Prince Igor(about 878-945) according to " Tales of Bygone Years» - Grand Duke of Kyiv, son Rurik, father Svyatoslav and husband Princess Olga- the first ancient Russian prince mentioned in foreign (European) historical chronicles, where he appeared as the ruler of the Scythians (or Russ, or Ross) Inger.
Rurik died in 879, then Igor was very young, so Oleg, close to Rurik, became the ruler and guardian of Igor. Although in the Russian-Byzantine treaty of 911 Oleg is listed as Grand Duke of Russia, and not a regent - this suggests that Prince Oleg was a relative of Rurik (and, accordingly, Igor).
Igor became a full-fledged ruler after his death Prophetic Oleg from a snake bite (according to several chronicles) in 912.
In 914 Igor Rurikovich conquered drevlyans and imposed on them an even higher tribute than Oleg.
In 920 he led a campaign against Pechenegs. The chronicles also speak of Igor's further successful military policy, but they do not specifically mention anything. Therefore, the next campaign was an attack on Constantinople (Tsargrad) in 941 and 943. The first campaign was unsuccessful - the Greeks ( Byzantines) used an unknown Russian " Greek fire”(the first primitive flamethrowers) and drove back the Russian troops. The second campaign was stopped in the middle of the way (at the initiative of the Byzantine emperor Roman I, by a peace agreement (and after that by an official agreement). The Byzantines considered the Russians “irresistible”, they were afraid (as evidenced by the annals of Photius and Theophanes’ successors) and preferred not to conflict with them, especially since the agreement on military assistance (in exchange for trade privileges) was beneficial to the Greeks.
In 945, Igor personally went for tribute to the Drevlyans, who for the most part evaded the campaign against Byzantium in 941, and therefore were the least affected by the defeat. The Drevlyans opposed the inflated taxes, an armed clash occurred, and Igor was killed (according to another version, he was captured and brutally executed by tying to the tops of trees and torn in two).
Later, Princess Olga severely punished the Drevlyans, destroying almost all representatives of power, except for ordinary peasants, and imposing a high tribute on them. She became Igor's successor, since Svyatoslav was then still about 2 years old, and Igor's team greatly revered his wife for her strong-willed character and sharp mind.
In the chronicles about Igor, historians notice many inconsistencies, mainly in relation to dates, but also to the events themselves. Most of the inconsistencies relate to Olga (according to The Tale of Bygone Years, she met Igor at the age of 12-13, and gave birth to Svyatoslav at the age of 52, which is unlikely), as well as the date of Igor's death. Some historians even claim that Igor did not die during the conflict with the Drevlyans, but survived and disappeared, but this is unlikely.
The Kyiv prince, according to the annalistic tradition, is the son of Rurik, the husband of Princess Olga and the father of Svyatoslav Igorevich; the first ancient Russian prince known from simultaneous Byzantine and Western sources
short biography
Igor(annalistic chronology - c. 878-945) - Prince of Kyiv (according to the annals 912-945), according to the chronicle tradition - the son of Rurik, the husband of Princess Olga and the father of Svyatoslav Igorevich.
The first ancient Russian prince, known from synchronous Byzantine (Greek "Ιγγωρ") and Western (Latin Inger) sources.
Igor in the annals
According to The Tale of Bygone Years (beginning of the 12th century), the founder of the ancient Russian princely dynasty, Rurik, died in 879, having transferred power and care over the young Igor to his relative Oleg. When (882) Oleg left Novgorod and approached Kyiv, where the Varangians Askold and Dir ruled, he lured the Kyiv princes out of the city by cunning and ordered them to be killed in the name of Igor, whom the chronicle calls as a baby: “ You are not princes and not of a princely family, but I am of a princely family. And this is the son of Rurik».
In the Russian-Byzantine treaty of 911, Oleg was called the "Grand Duke of Russia", that is, in the documentary source, he was considered not a regent under Igor, but a sovereign ruler.
In 903, Igor was brought a wife from Pskov, Olga, who was 13 years old, and Igor - 25. Considering that the son of Igor and Olga Svyatoslav was born in 942 (Olga was 52 years old), the dates look extremely doubtful. Having gone on a campaign against Byzantium (907), Oleg left Igor as governor in Kiev. After Oleg's death in 912, Igor became the ruler of Kievan Rus. The dates of Oleg's death and, accordingly, the beginning of Igor's reign are conditional.
