The Formation of Eastern Europe and Kievan Rus

The contours of modern eastern Europe took shape during the period from 850 to 950. By 800, Slavic settlements dotted the area from the Danube River down to Greece and from the Black Sea to Croatia. The ruler of the Bulgarians, called a khagan, presided over the largest realm. In the ninth century, Bulgarian rule stretched west to the Tisza River in modern Hungary. At about the same, however, the Byzantine Empire began its own campaigns to conquer, convert, and control these Slavic regions, today known as the Balkans.

The Byzantine offensive began under Emperor Nicephorus I (r. 802–811), who waged war against the Slavs of Greece in the Peloponnese, set up a new Christian diocese there, organized it as a new military theme, and forcibly resettled Christians in the area to counteract Slavic paganism. The Byzantines followed this pattern of conquest as they pushed northward. By 900, Byzantium ruled all of Greece.

Still under Nicephorus I, the Byzantines launched a massive attack against the Bulgarians, took the chief city of Pliska, plundered it, burned it to the ground, and then marched against the khagan’s encampment in the Balkan Mountains. But the Bulgarians successfully parried this attack. In 816, the two sides agreed to a temporary peace—though it was punctuated by hostilities—that lasted for most of the tenth century. Then Emperor Basil II (r. 976–1025) led the Byzantines in a slow, methodical conquest. Aptly known as the Bulgar-Slayer, Basil brought the entire region under Byzantine control and forced its ruler to accept the Byzantine form of Christianity. Around the same time, the Serbs, encouraged by Byzantium to oppose the Bulgarians, began to form the political community that would become Serbia. (See “Document 9.1: A Portrait of Basil II.”)

Religion played an important role in the Byzantine conquest of the Balkans. In 863, the brothers Cyril and Methodius were sent as Christian missionaries from the Byzantines to the Slavs. Well educated in both classical and religious texts, they devised an alphabet for Slavic (until then an oral language) based on Greek forms. It was the ancestor of the modern Cyrillic alphabet used in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Russia today.

The region that would eventually become Russia lay outside the sphere of direct Byzantine rule in the ninth and tenth centuries. Like Serbia and Bulgaria, however, it came under increasingly strong Byzantine influence. In the ninth century, the Vikings—Scandinavian adventurers who ranged over vast stretches of ninth-century Europe seeking trade, riches, and land—penetrated the region below the Gulf of Finland, where they imposed their rule. By the end of the century, they had moved southward and had conquered the region around Kiev, a key commercial emporium. From there the Rus, as the Viking conquerors were called, sailed the Dnieper River and crossed the Black Sea in search of markets for their slaves and furs.

The relationship between Rus and Byzantium began with trade, continued with war, and ended with a common religion. By the beginning of the tenth century, the Rus had special trade privileges at Constantinople. But relations deteriorated, and the Rus unsuccessfully attacked Constantinople in 941. Soon they resumed trading with Byzantium.

Few Rus were Christian (most were polytheists, others Muslims or Jews), but that changed at the end of the tenth century, when good relations between the Rus and the Byzantines were sealed by the conversion of the Rus ruler Vladimir (r. c. 978–1015). In 988, Emperor Basil II sent his sister Anna to marry Vladimir in exchange for an army of Rus. To seal the alliance, Vladimir was baptized and took his brother-in-law’s name. The general population seems to have quickly adopted the new religion.

Vladimir’s conversion represented a wider pattern: the Christianization of Europe. In the southeast, orthodox Byzantine Christianity dominated, while in the west and northwest, Roman Catholicism tended to be most important. Slavic realms such as Moravia, Serbia, and Bulgaria adopted the Byzantine form of Christianity, while the rulers and peoples of Poland, Hungary, Denmark, and Norway were converted under the auspices of the Roman church. The conversion of the Rus was especially significant because they were geographically as close to the Islamic world as to the Christian and could conceivably have become Muslims. By converting to Byzantine Christianity, the Rus made themselves heirs to Byzantium and its church, customs, art, and political ideology. However, choosing the Byzantine form of Christianity, rather than the Roman Catholic, later served to isolate the region from western Europe.

For more than fifty years, Rus remained united under one ruler. But after 1054, civil wars broke out. Invasions by outsiders, particularly from the east, further weakened the Kievan rulers, who were eventually displaced by princes from the north. At the crossroads of East and West, Rus could meet and absorb a great variety of traditions, but its geographical position also opened it to unremitting military pressures.