Everything about Sviatoslav I Of Kiev totally explained
Sviatoslav I of Kiev (
Old East Slavic: С~тославъ (Свąтославъ) Игорєвичь (
Sventoslavŭ Igorevichǐ),
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.
Personality
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 isn't 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). 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).
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). His tutor was a
Varangian named
Asmud. "Quick as a leopard," 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:
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.
His mother converted to Christianity at the court of
Byzantine Emperor
Constantine Porphyrogenitus in 945 or 957. However, 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. 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 wasn't 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, didn't extend to his religious observance.
Sviatoslav, had several children, but the origin of his wives isn't specified in the chronicle. By his wives, he'd
Yaropolk and
Oleg. By
Malusha, a woman of indeterminate origins, 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.
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.
Eastern campaigns
Shortly after his accession to the throne, Sviatoslav began campaigning to expand the Rus control over the Volga valley and the
Pontic steppe region. His greatest success was the conquest of
Khazaria, which for centuries had been one of the strongest states of
Eastern Europe. The sources are not clear about the roots of the conflict between Khazaria and Rus', so several possibilities have been suggested. The Rus' had an interest in removing the Khazar hold on the
Volga trade route because the Khazars collected duties from the goods transported by the Volga. Historians have suggested that the Byzantine Empire may have incited the Rus' against the Khazars, who fell out with the Byzantines after the persecutions of the
Jews in the reign of
Romanus I Lecapenus.
Sviatoslav began by rallying the Khazars'
East Slavic vassal tribes to his cause. Those who wouldn't join him, such as the
Vyatichs, were attacked and forced to pay tribute to the Kievan Rus' rather than the Khazars. According to a legend recorded in the Primary Chronicle, Sviatoslav sent a message to the Vyatich rulers, consisting of a single phrase: "I want to come at you!" (
Old East Slavic: "хощю на вы ити") This phrase is used in modern Russian (usually misquoted as "Иду на вы") to denote an unequivocal declaration of one's intentions. Proceeding by the
Oka and Volga rivers, he invaded
Volga Bulgaria and exacted tribute from the local population, thus bringing under Kievan control the upper Volga River. He employed
Oghuz and
Pecheneg mercenaries in this campaign, perhaps to counter the Khazars' and Bulgars' superior
cavalry.
Sviatoslav destroyed the Khazar city of
Sarkel around 965, and possibly sacked (but didn't occupy) the Khazar city of
Kerch on the
Crimea. At Sarkel he established a Rus' settlement called Belaya Vyezha ("the white tower" or "the white fortress", the East Slavic translation for "Sarkel"). He subsequently (probably in 968 or 969) destroyed the Khazar capital of
Atil. A visitor to Atil wrote soon after Sviatoslav's campaign: "The Rus attacked, and no grape or raisin remained, not a leaf on a branch." The exact chronology of his Khazar campaign is uncertain and disputed; for example,
Mikhail Artamonov and
David Christian proposed that the sack of Sarkel came after the destruction of Atil.
Although
Ibn Haukal reports Sviatoslav's sack of
Samandar in modern-day
Dagestan, the Rus' leader didn't bother to occupy the Khazar heartlands north of the
Caucasus Mountains permanently. On his way back to Kiev, Sviatoslav chose to strike against the
Ossetians and force them into subservience. Therefore, Khazar successor statelets continued their precarious existence in the region. The destruction of Khazar imperial power paved the way for Kievan Rus' to dominate north-south trade routes through the steppe and across the
Black Sea, routes that formerly had been a major source of revenue for the Khazars. Moreover, Sviatoslav's campaigns led to increased Slavic settlement in the region of the
Saltovo-Mayaki culture, greatly changing the demographics and culture of the transitional area between the forest and the steppe.
Campaigns in the Balkans
The annihilation of Khazaria was undertaken against the background of the Rus'-Byzantine alliance, concluded in the wake of
Igor's Byzantine campaign in 944. Close military ties between the Rus' and Byzantium are illustrated by the fact, reported by John Skylitzes, that a Rus' detachment accompanied Byzantine Emperor
Nicephorus Phocas in his victorious naval expedition to
Crete.
In 967 or 968 Nicephorus sent to Sviatoslav his agent,
Kalokyros, with the task of talking Sviatoslav into assisting him in a war against
Bulgaria. Sviatoslav was paid 15,000 pounds of gold and set sail with an army of 50,000 men, including thousands of Pecheneg mercenaries.
Sviatoslav defeated the Bulgarian ruler
Boris II and proceeded to occupy the whole of northern Bulgaria. Meanwhile, the Byzantines bribed the Pechenegs to
attack and besiege Kiev, where Olga stayed with Sviatoslav's son Vladimir. The siege was relieved by the
druzhina of
Pretich, and immediately following the Pecheneg retreat, Olga sent a reproachful letter to Sviatoslav. He promptly returned and defeated the Pechenegs, who continued to threaten Kiev.
Sviatoslav refused to turn his Balkan conquests over to the Byzantines, and the parties fell out as a result. To the chagrin of his
boyars and mother (who died within three days after learning about his decision), Sviatoslav decided to move his capital to
Pereyaslavets in the mouth of the Danube due to the great potential of that location as a commercial hub. In the
Primary Chronicle record for 969, Sviatoslav explains that it's to Pereyaslavets, the centre of his lands, "all the riches flow: gold, silks, wine, and various fruits from
Greece, silver and horses from
Hungary and
Bohemia, and from Rus furs, wax, honey, and slaves".
