Peter Alexandrovich Rumyantsev was the son of Alexander Ivanovich Rumyantsev, who rose to prominence in the circle of Peter I, and Maria An-dreyevna Matveyeva, whose father was an ambassador and senator. Early in the reign of Empress Anna (1730-1740), the Rumyantsevs fell from favor, but Alexander resumed service in 1735 and was rewarded with the hereditary title of count. In 1748 Peter Rumyantsev married Princess Ekaterina Mikhailovna Golitsyna, with whom he had three sons, Mikhail, Nikolai, and Sergei. He was estranged from his wife early in the marriage.
Despite earning a reputation for dissolute behavior, young Peter Rumyantsev received several commissions in the army. He served with distinction in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1762), commanding a cavalry regiment during several successful Russian actions. Having been promoted by Emperor Peter III, he expected to be exiled when Catherine II (r. 1762-1796) seized power, but in 1764 she made him governor-general of Ukraine, with the task of integrating that territory into the Russian administrative and fiscal system. He carried out a major survey and census, introduced a new postal system and courts, and revised laws on peasants. In 1767 he was summoned to participate in the Legislative Commission and was required to investigate Ukrainian delegates to minimize claims for independent privileges and institutions for the region.
At the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish war in 1768, Rumyantsev was first given command of Russia’s Second Army and charged with the responsibility of guarding the southern borders. He then took over the First Army from Prince Alexander Mikhailovich Golitsyn. He won victories in July 1770 at Larga and Kagul against great odds and went on to capture towns in Ottoman-held Moldavia and Wallachia. In 1771 he moved west to the Danube, and in 1773 he laid siege to towns in the region but was forced to retreat by supply difficulties. In 1774 Rumyantsev’s forces outmaneu-vered the Turkish vizier and forced him to accept peace terms at Kuchuk Kainardji.
Rumyantsev was made a field marshal and received the orders of St. George and St. Andrew, as well as lavish rewards that included landed estates. He returned to Ukraine to implement Catherine’s Provincial Reform (1775). In the second Russo- Turkish War (1787-1792) Rumyantsev commanded the Ukrainian army, but was in the shadow of Grigory Potemkin. His last major campaign was in Poland in 1794 against Tadeusz Kosciusko. When he died, Emperor Paul ordered three days mourning in the army in his honor.
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See also: MILITARY, IMPERIAL ERA; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS; SEVEN YEARS’ WAR
Alexander, John T. (1983). “Rumiantsev, Petr Aleksan-drovich.” In Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, edited by Joseph L. Wieczynski, vol. 31, 15-19. Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press.
(d. 879), Varangian (Viking) leader who established his rule over the Eastern Slavs in the Novgorod region and became the progenitor of the line of princes, the Rurikid dynasty (Rurikovichi), that ruled Kiev and Muscovy.
The Primary Chronicle reports that a number of Eastern Slavic tribes quarreled but agreed to invite a prince to come and rule them and to establish peace. They sent their petition overseas to the Varangians called the Rus. In 862 three brothers came with their kin. Sineus occupied Beloozero and Truvor took Izborsk, but they died within two years. Consequently Rurik, who initially may have ruled Staraya Ladoga, made Novgorod his capital and asserted his control over the entire region. He sent men to Polotsk, Rostov, Beloozero, and Murom. In doing so, he controlled the mayor river routes carrying trade between the Baltic to the Caspian Seas. Rurik allowed two boyars, Askold and Dir, to go to Constantinople; on the way they captured Kiev. In 879, while on his deathbed, Rurik handed over authority to his kinsman Oleg and placed his young son Igor into Oleg’s custody.