In 914, Igor conquered the Drevlyans and imposed on them a tribute greater than Oleg's. In 915, moving to the aid of Byzantium against the Bulgarians, the Pechenegs first appeared in Russia. Igor chose not to interfere with them, but in 920 he himself conducted a military campaign against them.
The next chronicle news about Igor is his campaign against Constantinople in 941-944. Since that time, evidence of Igor first appears in Byzantine and Western European sources. Thus, he became the first Russian prince named by name in foreign sources.
Campaigns against Tsargrad 941-944
The Old Russian chronicles in the story of the campaign of 941 go back to the translations of the Follower Amartol, but also contain traces of folk tradition, which was barely preserved by the time the chronicles were written.
The successor of Theophan begins the story of the campaign like this:
« On June 11 of the fourteenth indiction [941], dews sailed to Constantinople on ten thousand ships ...».
Liutprand of Cremona, the ambassador of the king of Italy Berengar II to Byzantium in 949, notices more than a thousand ships from the "King of the Rus Inger". In a sea battle, the huge Russian fleet was partially destroyed by Greek fire. After raids on Byzantine lands and a series of defeats, Igor returned home in September 941. The Russian chronicler conveys the words of the surviving soldiers: “ It is as if the Greeks have heavenly lightning and, by releasing it, they set fire to us; that's why they didn't overcome them.". The following fact testifies to the impression made by this raid on the Byzantines: the name of Igor became the only Russian name that was included in the Byzantine encyclopedic dictionary of the 10th century, known as Suda.
In 942, Igor's wife, Princess Olga, gave birth to Svyatoslav, who three years later became a prince under the care of his mother.
According to the annals in 944 (historians consider 943 proven), Igor gathered a new army from the Varangians, Rus (Igor's tribesmen), Slavs (Polyany, Ilmen Slovenes, Krivichi and Tivertsy) and Pechenegs and moved to Byzantium by cavalry by land, and most of the troops sent by sea. The Byzantine emperor Roman I Lekapen, warned in advance, sent envoys with rich gifts to meet Igor, who had already reached the Danube. At the same time, Roman sent gifts to the Pechenegs. After consulting with the squad, Igor, satisfied with the tribute, turned back. Theophan's successor reports a similar event in April 943, only the opponents of the Byzantines, who made peace and turned back without a fight, were called "Turks". The Byzantines usually called the Hungarians “Turks”, but sometimes they widely applied the name to all nomadic peoples from the north, that is, they could also mean the Pechenegs. The month of April was mentioned by Konstantin Porphyrogenitus in connection with the beginning of the navigation of the Rus.
In the next 944, Igor concluded a military-trade agreement with Byzantium. The contract mentions the names of Igor's nephews, his wife Princess Olga and son Svyatoslav. The chronicler, describing the approval of the treaty in Kyiv, reported on the church in which the Varangians-Christians took an oath.
Death of Igor
In the autumn of 945, at the request of the squad, dissatisfied with their content, Igor went to the Drevlyans for tribute. The Drevlyans were not included in the army that was defeated in Byzantium. Perhaps that is why Igor decided to improve the situation at their expense. Igor arbitrarily increased the amount of tribute from previous years, while collecting it, the combatants committed violence against the inhabitants. On the way home, Igor made an unexpected decision:
“On reflection, he said to his squad:“ Go home with tribute, and I will return and look like more. And he sent his retinue home, and he himself returned with a small part of the retinue, desiring more wealth. The Drevlyans, having heard that he was coming again, held a council with their prince Mal: “If a wolf gets into the habit of sheep, he will carry out the whole herd until they kill him; so this one: if we don’t kill him, then he will destroy us all” [...] and the Drevlyans, leaving the city of Iskorosten, killed Igor and his warriors, since there were few of them. And Igor was buried, and there is his grave near Iskorosten in Derevskoy land to this day.
Princess Olga meets the body of Prince Igor.
V. Surikov, 1915
25 years later, in a letter to Svyatoslav, the Byzantine emperor John Tzimiskes recalled the fate of Prince Igor, calling him Inger. In the presentation of Leo the Deacon, the emperor reported that Igor went on a campaign against some Germans, was captured by them, tied to the tops of trees and torn in two.
