Igor Rurikovich old

Igor (≈878 – 945) – Prince of Kievan Rus.

In 912, after the death of his father, Igor took power. Igor was the first Russian prince mentioned in Western sources.

Igor Rurikovich: foreign and domestic policy

Igor had a wife, Olga, who bore him a son, Svyatoslav.

The Drevlyans, taking advantage of the change in power, decided not to pay tribute. But Igor pacified the riot, and the tribute was paid.

In 913, Igor went on a campaign to the coast of the Caspian Sea. But it could only be approached through territories that belonged to the Khazars. Prince Igor promised them half of the spoils for letting his army pass. Igor kept his promise, but the Khazars began to lay claim to the other half. As a result, a battle took place, and the prince lost most of his army.

During the reign of Igor, the Pechenegs first attacked Russian lands. In 915 a peace treaty was concluded with them. Until 920, the Pechenegs no longer attacked Russian lands.

In 941, Igor made a campaign against Constantinople. The Byzantines destroyed most of the Russian fleet with Greek fire. In September 941, after a series of defeats, Igor returned to Kievan Rus.

In 944, Igor decided to organize a second campaign to wash away the shame of his defeats. The prince gathered an army of Russians, Slavs, Varangians and Pechenegs and went to Byzantium. Emperor Roman I Lekapin learned about Igor's huge army and sent ambassadors with gifts and an offer to conclude a peace treaty. The prince accepted the gifts and deployed his army.

In 944, Kievan Rus and Byzantium concluded a military-trade agreement.

Igor no longer fought, but sent the squad of the boyar Sveneld for tribute. This caused dissatisfaction, because... Sveneld's squad grew rich, but Igor's squad did not.

Igor’s warriors persuaded him to go for tribute. As a result, he agreed and in the fall of 945 he went to the Drevlyans for tribute. Igor discovered a shortage and decided to collect the tribute again. The Drevlyans were outraged by Igor’s behavior, and they killed Igor’s entire army and himself.

The widow Olga, according to legend, during her reign avenged the death of her husband.

In the chronicles of the 10th-11th centuries, the son of the legendary Prince Rurik, Igor, is mentioned with the addition of the word Old. This happens because it is to him that they trace the beginning of the dynasty of Russian princes Rurikovich. A similar name came into use and was widely used by historians of later times. We will not deviate from the established tradition.

Brief Introduction

Before starting the conversation, it is worth noting an extremely important detail - all the events in which Igor Stary, one way or another, took part are known today from a number of written monuments, often contradicting each other. Therefore, when talking about those long-gone times, it is customary to follow the most widespread and generally accepted version, and one should not be surprised if it does not completely correspond to data from any secondary sources.

Regent and guardian of the young prince

As the compiler of the Tale of Bygone Years, the chronicler Nestor, testifies, after the death of the legendary Prince Rurik, which followed in 879, his young son and heir Igor, who was born a year earlier, remained. Since, due to his youth, he could not yet begin to reign, until he matured, the rule was carried out by a relative of the deceased ruler - Prince Oleg - the same one who entered our history with the title Prophetic. He was also the boy’s closest caregiver.

Soon after gaining power, Oleg subjugates Smolensk, which was free until then, and then approaches Kyiv with his squad. The chronicler says that he cunningly lured the Kyiv princes Askold and Dir out of the fortified city and killed them. Having thus seized power, and wanting to give it legitimacy, Oleg points the people of Kiev to the young Igor as the legitimate heir to power, and assigns himself the role of a kind of regent. In reality, this was deceit, since he did not relinquish power until his death.

The marriage of Prince Igor

Nothing is known about how Prince Igor spent his youth, and in the next passage the chronicler reveals him to the reader already matured, but still not out of Oleg’s tutelage. It is he who brings the bride to the young prince - a very young thirteen-year-old (and according to some sources, ten-year-old) Pskov girl with the unusually poetic Old Slavic name Beautiful.

Further, Igor Stary (who was then barely 23 years old), inflamed with love, marries a young beauty, but for some reason gives his bride a new name - Olga. There can be two explanations for this action of his - either it is a consequence of a momentary whim, or a more serious reason.