The chronicle information about the semi-legendary Rurik has been interpreted in various ways. For example, the so-called Normanists accept the reliability of the chronicle information showing that the Varangians, or Normans, founded the first Russian state, but the so-called Anti-Norman-ists look upon the chronicle reports as unreliable if not fictitious. Some identify Rurik with Rorik of Jutland, who was based in Frisia. Significantly, other written sources and archaeological evidence neither prove nor disprove the chronicle information. See also: KIEVAN RUS; NOVGOROD THE GREAT; RURIKID DYNASTY; VIKINGS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Franklin, Simon, and Shepard, Jonathan. (1996). The Emergence of Rus 750-1200. London: Longman.
Ruling family of Kievan Rus, the northern Rus principalities, and Muscovy from the ninth century to 1598.
The Rurikid dynasty ruled the lands of Rus from the ninth century until 1598. The dynasty was allegedly founded by Rurik. According to an account in the Primary Chronicle he and his brothers, called Varangian Rus, were invited in 862 by East Slav and Finn tribes of northwestern Russia to rule them. Rurik survived his brothers to rule alone a region stretching from his base in Novgorod northward to Beloozero, eastward along the upper Volga and lower Oka Rivers and southward to the West Dvina River. Although it has been postulated that Rurik was actually Rorik of Jutland, there is no scholarly consensus on his identity, and the account of his arrival is often considered semi- legendary. Varangians or Vikings, however, had been operating in the region as adventurers and merchants. The tale of Rurik represents the stabilization and formalization of the relationship between these groups of adventurers and the indigenous populations.
After Rurik died (879), his kinsman Oleg (r. 882-912), acting as regent for Igor, identified as Rurik’s young son, seized control of Kiev (c. 882), located on the Dnieper River. From Kiev, which became the primary seat of the Rurikid princes until the Mongol invasions between 1237 and 1240, Igor (r. 913-945), his widow Olga (r. 945-c. 964), their son Svyatoslav (r. c. 964-972), and his son Vladimir (r. 980-1015), replacing other Varangian and Khazar overlords, subordinated and exacted regular tribute payments from the East Slav tribes on both sides of the Dnieper River and along the upper Volga River. Their strong ties to Byzantium resulted in Prince Vladimir’s conversion of his people to Christianity in 988. The dynasty and the church combined to provide a common identity to the disparate lands and peoples of the emerging state of Kievan Rus.
The Rurikids enlarged Kievan Rus territory and through diplomacy, war, and marriage established
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ties with other countries and royal houses from Scandinavia to France to Byzantium. But the Rurikids themselves were not always unified. Vladimir as well as his son Yaroslav the Wise gained the Kievan throne through fraticidal wars. To avoid further succession struggles, Yaroslav wrote a testament for his sons before he died in 1054. In it he assigned the central princely seat at Kiev to his eldest, surviving son Izyaslav. He gave other towns, which became centers of principalities within Kievan Rus, to his other sons while admonishing them to respect the seniority of their eldest brother.
Although Yaroslav’s testament did not prevent internecine warfare, it established a dynastic realm shared by the princes of the dynasty. Members of each generation succeeded one another by seniority through a hierarchy of princely seats until each in his turn ruled at Kiev. This system, known as the rota or ladder system of succession, functioned imperfectly. Ongoing discord combined with attacks from the Polovtsy (nomads of the steppe, also known as Kipchaks or Cumans) motivated the princes to meet at Lyubech in 1097; they agreed that each branch of the dynasty would rule one of the principalities within Kievan Rus as its patrimonial domain. Kiev alone remained a dynastic possession.
Under this revised method of succession Svy-atopolk Izyaslavich ruled Kiev to 1113. He was succeeded by his cousin, Vladimir Vsevolodich, also known as Vladimir Monomakh (r. 1113-1125), and subsequently by Monomakh’s sons. Although the system brought order to dynastic relations, it also reinforced division among the dynastic branches, which was paralleled by a weakening in the cohesion among the component principalities of Kievan Rus.
By the end of the twelfth century the dynasty had divided into approximately a dozen branches, each ruling its own principality. The princes of four dynastic lines, Vladimir-Suzdal, Volynia, Smolensk, and Chernigov, remained
