Editing Olga of Kiev (section)

== Regency ==
[[File:Rurikids Symbols from Rurik to Svyatoslav.png|thumb|The [[Symbols of the Rurikids|personal symbols]] of Rurik, Igor, Olga and Svyatoslav.]]
[[File:Olga_and_her_dead_husband_Igor.jpg|thumb|''Princess Olga meets the body of her husband''. A sketch by [[Vasily Surikov]].]]

After Igor's death in 945, Olga ruled [[Kievan Rus']] as regent on behalf of their son [[Sviatoslav I|Sviatoslav]].<ref>{{cite book|author=Barbara Evans Clements|title=A History of Women in Russia: From Earliest Times to the Present|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xa2yCC2apZAC&pg=PA7|year=2012|publisher=Indiana University Press|page=7|isbn=978-0-253-00104-7}}</ref> She was the first woman to rule Kievan Rus'.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hamilton |first1=George Heard |title=The Art and Architecture of Russia |date=1983 |publisher=Yale University Press |location=New Haven, Connecticut |isbn=9780300053272 |page=17 |edition=3rd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p6Fwr_e56d4C&dq=olga+of+kiev+first+woman+inpublisher:university+inpublisher:press&pg=PA17 |access-date=July 18, 2021}}</ref>
Little is known about Olga's tenure as ruler of Kiev, but the ''Primary Chronicle'' does give an account of her accession to the throne and her bloody revenge on the Drevlians for the murder of her husband. It also gives some insight into her role as civil leader of the Kievan people.

According to archeologist Sergei Beletsky, [[Knyaginya]] Olga, like all the other rulers before [[Vladimir the Great]], was also using the [[bident]] as her [[Symbols of the Rurikids|personal symbol]].<ref>{{cite web |last1=Repin |first1=Taras |title=Что на самом деле означали знаки Рюриковичей |trans-title= What did the Rurikids' symbols really mean?|url=https://cyrillitsa.ru/history/124285-chto-na-samom-dele-oznachali-znaki-ryurik.html |website=cyrillitsa.ru |access-date=24 May 2020 |language=ru |quote=Князья до Владимира (Игорь, Святослав, Ярополк), как утверждает археолог Сергей Белецкий, пользовались двузубцами}}</ref>

=== Drevlian Uprising ===
[[File:St._Olga,_1895_(priv._coll).jpg|thumb|[[Romanov]] Imperial icon created in 1895 of Saint Olga. Silver, gold, color enamel, tempera. Collection V.Logvinenko]]

After Igor's death at the hands of the Drevlians, Olga assumed the throne because her three-year-old son Sviatoslav was too young to rule. The Drevlians, emboldened by their success in ambushing and killing the king, sent a messenger to Olga proposing that she marry his murderer, [[Mal (prince)|Prince Mal]]. Twenty Drevlian negotiators boated to Kiev to pass along their king's message and to ensure Olga's compliance. They arrived in her court and told the queen why they were in Kiev: "to report that they had slain her husband{{nbsp}}... and that Olga should come and marry their Prince Mal." (line 6453).{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=79–80}} Olga responded:<blockquote>Your proposal is pleasing to me, indeed, my husband cannot rise again from the dead. But I desire to honor you tomorrow in the presence of my people. Return now to your boat, and remain there with an aspect of arrogance. I shall send for you on the morrow, and you shall say, "We will not ride on horses nor go on foot, carry us in our boat." And you shall be carried in your boat.{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=79–80}}</blockquote>When the Drevlians returned the next day, they waited outside Olga's court to receive the honor she had promised. When they repeated the words she had told them to say, the people of Kiev rose up, carrying the Drevlians in their boat. The ambassadors believed this was a great honor as if they were being carried by [[palanquin]]. The people brought them into the court, where they were dropped into a trench that had been dug the day before under Olga's orders, where the ambassadors were buried alive. It is written that Olga bent down to watch them as they were buried and "inquired whether they found the honor to their taste."{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=79–80}}