Probable relative of Prophetic Oleg

The fact is that Olga is a Scandinavian name, which is a derivative form of the male name Oleg. Therefore, there is an assumption that the trustee and temporary worker simply betrothed his relative to the heir, wanting to strengthen his influence on the matured young man.

One way or another, this woman entered the history of Russia under the name of Princess Olga - the first Russian Christian to be canonized. She is also the grandmother of the baptizer of Rus', Saint Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir. The fruit of her marriage with Prince Igor was her son Svyatoslav Igorevich, who inherited power and, unlike his mother, became a cruel persecutor of Christians. In addition to Olga, the prince had many other wives, but she always remained the most beloved.

Under the Burden of Power

In 912, after the unexpected death of his guardian, which was so poetically sung by A.S. Pushkin, Igor the Old finally gained full power. Until this time, he had been an independent ruler of Kyiv only in 907, when Oleg left him as his governor during the campaign against Byzantium, during which he captured Constantinople and nailed his famous shield on its gates.

The power that became the property of Igor, who was still inexperienced in ruling, brought with it a lot of worries. In particular, upon learning of Oleg’s death, the tribes of the Drevlyans, East Slavic peoples who inhabited the territory of what is now Ukrainian Polesie in those years, rebelled and refused to pay the previously established tribute.

As a result, Prince Igor the Old was forced, having assembled a squad, to pacify the rebels, which he did in 913, and in order to discourage freedom from taking liberties in the future, he imposed a tribute on them twice as high as before.

Asian cunning and ambitious dreams

The next military campaign in chronology was carried out by the prince against the Pechenegs, who first appeared in Rus' in 915. Heading to Byzantium to help it repel the Bulgarian attack, these steppe inhabitants did not have aggressive intentions towards the lands subject to Igor, and the prince agreed to let them through. However, full of cunning, he struck their rearguard from the rear, and as a result won a fairly easy victory, taking possession of property and provisions.

It was a success, but how could it compare with the glory with which his predecessor and guardian, the Prophetic Oleg, covered himself? Thoughts about this did not leave the mind of the ambitious and envious Igor. To immortalize his name, he needed something that could eclipse his previous victories. Dreams of his own shield on the gates of Constantinople filled his life. And in 941, Igor the Old’s campaigns against Byzantium began. There were two of them, each of which was interesting in its own way.

Sea voyage to Byzantium

The prince carried out his first campaign by sea, placing his entire large army on boats. It is not known for certain how many of these small and very primitive ships were needed to move along the sea coast from the mouth of the Dnieper to Constantinople, to transfer a very significant number of people. Nestor the Chronicler reports about 10 thousand ships, but European sources talk about only a thousand.

In any case, it was quite an impressive flotilla. On the approaches to the Byzantine capital, she managed to win a number of minor victories, but then the unexpected happened. The defenders of the city used against them a completely unknown weapon in Rus', which went down in history under the name of Greek fire.

Lightning came down from the sky

Judging by the remaining descriptions, it was some kind of modern flamethrower. Its essence was that, with the help of special siphons, a stream of burning mixture was ejected under pressure in the direction of the enemy, which did not go out even when it entered the water. It is not known exactly what it consisted of, but a number of surviving records, as well as laboratory experiments, give reason to believe that its components were quicklime, sulfur and oil.

The effect of using this weapon was colossal. Not only did a good half of the prince’s flotilla go to the bottom with its help, but the sight of the flying fire also made an indelible impression on the survivors. It is known that they fled in panic, and upon returning to their homeland, they talked about a certain miracle - lightning that came down from the sky and destroyed their army. Thus, Igor’s first Byzantine pancake came out in a big bloody lump.

Army of Marauders

The second campaign, which Igor the Old undertook in 944, was much more successful. He brought, if not military glory, then, in any case, a fair amount of booty. A year before this, the prince had a son, Svyatoslav Igorevich, and during his father’s absence he was nominally considered the ruler, although, of course, these functions were performed for him by his mother, Princess Olga.

This time the princely army was divided into two parts, one of which moved by land, and the other, like the last time, was located on boats. To finally achieve the desired triumph, Igor gathered under his banner a huge number of warriors, which included representatives of all the tribes with which he had established contacts. The desire to rob with impunity and enrich himself at the expense of others united in his ranks the Russians, Varangians, Pechenegs, Krivichi, Polovtsians and many, many other seekers of easy money.

