ABSTRACT
Our last chapter ended with a question: could the Rus foothold on the Middle Dnieper and the trading ties they forged with Byzantium endure? An answer comes from the much fuller literary and archaeological evidence which emerges fairly abruptly from around the middle of the tenth century. This presents a picture of a resilient political structure. The Rus have a ruling elite which is headed or fronted by a paramount prince, whose authority is hereditable. When Prince Igor is killed by recalcitrant Slavs in the mid-940s, there is no discernible free-for-all among the other princes or senior members of the elite. Instead, the reins of power are taken over by his widow, known to Byzantine writers by her Nordic name of Helga and given the Slavic name, Olga, in the Primary Chronicle. She acted as regent on behalf of their small son, Sviatoslav. Most importantly of all, the locus of her power lay among the Rus in the south and she possessed two halls at Kiev. One was a stone keep and stood inside the fortified area on Starokievskaia hill, while the other is said to have stood ‘outside the town’. Ingenious, but not wholly convincing, attempts have been made to identify the stone hall. 1 They are liable to divert attention from the remarkable fact that such a shift of power southwards occurred within a generation or so of the Rus’ installation on the Middle Dnieper. The precise date and the circumstances are unknown, save that by the end of the 930s Prince Igor was ensconced in Kiev. It may be that Igor, or his predecessor, gained authority there essentially in the manner recounted in the chronicle – through the elimination or expulsion of Rus adventurers who had set themselves up in the south. But it is no less possible that the change came about peaceably. Assuming that the chaganus at Gorodishche belonged to a hereditary dynasty, he may have considered it expedient to send a relative, perhaps a son, to embody his authority on the Middle Dnieper. There is no archaeological evidence of a conflagration at Kiev, such as a violent take-over in the second quarter of the tenth century might have occasioned.
