Vladimir the Great

Vladimir Sviatoslavich, called Volodymyr in Ukrainian and remembered as Vladimir the Great, ruled Kievan Rus' as grand prince from 978 until 1015. Having seized power by force as a pagan warlord, he accepted Byzantine Christianity in 988 and made it the religion of his realm, a turning point for the later histories of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. Both the Orthodox and Catholic churches venerate him as a saint.

Vladimir was born around 958, the youngest son of Sviatoslav I, of the Rurik dynasty, by Malusha, a woman of the household; his mother's brother Dobrynya became his tutor and closest adviser. In 970 Sviatoslav set him over Novgorod while giving Kiev to his legitimate son Yaropolk. After Sviatoslav was killed by the Pechenegs in 972, his sons fell out. In 977 Yaropolk's war with their brother Oleg ended in Oleg's death, and Vladimir fled overseas.

He returned the next year at the head of a Varangian, that is Scandinavian, army. On the way he asked for the hand of Rogneda, daughter of the prince of Polotsk; when she scorned him as the son of a servant, he stormed Polotsk, took her by force and killed her parents, according to the chronicle tradition. Taking Polotsk and Smolensk opened the road to Kiev, which fell in 978. Yaropolk was killed by treachery and Vladimir became sole ruler.

Vladimir pushed his frontiers outward: he took the Cherven towns from Poland in 981, crushed the Vyatichi, subdued the Yatvingians and Radimichs, and in 985 campaigned against Volga Bulgaria. At home he raised a temple in Kiev to six gods headed by Perun, the thunder god favoured by his warriors, apparently trying to unite his subjects' cults, and kept numerous wives and, by the chronicle's figure, hundreds of concubines.

The Primary Chronicle, whose narrative runs to 1110, tells how missionaries of Islam, Judaism and Latin and Greek Christianity came to Kiev, and how Vladimir's envoys were dazzled by the services in Constantinople. Historians treat this tale with caution. Arab chroniclers, including Yahya of Antioch, give a more political explanation: when rebels rose against the emperor Basil II in 987, Basil sought help from Rus', and Vladimir sent 6,000 troops in return for marriage to the emperor's sister Anna, on condition that he be baptised.

In 988, after capturing Chersonesus in Crimea, Vladimir was baptised there, taking the name Basil, and married Anna, an extraordinary match for a ruler beyond the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire. Back in Kiev he had the pagan idols destroyed and the people baptised, the event known as the Christianization of Kievan Rus'. Contemporary Byzantine writers barely mention it, and some historians think the familiar story took shape in the 1040s.

Vladimir built churches, among them the Church of the Tithes in Kiev, begun in 989, and according to the chronicles had the sons of nobles educated. He placed his twelve sons over the provinces, founded towns, including Belgorod in 991, and minted coins. The chronicles credit him with charity and with softening the harsher Byzantine penalties. He kept largely at peace with Poland and Hungary, though Pecheneg raids continued.

In 1014 his son Yaroslav the Wise refused to pay tribute. Vladimir was preparing to march against him when he fell ill and died at Berestove, near Kiev, on 15 July 1015, leaving his sons to fight over the succession. Folk ballads remember him as the "Fair Sun", and today he is claimed as a national symbol in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, a point of dispute between their historians.

Our 1000 map shows the Rus' state late in Vladimir's reign, after he had extended it to the Baltic.