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No prince could rule anywhere who was not a descendant of Rurik; Kief, the greatest prize of all, going to the oldest; and when a Grand Prince died, his son was not his rightful heir, but his uncle, or brother, or cousin, or whoever among the Princes had the right by seniority.
In like manner the love of liberty is developed to its greatest extent when despotism seeks to stifle it. "Brightest in dungeons, liberty thou art, For there the habitation is the heart." Twenty-one persons were arrested in Kief, and almost as many in Kharkov, and still Nihilism was not stamped out. Phoenix-like it arose from the ashes of its martyrs.
The sad fact soon forced itself on Mendel that the portion of Kief allotted to the Jews was entirely inadequate for the fifteen thousand inhabitants who were condemned to dwell there. So overcrowded were some of the houses that it seemed a miracle that the death-rate had not been even greater; yet there seemed to be no remedy for the evil.
Basil; and he is now remembered only as the saint who Christianized pagan Russia, and revered as the "Beautiful Sun of Kief." So the two most important events considered thus far in the history of this land have been, first, its military conquest from the North, and second, its ecclesiastical conquest from the South.
He established the first public school in Russia, where three hundred young men, sons of the priests and nobles, received instruction in all those branches which would prepare them for civil or ecclesiastical life. Ambitious of making Kief the rival of Constantinople, he expended large sums in its decoration.
Sviatoslaf had three sons, whom he established, though all in their minority, in administration of affairs in the realms from which he was departing. Yaropolk received the government of Kief. His second son, Oleg, was placed over the powerful nation of Drevliens. A third son, Vlademer, the child of dishonor, not born in wedlock, was intrusted with the command at Novgorod.
Hot with revengeful fury, he marched against Polotsk, killed in battle Rogvolod and his two sons, and forced the disdainful princess to accept his hand still red with her father's blood. Then he marched against Kief, where Yaropolk, who seems to have had more ambition than courage, shut himself up within the walls.
But the remote province of Souzdal, of which Moscow was the capital, situated some seven hundred miles north-east of Kief, was now emerging from barbaric darkness into wealth and civilization. The missionaries of Christ had penetrated those remote realms.
He then returned to Kief, taking with him some preachers of distinction; a communion service wrought in the most graceful proportions of Grecian art, and several exquisite specimens of statuary and sculpture, to inspire his subjects with a love for the beautiful.
After years of warfare he fell on the field of battle, and his skull, ornamented with a circle of gold, became a drinking-cup for the prince of the Petchenegans, by whose hands he had been slain. His empire was divided between his three sons, Yaropolk reigning in Kief, Oleg becoming prince of the Drevlians, and Vladimir taking Rurik's old capital of Novgorod.
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