According to the legend set forth in the annals, Igor's widow, Princess Olga, cruelly took revenge on the Drevlyans. She destroyed their elders by cunning, killed many ordinary people, burned Iskorosten and placed a heavy tribute on them. Princess Olga, with the support of Igor's squad and boyars, began to rule Russia while little Svyatoslav, Igor's son, was growing up.
In an early monument of ancient Russian literature, the “Sermon on Law and Grace” by Metropolitan Hilarion of Kyiv (before 1050), the genealogy of Russian princes can be traced back to Igor. Just about 100 years after the death of Igor, Hilarion called him "ancient Igor". Igor, among other illustrious princes, is remembered by the author of Zadonshchina, a poetic work of the late 14th century:
“That more prophetic Boyan, laying his golden fingers on living strings, give glory to the Russian prince: the first prince Rurik, Igor Rurikovich and Svyatoslav Yaroslavich, Yaroslav Volodimerovich ...”
Historiography on the life of Igor
V. N. Tatishchev, referring to the so-called Joachim Chronicle, the authenticity of which is questioned by historians, provides additional information about Igor. He calls Igor's mother Efanda, urmanskaya(Norman) princess and beloved wife of Rurik, who received the city of Izhora as a dowry. According to Tatishchev, the name "Ingor" comes from the Finnish (Izhora) name Inger. When Igor matured, Prince Oleg brought him a wife from Izborsk, from the noble family of Gostomysl. The girl's name was Prekrasa, but Oleg renamed her Olga. Subsequently, Igor had other wives, but he honored Olga more than others. Igor, besides Svyatoslav, also had a son, Gleb, whom Svyatoslav executed for his Christian beliefs. Otherwise, the Joachim Chronicle follows the Tale of Bygone Years. Tatishchev also gives the dates of Igor's birth from various lists: 875 in Raskolnichiy, 861 in Nizhny Novgorod, 865 in Orenburg.
At the beginning (913/914) and the end (943/944) of the annalistic chronology of Igor's reign, the Rus made major sea voyages in the Caspian region, which the ancient Russian chronicles are silent about. Chronologically, it is possible that the campaign in 913/914. influenced Igor's coming to power, since all its participants, according to Arab authors, were killed on the Volga. According to Khazar evidence, Igor's campaign against Byzantium was connected with the campaign against the Caspian Sea in 943-945), in which, according to Khazar and Arabic sources, unrelated to each other, the leader of the Rus died. The Khazar source reports the death of precisely " king of the Rus", calling him X-l-gu, which makes it tempting to identify him with Prophetic Oleg.
The Byzantine message of Leo the Deacon about the death of Igor at the hands of the Germans only increases the uncertainty. It is possible that Leo Deacon's informant misunderstood the unfamiliar ethnonym "Drevlyane" by ear as the more familiar "Germans".
The chronicle date of Igor's death (945) is also conditional; historians have noted that, like Oleg and Svyatoslav, it falls on the first year after the date of the agreement of these princes with the Greeks included in the annals, and, like Oleg, coincides with the end date of the reign of the contemporary Byzantine emperor (respectively, Leo VI and Roman I). A. V. Nazarenko interprets the formula of the message given by Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus to the “archon of Russia” from Constantine and his son Roman II as an indication that Igor was alive in the spring of 946, when Roman was crowned co-ruler of his father on Easter (since Igor’s successor became Olga, it would be said about her "archontissa").
The same Constantine Porphyrogenitus in his essay “On the Management of the Empire”, written in 949, noted: “ Monoxyls are one of Nemogard, in which Sfendoslav, the son of Ingor, archon of Russia, sat ...". Literally, this phrase implies that even by 949 Igor was still alive, since, according to the composition of the dew, they annually came to Byzantium on trade matters, and Constantinople was aware of the situation in Russia.
According to information provided by the 18th-century Polish historian Jan Strzhedowski, in 949 Igor made an alliance with Oleg Moravian against Hungary, but died in the same year.
Historians studying the deeds of Igor according to the ancient Russian chronicles note inconsistencies and exaggerations in his biography, which gives rise to various reconstructions of his reign.