Tit in a cage

Moving along the Black Sea coast towards Byzantium, this horde left behind a dead scorched earth, and the news of the atrocities it committed spread far across the surrounding lands. When these rumors reached the Byzantine emperor Roman I Lokapin, he was horrified and considered it prudent to try to somehow avert the misfortune from his state, especially since foreigners had already reached the banks of the Danube by that time.

For this purpose, he sent ambassadors to meet the army with gifts so rich that, after consulting, the warriors decided not to continue the campaign. There was a reason for this - to go forward, and no one wanted to risk their heads in order to increase the already rich booty. As a result, remembering once again that a bird in a cage is better than a pie in the sky, everyone turned back. In addition, they got a tit, although not covered in the glory of victory, but very fat.

A trip to the Drevlyans for tribute

Returning from the campaign, the prince did not suspect that his life was already coming to an end, and the reason for this was not old age, although he was 67 years old by that time, but greed, which had always been an integral part of his nature. One day she killed him.

The fact is that the rule of Igor the Old rested solely on the strength of his squad, which served as his support in the fight against other contenders for power, of which, as always, there were many. Therefore, it was extremely important for him to maintain proper relations with the warriors. And then one day, discontent arose among them that in the squad of Prince Sveneld, Igor’s governor, the warriors were richer dressed and better armed than they were.

Not wanting to bear the costs himself, and at the same time, trying to calm down the dissatisfied, he decided to come with them to the Drevlyans and, through robbery committed under the guise of collecting tribute, solve the problem. The warriors willingly supported him, and a large detachment led by the prince went to the foreigners.

At first everything went exactly as planned. They collected a huge tribute, and in anticipation of the division they went home. But then a snake stirred in the prince’s heart, even more terrible than the one that once bit the Prophetic Oleg. It is called greed, and countless people have been killed by its bites. So it struck Igor that if you return with a small number of people, and even rob, then the jackpot will come out fatter, and it will have to be divided among fewer mouths.

He only did not take into account what every ruler must know - even the most submissive people cannot be driven to extremes, otherwise there will be trouble. And so it happened, seeing the prince returning with small forces, and understanding his intentions, the Drevlyans rebelled. Having killed the guards, they put the prince to a cruel death - tying his legs to two spruce trees leaning towards each other, and tore him in half. This is how the Kiev prince Igor the Old ended his life ingloriously, whose biography, drawn from ancient chronicles, formed the basis of our story.

Conclusion

In conclusion, let us note one curious detail - in The Tale of Bygone Years this ruler is twice called the “Wolf Prince.” There is no doubt that such an expressive and very accurate image largely conveys his true essence. Both the foreign and domestic policies of Igor Stary always pursued the goal of his own enrichment and glorification, and was not aimed at the interests of the state. It is characteristic that the noun wolf, in addition to its direct meaning, in ancient times was used to express such concepts as robber, thief and robber, which, in essence, was Igor the Old. Death was a worthy reward for his deeds.

Prince Igor
Ruler of Kievan Rus.
Date of Birth - ?
Date of death - 945
Years of reign - (912 - 945)

