Origins

According to a founding myth in the Primary Chronicle, Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv and their sister Lybid co-founded the city of Kiev (Kyiv), and the oldest brother Kyi was "chief of his kin" (Old East Slavic: кнѧжаше в родѣ, romanized: knyazhashe v rodie).^[5] Some western historians (i.e., Kevin Alan Brook) suppose that Kiev was founded by Khazars or Magyars. Kiev is a Turkic place name (Küi = riverbank + ev = settlement).^[6] At least during the 8th and 9th centuries Kiev functioned as an outpost of the Khazar empire (a hill-fortress, called Sambat, "high place" in Old Turkic). According to Omeljan Pritsak, Constantine Zuckerman and other scholars, Khazars lost Kiev at the beginning of the 10th century.^[7][8]

At some point, Rurik, a Varangian prince, allegedly founded the "Rurik dynasty" (named after him in the 16th century) in 862 through the "calling of the Varangians", but he is considered to be a legendary, mythical and perhaps even entirely fictional character by modern scholars.^{[lower-alpha 1]} The Primary Chronicle never calls Rurik a prince of Kiev; the passage wherein Oleg "sat in Kiev" (Old East Slavic: понелѣже сѣде въ Кыевѣ, romanized: ponelѣzhe sѣde v" Kyyevѣ) makes no mention of Rurik, suggesting the author was 'more interested in the first Rus' ruler to reside in Kiev than with any founder of a dynasty'.^[11]

Kiev was captured by Askold and Dir, whose existence is also debatable, and are called "boyars" who "did not belong to [Rurik's] family" by the Primary Chronicle.^[12][1] According to some Russian historians (i.e., Gleb S. Lebedev), Dir was a chacanus of Rhos (Rus khagan).^[13] Thomas Noonan asserts that one of the Rus "sea-kings", the "High king", adopted the title khagan in the early 9th century.^[14] Peter Benjamin Golden maintained that the Rus became a part of the Khazar federation, and that their ruler was officially accepted as a vassal khagan of the Khazar Khagan of Itil.^[15]

First princes

Askold and Dir are narrated to have been killed in 882 by Oleg, the first "prince" (knyaz) of Kiev according to the Primary Chronicle, but not yet a "grand prince" (velikiy knyaz).^[1][11] His relation to Rurik is debatable, and has been rejected by several modern scholars.^[16] Although later Muscovite chroniclers would call Oleg a "grand prince" and Kiev a "grand principality" (Old East Slavic: великое княжение, romanized: velikoe knyazhenie), the earliest sources do not.^[17] Whereas the reconstructed original Greek text of the Rusʹ–Byzantine Treaty (907) calls Oleg a μεγας ἄρχων or "great archon" ("ruler"), the Old East Slavic translations found in the Laurentian Codex and Hypatian Codex do not.^[18] On the other hand, only when the Byzantine emperors Leo VI the Wise, Alexander and Constantine VII are called "the Great", Oleg is also called "the Great".^[18] Dimnik (2004) argued it should thus be read as "the Rus' prince Oleg the Great" instead of "Oleg the grand prince of Rus'".^[18] Similarly, the only occasions Igor of Kiev is ever called velikiy knyaz in the Primary Chronicle (six times) are all found in the Rusʹ–Byzantine Treaty (945), where the Greek emperors are also called k velikiy tsesarem Grech'-skim ("to the great Greek caesars").^[18] The same happens when, after Sviatoslav's invasion of Bulgaria, the 971 peace treaty is recorded; it is the only place in the Primary Chronicle where Sviatoslav I is named a velikiy knyaz.^[18] Most significantly, the Nachal'nyy svod (found only in the Novgorod First Chronicle) never mentions any of these peace treaties, and never calls Oleg, Igor or Sviatoslav a velikiy knyaz.^[19] According to Dimnik (2004), this means that Greek scribes added the word "great" to the princely title, whereas the Rus' themselves did not, except when translating these three treaties from Greek into Slavic.^[19]

