The victory of Vladimir over Iaropolk was achieved with the aid of Northmen and Novgorodians. It was, therefore, a victory of the Russian north over the Russian south, of Novgorod, where paganism was still unshaken, over Kiev, which was permeated with Christian elements. Vladimir was brought up in Novgorod, and during his two years’ stay in Sweden he must have become still more strongly impregnated with heathen ideas. Accordingly we find that no sooner was he firmly seated on his throne at Kiev than he tried to restore the heathen worship to more than its pristine strength among the Russian Slavs. Statues of the gods were erected: Perun, Dashbog, Stribog, Simargla, Mokosh--all of them, with the exception of Perun, known to us hardly more than by name. Human sacrifices were introduced, and two Christians, a father and his son, who resisted this blood-tax, were killed by a fanatical mob--the first and only Christian martyrs on Russian soil. One is tempted to assume that the Russian Slavs had originally no representations of the gods, and that it was their Norse princes who introduced them--at any rate there is no mention of images before the arrival of the latter; while the mode of worship introduced by Vladimir bears a bloody character, quite alien to the eastern Slavs. It is evident that he is making a last effort to impart to the colourless paganism of his subjects a systematic character which would enable it to resist the growing new religion. But the circumstances of this prince soon underwent a change. His Norse auxiliaries, whose rapacity he could not satisfy, he was soon obliged to dismiss. According to northern sagas he was even involved in a war with Sweden, the stronghold of heathenism. His new capital was in constant commercial intercourse with Byzantium, and the reports that reached him of its gorgeous worship made a deep impression on the imagination of the barbarian. But if he was to accept the religion of the Cæsars, he was determined to do it not as a suppliant, but as a conqueror.[g][a] In what follows we give in full the circumstantial account of Nestor. NESTOR’S ACCOUNT OF VLADIMIR’S CONVERSION [Sidenote: [987 A.D.]] In the year 987, Vladimir called together his boyars and the elders of the town, and said to them: “Behold, the Bulgarians have come to me saying: Receive our law; then came Germans and they praised their laws; after them came the Jews, and finally came the Greeks, blaming all other laws, but praising their own, and they spoke at great length, from the creation of the world, of the history of the whole world; they speak cunningly, and it is wonderful and pleasing to hear them; they say that there is another world, and that whosoever receives their faith, even though he die shall live to all eternity; but if he receive another law he shall burn in another world amidst flames. What think ye of it, and what will you answer?”