Igor was the son of the founder of the ancient Russian princely dynasty. The exact date of birth of the prince is unknown, it varies from 861 to 875. If we rely on the “tale of bygone years,” then Igor took his princely throne in 912, after Igor’s guardian, Prince Oleg, died. Having become the head of the state, Igor continued the policy of his predecessor - strengthening the power of Rus' over the conquered tribes and strengthening international positions.
Having ascended the throne, Igor immediately encountered difficulties. The Drevlyans, who were conquered by Oleg, did not approve of the new prince; on this occasion, an uprising was raised, which Igor brutally suppressed.
In 913-914, Russian troops made a campaign to the Caspian Sea and took the cities of Gilan, Daleim, Abesgun, but were defeated on the way back by the army of the Khazar Kaganate.
In 915, a dangerous enemy appeared on the southern borders of Rus' - the Pechenegs came from the east to the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region. They rushed to Russian lands, but were stopped by Igor’s squads. The prince entered into an alliance with the Pechenegs, which lasted five years. In 920, a new conflict broke out, ending in military confrontation. Unfortunately, the sources do not contain accurate data on the consequences of this war.
In 940, the Ulichi and Tivertsy submitted to the Prince of Kyiv, and their lands were subject to tribute. True, these tribes were not under the rule of Kyiv for long.
In his long-distance campaigns, Igor was not original and continued what Oleg had started. In 941 he moved with the Russian army to Byzantium. The Byzantine chronicle says that Igor arrived at Constantinople with an army on ten thousand ships. Against the troops that besieged the capital of Byzantium, Emperor Roman Lecapinus (919-944) sent the protovestiary Theophanes, who defeated the Russian fleet in a naval battle near Constantinople using “Greek fire” - a highly flammable petroleum-based mixture, the exact composition of which was kept a closely guarded secret. The emperor opposed the troops that besieged Bithynia to the armies of the patrician Vardas and the domesticate John, who also achieved victory.
In 944 Igor repeated the campaign against Byzantium. He gathered naval and ground forces, but, without waiting for the start of hostilities, the Byzantines preferred to conclude a peace treaty between Russia and Byzantium. According to the new peace treaty, Rus' had to pay trade duties and assumed a number of obligations towards Byzantium. In particular, Igor pledged not to allow black Bulgarians who lived near the Kerch Strait into the Byzantine possessions located in Crimea. In turn, Emperor Roman Lekapin obliged, at the request of the Russian prince, to provide an army at his disposal.
In 944-945, Igor carried out another campaign in the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, walking along the Caucasian coast of the Black Sea and then heading to Derbent. During this campaign, the city of Berdaa was captured.
In 945, inspired by success, Prince Igor of Kiev decided to go to the Drevlyans for tribute. He added a new one to the old one. After some battles, the Drevlyans paid tribute to the prince. Igor took the tribute and went back to his native Kyiv, but changed his mind and decided to return to the Drevlyans to collect another part of the tribute. The prince released most of his army. The Drevlyans, hearing that he was coming again, held a council with their prince Mal: “If a wolf gets into the habit of the sheep, he will carry out the whole flock until he kills him; so will this one: if we don’t kill him, he will destroy us all.” And they sent to him, saying: “Why are you going again? You’ve already taken all the tribute.” And Igor listened to them; 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 (mound) at Iskorosten in Derevskaya land to this day."

Death of the Prince

So, despite military successes, the prince died from his greed. In the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years” he went down in history as Igor the Old, or Igor the Greedy.
His wife, Princess Olga, took revenge on the Drevlyans for the death of her husband. She ordered one dove per house to be given as tribute. The princess ordered to tie a twig to the birds' feet and set it on fire; the birds returned to their house and burned all the houses.
The assessment of Prince Igor’s activities by his contemporaries is ambiguous: on the one hand, the Kiev Chronicle notes his greed, on the other hand, the Novgorod Chronicle speaks of him as a talented commander who knew military affairs and knew how to negotiate. There is enough evidence of both characteristics: on the one hand, the prince’s greed was the cause of his death, on the other, he actually managed to sign a profitable trade agreement with Byzantium, resist the attacks of the Pechenegs, conquer and annex the Uglich lands to his territory. Like most rulers of Kievan Rus, the image of Igor Rurikovich is a controversial person.

History of Russia from Rurik to Putin. People. Events. Dates Anisimov Evgeniy Viktorovich

Reign of Igor Stary

Oleg's successor was Igor (Ingvar), nicknamed the Old One. From an early age he lived in Kyiv, which became his home. We know little about Igor's personality. He was, like Oleg-Helg, a warrior, a stern Varangian. He almost never got off his horse, conquering the Slavic tribes and imposing tribute on them. Like Oleg, Igor raided Byzantium. His first campaign together with Oleg in 941 failed. The Greeks burned the Russian ships with the so-called “Greek fire” - shells with burning oil. The second campaign in 944 turned out to be more successful. This time the Greeks decided to pay off the Scandinavians with expensive fabrics and gold. This is exactly what Igor wanted - he immediately turned home. Under Igor, new opponents came from the steppe to replace the Khazars - the Pechenegs. Their first appearance was noted in 915. Since then, the danger of raids by nomads from the south and east has constantly increased.