Olga then sent a message to the Drevlians that they should send "their distinguished men to her in Kiev, so that she might go to their Prince with due honor."{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=79–80}} The Drevlians, unaware of the fate of the first diplomatic party, gathered another party of men to send "the best men who governed the land of Dereva."{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=79–80}} When they arrived, Olga commanded her people to draw them a bath and invited the men to appear before her after they had bathed. When the Drevlians entered the bathhouse, Olga had it set on fire from the doors, so that all the Drevlians within burned to death.{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=79–80}}

Olga sent another message to the Drevlians, this time ordering them to "prepare great quantities of mead in the city where you killed my husband, that I may weep over his grave and hold a funeral feast for him."{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=79–80}} When Olga and a small group of attendants arrived at Igor's tomb, she did indeed weep and hold a funeral feast. The Drevlians sat down to join them and began to drink heavily. When the Drevlians were drunk, she ordered her followers to kill them, "and went about herself egging on her retinue to the massacre of the Drevlians."{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=79–80}} According to the ''Primary Chronicle'', five thousand Drevlians were killed on this night, but Olga returned to Kiev to prepare an army to finish off the survivors.
[[File:A09 Mshenie Olgi.jpg|thumb|''Olga's revenge on the [[Drevlians]]'' by [[Fyodor Bruni]]]]

The initial conflict between the armies of the two nations went very well for the forces of Kievan Rus', who won the battle handily and drove the survivors back into their cities. Olga then led her army to Iskorosten (what is today [[Korosten]]), the city where her husband had been slain, and laid siege to the city. The siege lasted for a year without success, when Olga thought of a plan to trick the Drevlians. She sent them a message: "Why do you persist in holding out? All your cities have surrendered to me and submitted to tribute, so that the inhabitants now cultivate their fields and their lands in peace. But you had rather die of hunger, without submitting to tribute." (line 6454).{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=80–81}}

The Drevlians responded that they would submit to tribute, but that they were afraid she was still intent on avenging her husband. Olga answered that the murder of the messengers sent to Kiev, as well as the events of the feast night, had been enough for her. She then asked them for a small request: "Give me three pigeons{{nbsp}}... and three sparrows from each house."{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=80–81}} The Drevlians rejoiced at the prospect of the siege ending for so small a price, and did as she asked.

Olga then instructed her army to attach a piece of sulphur bound with small pieces of cloth to each bird. At nightfall, Olga told her soldiers to set the pieces aflame and release the birds. They returned to their nests within the city, which subsequently set the city ablaze. As the ''Primary Chronicle'' tells it: "There was not a house that was not consumed, and it was impossible to extinguish the flames, because all the houses caught fire at once."{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=80–81}} As the people fled the burning city, Olga ordered her soldiers to catch them, killing some of them and giving the others as slaves to her followers. She left the remnant to pay tribute.

=== Governance ===
Olga remained [[regent]] ruler of Kievan Rus' with the support of the army and her people. She changed the system of tribute gathering ([[poliudie]]) in the first legal reform recorded in Eastern Europe. She continued to evade proposals of marriage, defended the city during the [[Siege of Kiev (968)|Siege of Kiev]] in 968, and saved the power of the throne for her son.

After her dramatic subjugation of the Drevlians, the ''Primary Chronicle'' recounts how Olga "passed through the land of Dereva, accompanied by her son and her retinue, establishing laws and tribute. Her trading posts and hunting reserves are still there."{{sfn|Cross|Sherbowitz-Wetzor|1953|pp=80–81}} As queen, Olga established trading-posts and collected tribute along the Msta and the Luga rivers. She established hunting grounds, boundary posts, towns, and trading posts across the empire. Olga's work helped to centralize state rule with these trade centers, called [[Pogost|''pogosti'']], which served as administrative centers in addition to their mercantile roles. Olga's network of ''pogosti'' would prove important in the ethnic and cultural unification of the Rus' people, and her border posts began the establishment of national boundaries for the kingdom.

During her son's prolonged military campaigns, she remained in charge of Kiev, residing in the castle of [[Vyshhorod|Vyshgorod]] with her grandsons.