A family
Late sources from Igor's family know only his wife Olga and son Svyatoslav - the grandmother and father of St. Vladimir and thus the direct ancestors of all Russian princes of the 11th and subsequent centuries. This explains the attention paid to them by Russian chroniclers. However, judging by the Byzantine-Russian treaty of 944, the family of Igor (“prince”), who sent “ambassadors” and “merchants” to Constantinople, was much more numerous and included, in particular, his nephews Igor (the younger) and Akun (Hakon), people with Slavic names on - glory Volodislav and Peredslava (the wife of a certain Uleb, whom Tatishchev also associates with Gleb, the brother of Svyatoslav, mentioned in the Joachim Chronicle), a number of other people with Scandinavian names. A. V. Rukavishnikov suggests, judging by the choice of names, that Igor Jr. was the son of the brother of Grand Duke Igor, and Akun was the son of his sister. The report of Constantine Porphyrogenitus on Olga's visit to Constantinople in 957 mentions several of her relatives and a separate nephew; it is possible that in both of these sources the blood relatives of both Igor and Olga appear.
Apparently, these dynasts (with the exception of Svyatoslav Igorevich, who, according to Konstantin Porphyrogenitus, was “sitting” under his father, in Novgorod) did not have inheritances, but stayed in corpore in Kyiv, participating annually together with the Grand Duke in the polyudya procedure. The further fate of the "forgotten" relatives of Prince Igor is unknown; they could, in particular, die in a war or in an internecine clash. Probably, their failure to mention is a phenomenon of “non-recognition of kinship”, similar, for example, to the failure to mention odious branches of the family in medieval Norman chronicles (“History of the Normans” by Dudo from St. Quentin). “Non-recognition of kinship” in the Russian case emphasizes the legitimacy of only the direct ancestors of Christian princes, “cutting off” pagan lateral lines.
Until 912, Kievan Rus was ruled by Prince Oleg on behalf of Igor, since the latter was still very young. Being modest by nature and upbringing, Igor respectfully treated his elders and did not dare to claim his rights to the throne during the life of Oleg, who for his deeds surrounded his name with a halo of glory. Prince Oleg approved the choice of a wife for the future ruler. Prince Igor of Kyiv married in 903 a simple girl, Olga, who lived near Pskov.
Beginning of the reign
After Oleg died, Igor became a full-fledged prince of Russia. His reign began with a war. At this time, the tribe of the Drevlyans decided to get out of the power of Kyiv and an uprising began. The new ruler severely punished the rebels, inflicting a crushing defeat on them. This battle began numerous campaigns of Prince Igor. The result of the campaign against the Drevlyans was the unconditional victory of Russia, which, as a winner, demanded additional tribute from the rebels. The following campaigns were aimed at confronting the Pechenegs, who, having driven the Ugor tribes from the Urals, continued their advance to the West. The Pechenegs, in the fight against Kievan Rus, occupied the lower reaches of the Dnieper River, thereby blocking the trade opportunities of Russia, since it was through the Dnieper that the path from the Varangians to the Greeks passed. The campaigns conducted by Prince Igor against the Polovtsy were carried out with alternate success.
Campaigns to Byzantium
Despite the ongoing confrontation with the Polovtsians, new wars continue. In 941, Igor declares war on Byzantium, thereby continuing the foreign policy of his predecessors. The reason for the new war was that after the death of Oleg, Byzantium considered itself free from previous obligations and ceased to fulfill the terms of the peace treaty. The campaign against Byzantium was truly outstanding. It was the first time that such a large army was advancing on the Greeks. The Kyiv ruler took with him about 10,000 ships, according to the chroniclers, which is 5 times more than the army with which Oleg won. But this time the Russians failed to take the Greeks by surprise, they managed to gather a large army and won the first battle on land. As a result, the Russians decided to win the war by naval battles. But that didn't work either. Byzantine ships, using a special incendiary mixture, began to burn Russian ships with oil. Russian wars were simply amazed by this weapon and perceived it as heavenly. The army had to return to Kyiv.
Two years later, in 943, Prince Igor organizes a new campaign against Byzantium. This time the army was even larger. In addition to the Russian troops, mercenary detachments were invited, which consisted of Pechenegs and Varangians. The army moved to Byzantium by sea and by land. New campaigns promised to be successful. But the surprise attack failed. Representatives of the city of Chersonesos managed to report to the Byzantine emperor that a new large Russian army was advancing on Constantinople. This time the Greeks decided to avoid fighting and proposed a new peace treaty. Prince Igor of Kyiv, after conferring with his retinue, accepted the terms of the peace treaty, which were identical to the terms of the treaty signed by the Byzantines with Oleg. This ended the Byzantine campaigns.