In summer 969, Sviatoslav left Rus' again, dividing his dominion into three parts, each under a nominal rule of one of his sons. At the head of an army that included Pecheneg and Magyar auxiliary troops, he invaded Bulgaria again, devastating
Thrace, capturing the city of
Philippopolis, and massacring its inhabitants. Niceforus responded by fortifying the defenses of
Constantinople and raising new squadrons of armored cavalry. In the midst of his preparations, Niceforus was overthrown and killed by
John Tzimiskes, who thus became the new Byzantine emperor.
John Tzimiskes first attempted to persuade Sviatoslav into leaving Bulgaria, but was unsuccessful. Challenging the Byzantine authority, Sviatoslav crossed the Danube and laid siege to
Adrianople, causing panic on the streets of Constantinople in summer 970. Later that year, the Byzantines launched a counteroffensive. Being occupied with suppressing a revolt of
Bardas Phocas in
Asia Minor, John Tzimiskes sent his commander-in-chief,
Bardas Sklerus, who defeated the coalition of Rus', Pechenegs, Magyars, and Bulgarians in the
Battle of Arcadiopolis. Meanwhile, John, having quelled the revolt of Bardas Phocas, came to the Balkans with a large army and promoting himself as the liberator of Bulgaria from Sviatoslav, penetrated the impracticable mountain passes and shortly thereafter captured
Marcianopolis, where the Rus were holding a number of Bulgar princes hostage.
Sviatoslav retreated to
Dorostol, which the Byzantine armies
besieged for sixty-five days. Cut off and surrounded, Sviatoslav came to terms with John and agreed to abandon the Balkans, renounce his claims to the southern Crimea and return west of the
Dnieper River. In return, the Byzantine emperor supplied the Rus' with food and safe passage home. Sviatoslav and his men set sail and landed on
Berezan Island at the mouth of the Dnieper, where they made camp for the winter. Several months later, their camp was devastated by famine, so that even a horse's head couldn't be bought for less than a half-
grivna, reports the Kievan chronicler of the Primary Chronicle. While Sviatoslav's campaign brought no tangible results for the Rus', it weakened the Bulgarian statehood and left it vulnerable to the attacks of
Basil the Bulgar-Slayer four decades later.
Death and aftermath
Fearing that the peace with Sviatoslav wouldn't 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. 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.
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'.
In art and literature
Sviatoslav has long been a hero of Russian,
Ukrainian, and
Belarusian patriots due to his great military successes. His figure first attracted attention of Russian artists and poets during the
Russo-Turkish War, 1768–1774, which provided obvious parallels with Sviatoslav's push towards Constaninople. Russia's southward expansion and
Catherine II's imperialistic ventures in the Balkans seemed to have been legitimized by Sviatoslav's campaigns eight centuries earlier.
Among the works created during the war was
Yakov Knyazhnin's tragedy
Olga (1772). The Russian playwright chose to introduce Sviatoslav as his protagonist, although his active participation in the events following Igor's death is out of sync with the traditional chronology. Knyazhnin's rival
Nikolai Nikolev (1758–1815) also wrote a play on the subject of Sviatoslav's life.
Ivan Akimov's painting
Sviatoslav's Return from the Danube to Kiev (1773) explores the conflict between military honour and family attachment. It is a vivid example of
Poussinesque rendering of early medieval subject matter.
In the 19th century, interest in Sviatoslav's career waned.
Klavdiy Lebedev depicted an episode of Svyatoslav's meeting with
Emperor John in his well-known painting, while
Eugene Lanceray sculpted an
equestrian statue of Sviatoslav in the early 20th century. Sviatoslav appears in the
Slavophile poems of
Velimir Khlebnikov as an epitome of militant Slavdom:
| Знаменитый сок Дуная, |
|
| Наливая в глубь главы, |
|
| Стану пить я, вспоминая |
|
| Светлых клич: "Иду на вы!". |
|
He is the villain of
Samuel Gordon's novel
The Lost Kingdom, or the Passing of the Khazars, a fictionalized account of the destruction of Khazaria by the Rus'. The Slavic warrior figures in a more positive context in the story "Chernye Strely Vyaticha" by Vadim Viktorovich Kargalov; the story is included in his book
Istoricheskie povesti.
In 2005, reports circulated that a village in the
Belgorod region had erected a monument to Sviatoslav's victory over the Khazars by the Russian sculptor
Vyacheslav Klykov. The reports described the 13-meter tall statue as depicting a Rus' cavalryman trampling a supine Khazar bearing a
Star of David. This created an outcry within the
Jewish community of Russia. The controversy was further exacerbated by Klykov's connections with
Pamyat and other anti-Semitic organizations, as well as by his involvement in the "letter of 500", a controversial appeal to the Prosecutor General to review all Jewish organizations in Russia for extremism. The Press Center of the Belgorod Regional Administration responded by stating that a planned monument to Sviatoslav hadn't yet been constructed, but would show "respect towards representatives of all nationalities and religions." When the statue was unveiled, the shield bore a twelve-pointed star.
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