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Kievan Rus
According to the earliest chronicle of Kievan Rus', a Varangian named Rurik became prince of Novgorod in about 860 before his successors moved south and extended their authority to Kiev. By the late 9th century the Varangian ruler of Kiev had established his power over a large area that gradually came to be known as Russia.
The name "Russia" is thought to be connected with Slavic or Persian roots. Originally Rus was a medieval country and state that comprised mostly Early East Slavs. The territories of that old Rus are today distributed among the Russian Federation, Belarus and Ukraine.
That early "Rus" state had no proper name. Its inhabitants called it "Russkaya zemla", which might be translated as "Rus land" or "Land of the Rus". In a similar fashion, Poland is still called Polska by its inhabitants, and the Czech Republic (Česká republika) is commonly called by its adjectival name.
In order to distinguish the early "Rus" state from other states that subsequently derived from it, it is called by modern historians as "Kievan Rus".
Kievan Rus', the first East Slavic state, emerged in the 9th century along the Dnieper River valley. A coordinated group of princely states with a common interest in maintaining trade along the river routes, Kievan Rus' controlled the trade route for furs, wax, and slaves between Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire along the Dnieper River. By the end of the 10th century the Norse minority had merged with the Slavic population.
Kievan Rus' introduced a Slavic variant of the Eastern Orthodox religion, making a synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next thousand years. The region adopted Christianity in 988 by the official act by Prince Vladimir I. Some years later the first code of laws, Russkaya Pravda, was introduced.
By the 11th century, particularly during the reign of Yaroslav the Wise, Kievan Rus' could boast an economy and achievements in architecture and literature compared to those that then existed in the western part of the continent. Russian language was by the way little influenced by the Greek and Latin of early Christian writings.
Kievan Rus' ultimately disintegrated as a state because of the armed struggles among members of the princely family that collectively possessed it. Kiev's dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, Novgorod in the north, and Halych-Volhynia in the south-west. Conquest by the Mongol Golden Horde in the 13th century was the final blow. Kiev was destroyed. Halych-Volhynia would eventually be absorbed into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Mongol-dominated Vladimir-Suzdal and independent Novgorod would establish the basis for the modern Russian nation.
The rulers of this period include the following persons. Note that the succession did not always pass directly from father to son, but sometimes between other male relatives, including brothers and uncles and nephews. Overlapping dates are due to princes ruling in different principalities, all nominally under Kievan suzerainty.
http://www.parallelsixty.com/history-russia.shtml
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Originally Posted by Hors
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