End of the reign of Prince Igor
According to the records in the annals, in November 945, Igor gathered a squad and moved to the Drevlyans to collect tribute. Having collected tribute, he released most of the troops and with a small squad went to the city Iskorosten. The purpose of this visit was to demand tribute for himself personally. The Drevlyans were outraged and planned murder. Having armed the army, they set off towards the prince with his retinue. This is how the murder of the Kyiv ruler happened. His body was buried near Iskorosten. According to legend, the murder was extremely brutal. He was tied hand and foot to bent trees. Then the trees were released... Thus ended the reign of Prince Igor...
IGOR(? -945) - Prince of Kyiv (since 912), the actual ancestor of the Rurik dynasty (according to the oldest Russian chronicle - Tale of Bygone Years - the son of Rurik), the first of the Russian princes, mentioned by foreign historians - Simon Logofet, Leo Grammatik, etc.
The main direction of his activity was to protect the country from the raids of the Pechenegs and preserve the unity of the state. He reigned in Kyiv after the death of his predecessor Oleg from 912, subduing the rebellious tribes of the Drevlyans and Uglichs, forcing them to pay "polyudye" (tribute). According to the Russian chronicle, in 913 he married Olga, a Pskov woman from a noble family, possibly Varangian (according to one of the legends, Oleg chose her for him in 903, according to another, he himself met her on a river crossing in Pskov). In the same year, under his leadership, a campaign was made on the coast of the Caspian Sea. Moving along the coast of the Caspian Sea, the approaches to which were under the control of the Khazars, Igor's army approached Baku. As payment for the "pass", the Khazars were promised half of the booty. The booty was really huge, and half of it was given to the Khazars, as promised, by the Russians. Because of the second half, which the Khazars also began to claim, a terrible battle broke out, as a result of which almost the entire army of Prince Igor was destroyed.
Returning to Kyiv, Igor was forced to gather a new squad for a new campaign: the territory of the Russians was attacked by the Pechenegs for the first time. Like the Ugrians, Bulgars, Avars, they came from the east; they led a nomadic lifestyle. Having met with a strong army of Igor, the Pechenegs were forced to retire to Bessarabia, where they also terrified their neighbors. Having made peace with Igor in 915, they did not disturb the Russians for five years, but from 920, as the compiler writes Tale of Bygone Years, began to invade the expanses of Russia again.
In 941, Prince Igor undertook a campaign against Constantinople "on ten thousand ships" (an exaggeration of the Byzantine chronicler, frightened by the devastation of the city, the turning to ashes of temples, villages, monasteries). However, the campaign ended sadly for the Russian army: the Byzantines responded to Igor with the so-called "Greek fire" (sulfur, resin and lime in barrels and pots). Most of the Russian troops were destroyed.
Igor retreated and again went to the Greeks in 943. Warned by the Bulgarians and Khazars "about Russia[s] without number", the Byzantines offered peace on favorable terms for Prince Igor. After consulting with wise warriors, the Russian ruler accepted the proposal of the Byzantine emperor. The following year, Kyiv and Tsargrad exchanged embassies and concluded a new peace treaty, the third in a row (after treaties 907 and 911) in Russian history. Treaty 944 established “eternal peace as long as the sun shines and the whole world stands still”, stipulated more favorable conditions for trade between the Russians and Byzantium, and secured the agreement to help each other with military forces. The drafters of the treaty from the Byzantine side noted that “if [some ruler of an enemy land] wants to start our kingdom from us [take away], let us write to your Grand Duke, and he will go to us, if we want…”
It was the first international document to mention a country under the name Russian land. It is not surprising that the Russian chronicler introduced the text of this treaty under 944 in Tale of Bygone Years- so great is its significance. Treaty 944 called the Russian princes who accompanied Igor (“archons”) by their names, which makes it possible to see an early feudal monarchy in the system of government that existed in Igor's time. In order to manage a vast territory, the prince had to divide Russia between relatives and allied "archons" or kings. It is important to note that not only “husbands”, but also the wives of princes and senior kings, the “archontesses” Predslava and Sfandra, who owned huge cities (“jarls”), participated in the “sharing”. These noble women also sent their ambassadors to Constantinople, including Igor's wife Olga, who owned the city of Vyshgorod as a "yarldom", was in charge of state affairs and ruled the court in the absence of her husband. The separation of the “Igor family” from the rest of the “great princes” (kings) and the conquest of the exclusive right to the Kyiv throne by him had the character of a long process. Its decisive factors were the formation of a new system of government and the formation of the support of the dynasty - the boyars.
