ABSTRACT
During the tenth and eleventh centuries the political and cultural centre of the Eastern Slavs was Kiev, that trading centre on the Dnieper which was connected by water with all those outposts of Russian colonisation, pushing north and east across the great plain. The framework of the state, which was supposed to unite the Russian community, was really very feeble and unable to protect it from the dangers which were even now threatening from without. From the eleventh to thirteenth centuries these dangers came from every side and the tender shoot of Russian nationality was all but withered by devastating blasts from east and west. The Russians had been able to withstand the heavy armour of the German Knights, but they were powerless now before the swarms of mobile cavalry, armed with terrible swords and pikes, and unburdened by heavy baggage trains, for they lived on the plunder of the country.
