For two centuries the Grand Prince of Kiev was known and respected throughout Europe, even though that Europe was very different politically from what it is to-day. Constantinople which had given richly of its culture to the new state in the east of Europe was then the great centre of Christian civilization. All nations in the West were looking at its wealth and power with admiration and with envy, for there was none that could compare with it. The Western Holy Roman Empire had just struggled to its feet under the rule of the Emperor Otto I. Hugh Capet had just been crowned King of France and was struggling to make his title valuable. The Norman conquest of England had not yet taken place and the last Saxon rulers were trying to hold their crown and to unify the country. Paganism still was rife in large sections of Germany. The reforms of Pope Gregory VII in the Roman Catholic Church were still in the future. All of western Europe was slowly recovering from the Dark Ages which had prevailed since the barbarian invasions of the fifth century. Against this background Kiev shines as a great and progressive state. Its early rulers represented culture and civilization. It is small wonder that Princesses of Kiev married into all the royal houses of Europe, that the struggling princes and kings and emperors of the West were only too proud and happy to be connected by ties of marriage and of blood to the Grand Princes of Kiev, their superiors in wealth and culture and enlightenment. Unless we realize this fact, we cannot hope to understand the tragedy that swept over Ukraine when internal dissension and the overwhelming attacks of the nomads of the steppes and then of the Mongols weakened and destroyed a state that had seemed secure and permanent but a short time before. We cannot understand otherwise the political vacuum that developed in eastern Europe, when early in the thirteenth century Rus’-Ukraine ceased to be the dominant force along the great river valleys of the east and left its lands and people to be the prey of one nation after another which for centuries had not dared to question their will.