After the campaign of 944, Prince Igor no longer fought and even sent the squad of his boyar Sveneld to collect tribute, which began to affect the level of well-being of Igor's squad. In Igor's squad, they soon began to grumble: “The youths (militants) of Sveneld got rich in weapons and clothes, and we are naked. Come, prince, with us for tribute, and you will get it, and so will we! After much persuasion, Prince Igor set off in 945 with his retinue to the Drevlyane land for tribute. Considering the collected polyudye insufficient, the prince returned with his warriors to collect tribute again. Outraged by such arbitrariness, the Drevlyans from Iskoresten decided: “The wolf got into the habit of going to the sheep - this is how he drags the whole herd. We'd better kill him!" A small detachment of Igor was defeated by the Drevlyansk prince Mal, Igor himself - according to the testimony of the Byzantine historian Leo the Deacon - was killed, tied to the bent tops of two neighboring trees. According to the chronicle, for the death of her husband, Olga brutally dealt with the Drevlyans and, in order to avoid such conflicts, later “introduced charters and lessons” (determined the places, frequency and amount of tribute collected).
By the end of Igor's reign, the power of the Russians had spread on both sides of the upper and middle Dnieper, in the southeast - to the Caucasus and the Tauride Mountains, in the north - to the banks of the Volkhov. Shortly before the death of Igor, an heir appeared in his family - Svyatoslav, to whom (according to the Byzantine historian Konstantin Porphyrogenitus) he immediately gave the city of Novgorod into possession. According to the Russian chronicle, the child was very small in the year of his father's death and could hardly ride a horse. Doubts were expressed that Igor was the father of Svyatoslav (L.N. Gumilyov).
The idea of rapprochement, rallying and unification of the Slavic peoples, "read" in the history of ancient Russian campaigns and battles of the early 10th century. in Russian chronicles by the modern sculptor N.Mozhaev, artist V.Gorbulin and architect M.Pozdnyakov, is the basis of the composition dedicated to Prince Igor and erected in 2003 over the Severny Donets River in the Luhansk region (Ukraine).
Lev Pushkarev
Igor is the son of the Novgorod prince Rurik. The Tale of Bygone Years says that in 879, when Rurik was dying, Igor was a small child, whom his father handed over to his relative Oleg. And in the Novgorod First Chronicle of the younger edition, Igor, during the capture of Kyiv in 882, acts as an adult mature ruler. According to the "Tale of Bygone Years" in 903, Igor is the "assistant" of the great Russian prince Oleg. It also reports on Igor's marriage to Olga, and under 907 it is said that when Oleg went on a campaign against Constantinople, Igor was his governor in Kyiv. And the Novgorod chronicler states that the campaign against Byzantium was organized not by Oleg, but by Igor.
According to The Tale of Bygone Years, Igor took the throne in 913 after the death of Oleg the Prophet. In 914, he suppressed the uprising of the Drevlyans, who did not want to obey him. In 915 he made peace with the Pechenegs. In 920 he again fought with the Pechenegs. The results of this war are not known. During his reign (in 913 and 943) two Russian military campaigns were carried out against the Caspian countries. In 940, the streets were subdued to Kyiv, on which tribute was imposed "by a black kune from smoke."
START: IGOR WENT TO DREVLYAN
According to the account of the chronicler, Oleg's successor Igor, the son of Rurik, reigned for 33 years (912 - 945) and only five legends are recorded in the annals about the affairs of this prince; for the reign of Oleg, 33 years were also calculated (879 - 912). The chronicle says that Igor remained a baby after the death of his father; in the legend about the occupation of Kyiv by Oleg, Igor is also a baby who could not even be taken out, but carried out in his arms; if Oleg reigned for 33 years, then Igor should have been about 35 years old after his death. Under the year 903, Igor's marriage is mentioned: Igor grew up, says the chronicler, walked around Oleg, obeyed him, and they brought him a wife from Pskov named Olga. During Olegov's campaign near Tsargrad, Igor remained in Kyiv. The first legend about Igor, recorded in the annals, says that the Drevlyans, tormented by Oleg, did not want to pay tribute to the new prince, shut themselves up from him, that is, they did not let either the prince or his husbands come to him for tribute. Igor went to the Drevlyans, won and imposed a tribute on them more than what they paid before to Oleg.
