The interests of the princes and their ambition to provide an appanage for each of their children, necessitated at the death of every sovereign a fresh distribution of Russian territory. Yet a certain cohesion was evident in the midst of these vicissitudes. There was visible a unity of race and language, the more marked, notwithstanding differences of dialect, in that the Russian Slavs, excepting in the southwest, were surrounded everywhere by entirely dissimilar peoples--Lithuanians, Tchuds, Finns, Turks, and Magyars. There was also unity of religion; the Russians were differentiated from nearly all their neighbours in that, in contradistinction to the Slavs of the west, the Poles, Czechs, and Moravians, they represented a distinct form of Christianity, acknowledging no tie with Rome and rejecting Latin as the church language. There was also a unity of historical development, since hitherto the Russian Slavs had all followed the same destiny, had equally accepted Greek civilisation, submitted to Varangian conquest, and pursued in common certain great enterprises, such as the expeditions against Byzantium and the wars with the nomads. There was finally political unity, as among all--in Galicia as in Novgorod, by the Dnieper as in the forests of Suzdal--the same family sat upon all the thrones. All the Russian princes were descended from Rurik, from St. Vladimir, and from Iaroslav the Great. The civil wars which desolated the country affirmed anew this unity. No state in Russia could regard the rest as outsiders, when the princes of Tchernigov and Suzdal were seen to take up arms solely to decide which among them was the eldest--which held the right to the title of grand prince and to the throne of Kiev. There were descendants of Rurik who governed successively the most distant states in Russia, and who, having reigned at Tmoutarakan on the straits of Ienikale, at Novgorod the Great, at Toropetz in the country of Smolensk, finished by obtaining recognition of their right to reign over Kiev.[b] THE THEORY OF SUCCESSION [Illustration: A KORIAK] If the question be asked why the Russian state continued undivided throughout the two hundred years of the Varangian period, our answer is that it was due solely to the fact that during the greater part of this period the grand princes left one son and heir. Whenever the case was otherwise, as after the death of Sviatoslav and Vladimir, the brothers straightway entered upon a struggle for mastery that did not terminate until all but one were destroyed. That one then became undisputed master, for no one dared dispute the possession of power with the descendants of Rurik.