strength and adroitness of her mind. She was baptized by the Greek
Patriarch, under the new name of Helen, the emperor acting as her
godfather.

There were already a few Christians in Kief, but so unpopular was the
new religion that Olga's son Sviatoslaf, upon reaching his majority,
absolutely refused to make himself ridiculous by adopting his mother's
faith. "My men will mock me," was his reply to Olga's entreaties, and
Nestor adds "that he often became furious with her" for her importunity.

Sviatoslaf, the son of Igor and Olga, although the first prince to bear
a Russian name, was the very type of the cunning, ambitious, and
intrepid Northman, and his brief reign (964-972) displayed all these
qualities. He defeated the Khazarui, the most civilized of all those
Oriental people, and once the most powerful. He subjugated the
Pechenegs, perhaps the most brutal and least civilized of all the
barbarians. But these were only incidental to his real purpose.

The Bulgarian Empire was large, and had played an important part in the
past. It had a Tsar, while Russia had only a Grand Prince, and,
although now declining in strength, was a troublesome neighbor to the
Greek Empire. The oft-repeated mistake of inviting the aid of another
people was committed. Nothing could have better pleased Sviatoslaf
than to assist the Greek Empire, and when he captured the Bulgarian
capital city on the Danube, and even talked of making it his own
capital instead of Kief, it looked as if a great Slav Empire was
forming with its center almost within sight of Constantinople. The
Greeks were dismayed. With the Russians in the Balkan Peninsula, the
center of their dominions upon the Danube--with the Scythian hordes in
the South ready to do their bidding--and with scattered Slavonic tribes