The early Russia saw its Rise from 862 to 1245 till it collapsed under the Mongol invasions

A Slav attack on Russia

Three factors shaped the early history of Russia:

The movement eastward of Slav tribal settlers; the impact of the Vikings or Varangians, seafaring raiders and traders from Sweden who entered northern Russia in 850 and imposed tribute on the neighboring Slavs and Finns; the basic geography of the region, particularly the division between the forests of central and northern Russia and the treeless steppes of the south through which successive waves of invaders from Asia poured into Europe. Fierce Pechenegs controlled the fertile steppelands. To avoid them, Slav colonists moved into central Russia, where they settled into river basins, clearing the forests and living by agriculture, hunting, trapping and by the fur trade.

At first the Slavs resisted the Varangrians. But in 862 they called in ‘Rurik the Viking’ to restore order and protect them from Pecheneg raiders. Rurik occupied Novgorod, but the Varangrians immediately pushed south to Smolensk and then along the Dnieper to Kiev in 882. They thus controlled the trade route from the Baltic to the Black Sea. At the same time they imposed their rule over the Slav tribes on both sides of the river. It was nevertheless only a loose tributary overlordship, and it was not until the time of Vladimir I (980-1015) that the tribal regions were welded together into a single state.

The reign of Vladimir’s son, Yaroslav I was the high point of Kievan Russia. Converted to Christianity under Vladimir and in close contact with Constantinople, Kiev ranked high among European cities, but the new state had grown too quickly and after 1054 its decline was rapid. Dynastic conflict was incessant and the administration ineffective. At the same time the destruction of the Khazar empire by Svyatoslav in 965 opened the way for a new wave of Asiatic nomads, the Polovtsy, who broke through the defenses erected by Vladimir I and sacked Kiev in 1093. The result was a great exodus of peasants northwards to the region between the Oka and the Volga, where many new towns were founded including Vladimir, Suzdal, Rostov Moscow and Tver, Novgorod-Seversk, and in the west, Galich and Vladimir-Volynsk broke away from Kiev. After 1125 the axis of Russian life shifted north and the state broke up into warring principalities, among which Vladimir-Szdal was outstanding.

The final blow to the old order was the Mongol invasions, which fell upon the Volga region before turning south against Kiev, which was sacked in 1240. Novgorod was exposed simultaneously to German and Swedish attack. Mongol control was only indirect but its results were far-reaching. Kievan Russia already debilitated, disappeared forever, and the way was opened for the rise of Moscow.