ASSOCIATION OF SLAVIC TRIBES UNDER IGOR
"The Tale of Bygone Years" connects the expansion of the possessions of the Kyiv prince with the name of Oleg. In addition to the territories of the Slovenes, Krivichi and Polyana, which he owned after the capture of Kyiv, dated by the annals of 882, Oleg imposes tribute on the Drevlyans, the north and the Radimichi. His successor Igor, according to the Primary Code, subjugated the streets. Chronicle information about the conquest of "Slavinia", however, is not only chronologically inaccurate, but also clearly incomplete: for example, they do not say anything about the territorially close to Kyiv Dregovichi and communities of Volhynia. But for the 1st half of the tenth century. there is a unique opportunity to compare four multilingual sources containing extensive information about Russia, with the mention of toponyms and anthroponyms, and at the same time created almost simultaneously, within one decade. These are the treatise of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus “On the management of the empire” (948-952), the work of the Arab author al-Istakhri “The Book of Ways and Countries” (the version that has come down to us is c. 950), Igor’s agreement with Byzantium, which came down in the Old Russian version (which is a translation from the Greek original) as part of The Tale of Bygone Years (944), etc. The "Cambridge Document" is a letter in Hebrew sent from Khazaria (c. 949).
Chapter 9 of Constantine’s work tells that “monoxyls coming from outer Russia to Constantinople (ships with a keel part hollowed out of one log. - A. G.) are from Nemogard, in which Svendoslav, the son of Ingor, the archon of Russia, sat, and others from the fortress of Miliniski, from Teliutsa, Chernigoga and from Vusegrad (Smolensk, Lyubech, Chernigov and Vyshgorod. - A.G.). So, they all descend by the Dnieper River and converge in the fortress of Kioava, called Samvatas. The Slavs, their pactiotes, namely: Kriviteins, Lendzanins and other Slavinians, cut monoxyls in their mountains during the winter and, having equipped them, with the onset of spring, when the ice melts, they introduce them into the nearby water bodies. Since these [reservoirs] flowed into the Dnieper River, they also enter this very river from there [places] and go to Kiev. They are pulled out for [rigging] and sold to dews. The dews, having bought these dugouts alone and dismantled their old monoxyls, transfer from those to these oars, oarlocks and other decorations ... equip them. And in the month of June, moving along the Dnieper River, they descend to Vitichev, which is a paktio fortress of the Ross, and, having gathered there for two or three days, until all monoxyls are united, then they set off and descend along the named Dnieper River. Next comes a story about the route of the "Roses" to Constantinople, and at the end of the chapter it says: "The winter and harsh way of life of those same Ross is as follows. When the month of November comes, immediately their archons leave with all the dews from Kiava and go to polyudia, which is called “circling”, namely, in Slavinia, the Vervians, Druvits, Krivichi, Severii (Drevlyans, Dregovichi, Krivichi and Northerners. - A. G .) and other Slavs who are pactiotes of the Ross. Feeding there throughout the winter, they again, starting in April, when the ice on the Dnieper River melts, return to Kiav.
Under the author's pen, Igor is represented as the head of Russia, Kyiv as the main center. In Nemogard (Novgorod), his son Svyatoslav reigns. "Dews" go to polyudye - a circular detour in order to collect tribute - to the Slavic communities of the Drevlyans, Dregovichi, Krivichi, Northerners and "other" Slavs; the latter should, apparently, include the streets and "lendzanins" - lendzyans (localized, most likely, in Eastern Volhynia), since in chapter 37 both of them are called tributaries of the "ros", and at the beginning of chapter 9 lendzanins together with the Krivichi are called their "pactiots" (this term indicates tributary-allied relations). The enumeration of the cities along which the “monoxyls” descend to Kyiv goes from north to south, along the path “from the Varangians to the Greeks”: Novgorod, Smolensk, Lyubech, Chernigov, Vyshgorod ...