Oleg of Novgorod
Oleg of Novgorod was the Varangian prince who took Kyiv in 882, killed the two men holding it by pretending to be a merchant, moved his seat from Novgorod to the Dnieper, called the city the mother of Russian cities, and so joined the two ends of the river road from the Baltic to the Black Sea into the state the Primary Chronicle calls Rus. Twenty-five years later he took a fleet to Constantinople, put his ships on wheels, the chronicle says, and sailed them up to the walls, and got from the Greeks the trade treaty of 911 that is the first written document of Russian history. Everything known about him is from that chronicle, written two centuries later in Kyiv, and it is not sure whether he was Rurik's kinsman and the regent for Rurik's son Igor, as it says, or a ruler in his own right whom the Rurikid dynasty afterwards fitted into its line. He came down the Dnieper about 882 with an army of Varangians, Slavs and Finns, took Smolensk and Lyubech, and at Kyiv found Askold and Dir, two of Rurik's men who had gone south on their own and set up as princes. He hid his soldiers in the boats, called the two out as a passing trader, showed them the child Igor and told them they were not of princely blood, and had them killed. Then he built forts, imposed tribute on the Slav tribes of the Dnieper basin, the Drevlians and Severians and Radimichians, and took the tribute the Khazars had been taking. The expedition of 907 is not in the Byzantine sources and may be the chronicle's memory of the treaty. The treaty of 911 is genuine, a text in Greek and Slavonic naming the Rus envoys, fixing the law for disputes between Rus merchants and Greeks in Constantinople, and giving the Rus the right to trade duty-free and to be fed for six months at the empire's expense. He was told by his wizards that his own horse would kill him, sent the horse away, and years later, being shown its skeleton and laughing, was bitten by the snake that came out of the skull; Pushkin made the poem. He died about 912, and Igor, grown up, ruled after him. Novgorod and Kyiv both claim his grave.
- Nationality: Varangian
- Roles: prince, ruler, founder
