Vladimir's force, his legitimacy deficit and turning to the gods
Vladimir suffered the handicap of lacking reputable ties with local elites or populations on the middle Dnieper. He was of princely stock, but his mother had been Sviatoslav's key-holder and of unfree status. Vladimir had spent his youth far away and lacked a longstanding retinue, once he had dispatched his 'Varangian' retainers to Byzantium. He sent them off after declining to pay them in precious metal and then reneging on a promised payment in marten- skins. This episode demonstrates the high running costs of war-bands and also Vladimir's political nous. He was anxious not to antagonise the better-off inhabitants of Kiev through over-taxation. As at Novgorod, the active cooperation of the citizenry was needed to underpin his regime: at least one prominent supporter of his murdered half-brother had fled to the Pechenegs and 'often' took part in their raids.26
Lack of material resources partly explains the tempo of Vladimir's early years in power. He needed to reimpose and extend tribute collection so as to feed the markets of Kiev and secure means for rewarding his followers. He led campaigns to the west and campaigned repeatedly against the redoubtable Viatichi, so as to reimpose tribute on them. Besides restoring the exchange nexuses, war-leadership could bond Vladimir with contingents of warriors of his choosing and strengthen his power base. This, however, presupposed victories and the public cult he instituted was designed to induce them, besides appealing to the heterogeneous population of the middle Dnieper region. The 'pantheon' of wooden idols set up outside his hall in Kiev was headed by Perun, the Slavic god of lightning and power. This is our first evidence of a prince's attempt to organise public worship and to associate his rule with a medley of gods, some quite local, others (like Perun) with a widespread following. Vladimir presumably hoped to bolster his legitimacy through such measures, and to win further victories. After subjugating the Iatviagians in the west, he ordered sacrifices in thanksgiving to the idols outside his hall. We know of this only because the father of a boy chosen by lot for sacrifice happened to be Christian, a Varangian who had come from 'the Greeks' to reside in Kiev and who refused to give up his son, at the cost of his own life. Vladimir's command- cult thus gave rise to 'martyrs'. But judging by the coffins and contents of several graves in Kiev's main burial ground, Christians and part-Christians lived peaceably with pagans, and were buried near them. The incessant circulation of travellers between the Baltic and Byzantium prompted individual Rus' to be baptised and Christianity was quite well known to inhabitants of the urban network, but this did not oblige their prince to follow suit.
Vladimir's campaigns brought mastery of the towns between the San and the Western Bug. Among these were Cherven and Peremyshl' (modern Przemysl in Poland), population centres astride routes to Western markets. The run of victories abated when Vladimir suffered a setback at the hands of the most sophisticated power adjoining Rus', the Volga Bulgars. He had presumably hoped to subjugate their markets, too, but on his uncle's advice came to terms. Dobrynia is supposed to have pointed out that these enemies wore boots: 'Let us go and look for wearers of bast-shoes!'27 His implication that Vladimir should seek tribute from simpler folk was demeaning, setting limits to the resources he could bring under his sway. To that extent, Perun and his fellow gods had failed to 'deliver', and a quest for a better guarantor of victory would be understandable. It may be no accident that the Primary Chronicle's next entry after Vladimir's reverse on the Volga is the arrival of a Bulgar mission to convert him to Islam, in the mid-980s. This serves as the preliminary to a lengthy account sometimes termed Vladimir's 'Investigation of the Faiths'. Most - though not all - of the material in the 'Investigation' is stylised doctrinal exegesis. But its image of Vladimir investigating four brands of monotheism - Eastern and Western Christianity besides Islam and Judaism - encapsulates what the immediately preceding chronicle entries and the general historical context lead one to expect. Rus' rulers since Ol'ga had been considering alternative sacral sources of authority. The cult of an all-powerful God had its attractions for a prince pre-eminent, yet light on legitimatisation, as Vladimir was. One might consider Vladimir's eventual choice of Byzantine Christianity inevitable, given the exposure of so many of his notables to its wealth and majesty. But Vladimir could have obtained a mission from the Germans, following his grandmother's precedent, had the government during Otto III's minority been better placed to further mission work. And there is evidence that Vladimir sent emissaries to Khorezm and obtained an instructor to teach 'the religious laws of Islam'. This demarche by a Rus' 'king' is recounted by a late eleventh-century Persian writer and it is compatible with the Primary Chronicle's tale of the dispatch of enquirers to the Muslims, Germans and Byzantines.[18] Seeking a mission from the Orient was nothing untoward, even if commercial ties with Central Asia were set to slacken.
An unusual conjuncture of events caused Vladimir to settle for a religious mission, marriage alliance and treaty with the senior Byzantine emperor, Basil II. The outlines are clear: by early 988 Basil was beleaguered in his capital by rebel armies encamped across the Bosporus, while a Bulgarian uprising against Byzantine rule in the Balkans was in full flame. Basil came to terms with Vladimir, sending his sister as bride in exchange for military aid; Vladimir's baptism was the inevitable corollary of this. Vladimir sent an army - 6,000- strong by one account - and they caught the rebels off-guard at Chrysopolis in the opening months of 989, at latest. This turned the tide. Within a couple of years the military rebellion ended and Anna Porphyrogenita settled in Kiev with her spouse, who took the Christian name 'Basil', in honour of his brother-in-law. These outlines convey the essence, that Basil II's domestic interests momentarily converged with those ofVladimir. The Rus' ruler could supply desperately needed troops and in return received generous concessions, such as had not been vouchsafed to Ol'ga.
The exact course and significance of events is harder to reconstruct, especially the expedition of Vladimir to Cherson. The Primary Chronicle's account draws on disparate sources, and our near-contemporaneous foreign sources are sketchy. Various explanations for Vladimir's expedition are feasible. This could have been a 'first strike', akin to his seizure of Cherven and other towns to the west. Cherson had prospered greatly in the tenth century and the town's built-up area expanded. Vladimir may have exploited Basil II's preoccupation with rebellions to grab the Crimea's richest town, reckoning that he could either mulct its revenues or use it as a bargaining counter. As part of an ensuing treaty, he may have sent Basil military aid. Alternatively, Vladimir may have seized Cherson in retaliation for Basil's slowness to honour an initial agreement on similar lines, forcing him to abide by it. Or the capture of Cherson could even have been carried out as a form of assistance to Basil if, as has been suggested, the townsfolk had sided with the rebellious generals.[19] What is not in doubt is that Vladimir exploited Byzantine disarray in order to secure his own authority, underwritten by Almighty God.
18
V Minorsky,