Rus' was not yet an established state. It stretched from south to north along the only communications - waterways, and they were precisely controlled by the Varangian princes. In general, the chronicles impose on us the idea of Rurik, Oleg, Igor as sovereign rulers from the princely dynasty of the Rurikovichs. In fact, the Varangian princes were not such rulers. The kings were only the leaders of the Varangian squads and often, when going on campaigns, they acted in alliance with other kings, and then broke away from them: they either left for Scandinavia, or settled down - “sat down” on the lands they conquered, as happened with Oleg in Kyiv. The entire strength of the Varangian kings consisted of their powerful squads, constantly replenished with new fighters from Scandinavia. Only this force united the distant lands of the Russian state from Ladoga to Kyiv.

At the same time, the king-prince in Kyiv divided possessions between relatives and allied kings for their “feeding”. So, Igor-Ingvar gave Novgorod to his son Svyatoslav, Vyshgorod to his wife Olga, and the Drevlyan lands to King Sveneld. Every winter, as soon as the rivers and swamps froze, the kings went to the “polyudye” - they traveled around their lands (made a “circle”), judged, settled disputes, collected a “lesson”. This is what the kings did in Scandinavia during similar detours. As the chronicler reports, back in the 12th century. the sleigh on which Princess Olga rode to Polyudye was kept in Pskov; but, apparently, spring found her in Pskov and the sleigh had to be abandoned there. They also punished the tribes that had “sat aside” over the summer: relations with the local Slavic tribal elite among the Varangians were difficult for a long time, until its elite began to merge with the Scandinavian warriors. It is generally accepted that the process of merging the Slavic and Varangian elites occurred no earlier than the beginning of the 11th century, when five generations of rulers, already born in Rus', changed. Exactly the same process of assimilation took place in other lands conquered by the Vikings - in France (Normandy), Ireland.

Igor died during the usual polyud in those days in 945, when, having collected tribute in the land of the Drevlyans, he was not satisfied with it and returned for more. According to another version, the Drevlyansky land was in the power of King Sveneld. When he and his men appeared in Kyiv in rich outfits taken from the Drevlyans, Igor’s squad was overcome with envy. Igor went to the capital of the Drevlyans - the city of Iskorosten - to take tribute for himself. The inhabitants of Iskorosten were outraged by this lawlessness, grabbed the prince, tied him by the legs to two bent mighty trees and released them. This is how Igor died ingloriously.

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Oleg's successor was Igor (Ingvar), nicknamed the Old One. From an early age he lived in Kyiv, which became his home. We know little about Igor's personality. He was, like Oleg_Helg, a warrior, a stern Varangian. He almost never got off his horse, conquering the Slavic tribes and imposing tribute on them. Like Oleg, Igor raided Byzantium. His first campaign together with Oleg in 941 failed. The Greeks burned Russian ships with the so-called “Greek fire” - shells with burning oil. The second campaign in 944 turned out to be more successful. This time the Greeks decided to pay off the Scandinavians with expensive fabrics and gold. This is exactly what Igor wanted - he immediately turned home. Under Igor, new opponents came from the steppe to replace the Khazars - the Pechenegs. Their first appearance was noted in 915. Since then, the danger of raids by nomads from the south and east has constantly increased.

At the same time, the king-prince in Kyiv divided possessions between relatives and allied kings for their “feeding”. So, Igor_Ingvar gave Novgorod to his son Svyatoslav, Vyshgorod to his wife Olga, and the Drevlyan lands to King Sveneld. Every winter, as soon as the rivers and swamps froze, the kings went to the “polyudye” - they traveled around their lands (made a “circle”), judged, settled disputes, collected a “lesson”. This is what the kings did in Scandinavia during similar detours. As the chronicler reports, back in the 12th century. the sleigh on which Princess Olga rode to Polyudye was kept in Pskov; but, apparently, spring found her in Pskov and the sleigh had to be abandoned there. They also punished the tribes that had “sat aside” over the summer: relations with the local Slavic tribal elite among the Varangians were difficult for a long time, until its elite began to merge with the Scandinavian warriors. It is generally accepted that the process of merging the Slavic and Varangian elites occurred no earlier than the beginning of the 11th century, when five generations of rulers, already born in Rus', changed. Exactly the same process of assimilation took place in other lands conquered by the Vikings - in France (Normandy), Ireland.