Yaropolk I of Kiev and Volodimer I of Kiev are both steadily referred to as just a knyaz by the Novgorod First Chronicle and the Laurentian and Hypatian Codices.^[20] There is one exception: the Hypatian Codex writes Volodimir knyaz velikii ("Volodimir the grand prince") when reporting the latter's death; because the Hypatian Codex is the latest source of the three (compiled c. 1425), this is probably a later interpolation.^[20] A Paterik of the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra of the early 13th century also calls Volodimer a velikiy knyaz, but that was written two centuries after his death, and may not necessarily describe how he was known while alive.^[21] The oldest surviving source available is Hilarion of Kiev's Sermon on Law and Grace (c. 1040s), which calls Volodimer a kagan (a Khazar title) rather than a knyaz.^[21] Some scholars have suggested that this indicates Kievan Rus' had won its independence from the Khazars in the early 10th century, and had inherited the title of kagan from them, before exchanging it for knyaz later.^[21] The Church Statute of Prince Volodimir starts with "Behold, I, Prince Vasilii, called Volodimir," (Old East Slavic: Се аз, князь Василий, нарицаемыи Володимир, romanized: Se yaz, knyaz' Vasilii, naritsayemy Volodimir,^[22]), but later in the text he interchangeably calls himself knyaz and velikiy knyaz, and the earliest copy of this document is from the 14th century, so it is difficult to say what the lost original text said.^[22] Since chroniclers also regularly referred to Volodimer as velikiy without mentioning his title – the reason why he has become known to history as Volodimer "the Great" – suggests that this adjective was not part of his title, but a sobriquet or nickname, that was also applied to other monarchs or clerics around him.^[23]

Velikiy knyaz Yaroslav and descendants

Sviatopolk I of Kiev was never called velikiy knyaz ("grand prince") in any source.^[24] Moreover, he has been stigmatised by chroniclers with the nickname "the Accursed" or "the Damned" (okayannyy) because of how he violently rose to power in the war of succession following Volodimir's death in 1015.^[24] On the other hand, Yaroslav the Wise is the first widely attested velikiy knyaz ("grand prince") in virtually all sources of the second half of the 11th century, and surviving copies of the Church Statute of Prince Yaroslav also strongly suggest he applied the title to himself while he was alive.^[25] Dimnik (2004) concluded that by the end of Yaroslav's reign in the third quarter of the 11th century, he was regularly calling himself and being called the velikiy knyaz of Kiev, and the competing titles of kagan and tsar had decisively lost in favour of velikiy knyaz as the preferred appellation of the Kievan monarch.^[26] The velikiy knyaz was designated by genealogical seniority and given the right to reign from Kiev – the grand principality superior to all other principalities in the realm – over all other princes descended from Yaroslav.^[27] The reason why the system of succession did not always work as Yaroslav intended was because some princes simply usurped power through a coup d'état at the court in Kiev.^[28] The 1097 Council of Liubech upgraded the dynastic capitals of the inner circle of senior princes to grand principalities as well, but still acknowledged the superiority of Kiev.^[28]

It was not until the Sack of Kiev (1169) by Andrey Bogolyubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal that the grand princes of Vladimir launched a fierce competition with the grand princes of Kiev over who had primacy over the entire realm.^[28] Since then, the phrase "velikiy knyaz of Kiev" was merely titular, and chroniclers applied the symbolic title of velikiy knyaz to Kiev or Vladimir on the Klyazma according to whomever they favoured.^[28] In practice, the military supremacy of any particular prince – especially from Vsevolod the Big Nest onwards – would determine whether the other princes would or would not acknowledge him as "grand prince".^[29] After the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' and Sack of Kiev in the late 1230s and 1240s, the khans of the Golden Horde "in effect, terminated the office of the velikiy knyaz' of Kiev and conferred political supremacy on their puppet in Vladimir."^[30]