ABSTRACT
From 1036 until his death in 1054 Iaroslav was unchallenged and unchallengeable in his political, military, economic and territorial dominance. With the defeat of the Pechenegs he obtained, at least for a while, relative security from attack. With the death of Mstislav (and the remote imprisonment of Sudislav) he inherited sole dynastic authority. And with the acquisition of Mstislav’s ‘left-bank’ territories, with control over Chernigov and Tmutorokan, Iaroslav had substantially augmented his own resources. His response to this new freedom was decisive: Iaroslav embarked on the most ambitious programme of construction and public patronage in the history of his clan. In scope and scale Iaroslav’s initiatives in Kiev and Novgorod comfortably, and doubtless deliberately, surpassed Mstislav’s unfinished project for Chernigov. His transparent aim was to lay the physical and cultural foundations on which to secure his own status and prestige as ruler in Kiev, to secure the status and prestige of Kiev above other cities of the Rus, and to secure the status and prestige of the Rus among the peoples of the known world.
