Origins in the opening lines of the
Khlebnikov Codex: "In Kiev, the first to begin reigning together were
Dinar and Askold, after them came
Olga, after Olga
Igor..." According to a founding myth in the
Primary Chronicle,
Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv and their sister Lybid co-founded the city of Kiev (
Kyiv), and the oldest brother
Kyi was "chief of his kin" (). Some western historians (i.e., Kevin Alan Brook) suppose that Kiev was founded by the
Khazars or
Magyars. Kiev is a Turkic place name (
Küi = riverbank +
ev = settlement). At least during the 8th and 9th centuries Kiev functioned as an outpost of the Khazar empire (a hill-fortress, called
Sambat, "high place" in
Old Turkic). According to
Omeljan Pritsak,
Constantine Zuckerman and other scholars, Khazars lost Kiev at the beginning of the 10th century. At some point,
Rurik, a
Varangian prince, is alleged to have founded the "
Rurik dynasty" (named after him in the 16th century) in 862 through the "
calling of the Varangians", but some scholars consider this to be a mythical or legendary event. The
Primary Chronicle never calls Rurik a prince of Kiev; the passage wherein Oleg "sat in Kiev" () makes no mention of Rurik, suggesting the author was "more interested in the first Rus' ruler to reside in Kiev than with any founder of a dynasty". Kiev was captured by
Askold and Dir, whose existence is also debatable, and are called "
boyars" who "did not belong to [Rurik's] family" by the
Primary Chronicle. According to some Russian historians (i.e., Gleb S.
Lebedev), Dir was a
chacanus of Rhos (
Rus khagan).
Thomas Noonan asserts that one of the Rus "sea-kings", the "
High king", adopted the title khagan in the early 9th century.
Peter Benjamin Golden maintained that the Rus became a part of the Khazar federation, and that their ruler was officially accepted as a vassal khagan of the Khazar Khagan of Itil. Before the mid-15th century, no historical source claims that Rurik founded a dynasty; the
Hypatian Codex of 1425 began its list of
knyazi of Kiev with "Dir and Askold", then "Oleg", then "Igor", up to 1240, and does not mention Rurik anywhere. Similarly, the
Khlebnikov Codex starts with a regnal list stating: "In Kiev, the first to begin reigning together were Dinar and Askold, after them came Olga, after Olga Igor, after Igor Sviatoslav, [...]". There is no mention of a "Rurik"; instead, the list starts with "Dinar and Askold". Unlike
Hypatians second place for Oleg the Wise, however,
Khlebnikov appears to assert
Olga of Kiev succeeded them, and preceded her own husband
Igor of Kiev.
First princes Askold and Dir are narrated to have been killed in 882 by
Oleg, the first "prince" (
knyaz) of Kiev according to the
Primary Chronicle, but not yet a "grand prince" (
velikiy knyaz). His relation to Rurik is debatable, and has been rejected by several modern scholars. Although later Muscovite chroniclers would call Oleg a "grand prince" and Kiev a "grand principality" (), the earliest sources do not. Whereas the reconstructed original Greek text of the
Rusʹ–Byzantine Treaty (907) calls Oleg a μεγας ἄρχων or "great
archon" ("ruler"), the
Old East Slavic translations found in the
Laurentian Codex and
Hypatian Codex do not. On the other hand, only when the Byzantine emperors
Leo VI the Wise,
Alexander and
Constantine VII are called "the Great", Oleg is also called "the Great". Dimnik (2004) argued it should thus be read as "the Rus' prince Oleg the Great" instead of "Oleg the grand prince of Rus'". Similarly, the only occasions
Igor of Kiev is ever called
velikiy knyaz in the
Primary Chronicle (six times) are all found in the
Rusʹ–Byzantine Treaty (945), where the Greek emperors are also called ''k velikiy tsesarem Grech'-skim'' ("to the great Greek
caesars"). The same happens when, after
Sviatoslav's invasion of Bulgaria, the 971 peace treaty is recorded; it is the only place in the
Primary Chronicle where
Sviatoslav I is named a
velikiy knyaz. Most significantly, the ''Nachal'nyy svod
(found only in the Novgorod First Chronicle) never mentions any of these peace treaties, and never calls Oleg, Igor or Sviatoslav a velikiy knyaz''. According to Dimnik (2004), this means that Greek scribes added the word "great" to the princely title, whereas the Rus' themselves did not, except when translating these three treaties from Greek into Slavic.
