The raids of the Polovtsi and the campaigns of Russian princes against them were so many that it would not be possible to describe them in detail. They were an incurable evil in Russia, and continued to be so till the Mongol invasion and conquest put an end to them. While Kief, the mother of Russian cities, was declining, Galitch was forming a separate principality, and the influence of its western neighbors rose more and more. Hungarians and Poles, who had joined Latinized nations, could boast at this time that they formed in Eastern Europe the foremost advance of Latin influence, the remotest boundary of the Holy Roman-German Empire, beyond which was Russia. In the life of Poles and Hungarians, there were many traits in common. First came subjection of all the people by nobles, while the sovereign merely focused the splendor of nobles and magnates. The sovereign held office to preserve supreme privileges for nobles; beyond that he meant nothing to them, and for the people he had no meaning whatever. From the nobles came the laws, the disposition of wealth, the amount of taxation and its character. The income from lands and towns, and all the government of the country was in possession of the upper class solely, hence the amazing concentration of wealth in their hands. The nobles did as they pleased, while the people endured all that was put on them. Hungarians and Poles yielded themselves to the West in religion. Their learning was Western, and, for the greater part also, their vices. They imparted these vices to their neighbors of Galitch, where they found a place in the palace and brought about a great riot, which ended in the burning alive of Anastasia, the mistress of Eight Minds, whose legal wife had fled to seek an asylum with her brother Vsevolod, Prince of Vladimir, at that time generally called Big Nest. Later on riots were frequent, and the power of the boyars grew daily.