The war of Vladimir’s sons (1015–1019) and the murder of Boris and Gleb

Vladimir died at Berestove on 15 July 1015 while preparing a campaign against his son Yaroslav, who as prince of Novgorod had stopped sending Kyiv its yearly 2,000 grivnas. Sviatopolk — Vladimir’s son or, as the chronicle hints, the son of his brother Yaropolk — had been held in prison shortly before; now he sat on the throne and tried to win the Kyivans with gifts. Boris, returning from a campaign against the Pechenegs, refused his father’s retinue when it urged him to take Kyiv — ‘I will not raise my hand against my elder brother’ — and was mortally wounded in his tent on the Alta, on the night of 24 July according to the Tale of Boris and Gleb; the Primary Chronicle adds that two Varangians finished him off. Gleb was killed on the bank of the Dnieper below Smolensk on 5 September, and Sviatoslav while fleeing to Hungary. The chronicle and the Tale — usually dated to the mid-11th century, though some scholars place it after 1115 — blame Sviatopolk, remembered as ‘the Accursed’. Some historians, relying on the Icelandic Eymund’s saga of the late 13th century, have suggested that Boris was killed by Varangians in Yaroslav’s service; others, such as L. V. Voitovych, consider the arguments very shaky.

Warned by his sister Predslava, Yaroslav raised the Novgorodians and his Varangians. In 1016 the two armies stood for three months on opposite banks of the Dnieper near Liubech, until, with the first frosts, Yaroslav crossed at dawn and pressed Sviatopolk’s men against a lake whose ice broke under them; Sviatopolk fled to Poland, and Yaroslav took the throne of Kyiv. In 1018 Bolesław I came with Sviatopolk, routed Yaroslav on the Western Bug in late July and on 14 August entered Kyiv, where, according to Thietmar of Merseburg, the archbishop received him in the church of St Sophia. Yaroslav fled to Novgorod and wanted to escape over the sea, but the Novgorodians under the posadnik Konstantin cut up his boats and raised money to hire Varangians. When Sviatopolk had the Poles quartered in the towns killed, Bolesław left Kyiv, taking the treasury, Yaroslav’s sisters, many captives and the Cherven towns.

In 1019 Sviatopolk returned with the Pechenegs. Yaroslav met him on the Alta, at the place where Boris had been killed; the armies clashed three times in a battle ‘such as had never been in Rus’’, and by evening Sviatopolk fled. He died in flight ‘between Poland and Bohemia’ — words that many historians read as a saying rather than a precise place — and Yaroslav ruled Kyiv from then on. In 1019 Gleb’s body was brought to Vyshgorod and buried beside Boris; the brothers were venerated as passion-bearers, and on 20 May 1072 Yaroslav’s sons translated their relics into a new church (the Laurentian copy of the chronicle has 2 May, probably confused with the translation of 1115).