Yaropolk I of Kiev and
Volodimer I of Kiev are both steadily referred to as just a
knyaz by the
Novgorod First Chronicle and the Laurentian and Hypatian Codices. There is one exception: the Hypatian Codex writes
Volodimir knyaz velikii ("Volodimir the grand prince") when reporting the latter's death; because the Hypatian Codex is the latest source of the three (compiled 1425), this is probably a later
interpolation. A
Paterik of the
Kyiv Pechersk Lavra of the early 13th century also calls Volodimer a
velikiy knyaz, but that was written two centuries after his death, and may not necessarily describe how he was known while alive. The oldest surviving source available is
Hilarion of Kiev's
Sermon on Law and Grace (), which calls Volodimer a
kagan (a
Khazar title) rather than a
knyaz. Some scholars have suggested that this indicates Kievan Rus' had won its independence from the Khazars in the early 10th century, and had inherited the title of
kagan from them, before exchanging it for
knyaz later. The
Church Statute of Prince Volodimir starts with "Behold, I, Prince Vasilii, called Volodimir," (), but later in the text he interchangeably calls himself
knyaz and
velikiy knyaz, and the earliest copy of this document is from the 14th century, so it is difficult to say what the lost original text said. Since chroniclers also regularly referred to Volodimer as
velikiy without mentioning his title – the reason why he has become known to history as Volodimer "the Great" – suggests that this adjective was not part of his title, but a
sobriquet or
nickname, that was also applied to other monarchs or clerics around him.
Velikiy knyaz Yaroslav and descendants Sviatopolk I of Kiev was never called
velikiy knyaz ("grand prince") in any source. Moreover, he has been stigmatised by chroniclers with the nickname "the Accursed" or "the Damned" (
okayannyy) because of how he violently rose to power in the war of succession following Volodimir's death in 1015. On the other hand,
Yaroslav the Wise is the first widely attested
velikiy knyaz ("grand prince") in virtually all sources of the second half of the 11th century, and surviving copies of the
Church Statute of Prince Yaroslav also strongly suggest he applied the title to himself while he was alive. Dimnik (2004) concluded that by the end of Yaroslav's reign in the third quarter of the 11th century, he was regularly calling himself and being called the
velikiy knyaz of Kiev, and the competing titles of
kagan and
tsar had decisively lost in favour of
velikiy knyaz as the preferred appellation of the Kievan monarch. The
velikiy knyaz was
designated by genealogical seniority and given the right to reign from Kiev – the grand principality superior to all other principalities in the realm – over all other princes descended from Yaroslav. The reason why the system of succession did not always work as Yaroslav intended was because some princes simply
usurped power through a
coup d'état at the court in Kiev. The 1097
Council of Liubech upgraded the dynastic capitals of the inner circle of senior princes to grand principalities as well, but still acknowledged the superiority of Kiev. It was not until the
Sack of Kiev (1169) by
Andrey Bogolyubsky of
Vladimir-Suzdal that the
grand princes of Vladimir launched a fierce competition with the grand princes of Kiev over who had primacy over the entire realm. Since then, the phrase "
velikiy knyaz of Kiev" was merely
titular, and chroniclers applied the symbolic title of
velikiy knyaz to Kiev or
Vladimir on the Klyazma according to whomever they favoured. In practice, the military supremacy of any particular prince – especially from
Vsevolod the Big Nest onwards – would determine whether the other princes would or would not acknowledge him as "grand prince". After the
Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' and
Sack of Kiev in the late 1230s and 1240s, the khans of the
Golden Horde "in effect, terminated the office of the
velikiy knyaz of Kiev and conferred political supremacy on their puppet in Vladimir." == Princes of Kiev ==