THE ORIGINS OF princely domination in Rus are described in what is probably the most famous, and most commented on, passage from the Primary Chronicle. It tells us that in the mid-ninth century “the Varangians from across the sea” collected something called dan from the Slavic and Finnic population, in what is now northern Russia, until the people refused to give them dan and drove them away.

Three brothers with their kin volunteered to go, and the oldest brother, Rurik, founded the dynasty that later established itself in Kiev.

This brief paragraph has been analyzed, interpreted in all possible and impossible ways, and hotly debated by historians and by ideologists of all sorts since the mideighteenth century. However, the debates have been concerned almost exclusively with only one aspect of the passage: the ethnicity of Rurik and the role that the Scandinavians, called “Varangians” in East Slavonic, played in the formation of Rus. Contrary to overwhelming evidence for the prominence of Scandinavians in early Rus, there are still people in Russia and Ukraine— including some scholars— who feel that the idea of “foreigners” from overseas dominating the Slavs somehow offends their sensibilities, and who seek to construe Rurik and his Varangians as Slavic. Needless to say, Rurik, who is not mentioned in any other source, probably never existed in the first place, and even if he did, his invitation, as it is presented in the chronicle, can only be legendary. The story, although included in the entry for 862, must have been composed much later. Most likely, it reflects the ideas about princes that existed at the time of the compilation of the Primary Chronicle in the early twelfth century.