Burke calls him Great Duke of Russia. Snorri Sturlasson call him Prince of Holmgarth and shows his children as Holti-Nimble, Vissivald, Ellisif.

His father's death in 1015 led to another civil war. Several of Vladimir's sons who had served in different parts of the realm as their father's lieutenants and had acquired local support became involved in the struggle. The eldest among them, Sviatopolk, triumphed over several rivals, only to be finally defeated in 1019 by another son, Iaroslav, who resumed the conflict from his base in Novgorod. Sviatopolk's traditional appellation in Russian history is 'the Damned' and his listed crimes-true or false, for Iaroslav was the ultimate victor-include the assassination of three of his brothers, Sviatoslav, Boris, and Gleb. The latter two became saints of the Orthodox Church.164

Prince Yaroslav 'the Wise' ruled in Kiev from 1019 until his death in 1954. His reign has been generally acclaimed as the high point of Kievan development and success. Yet it was fraught with danger, and the needs of the state continued to demand strenuous exertion from the prince and his subjects. Civil war did not end with Yaroslav's occupation of Kiev. In fact, he had to flee it and ultimately, by an agreement of 1026, divide the realm with his brother Mstislav the Brave, prince of Tmutorokan, a principality situated in the area where the Kuban flows into the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea: Yaroslav kept Kiev and authority over the lands west of Dnieper; Mstislav secured as his domain the territory east of it, with the center at Chernigov. Only after the death of Mstislav in 1036 did Yaroslav become the ruler of the entire Kievan state, and even then the Polotsk district retained a separate prince.
Besides fighting for his throne, Yaroslav had to suppress a whole series of local rebellions, ranging from a militant pagan revival in the Suzdal area to the uprisings of various Finnish and Lithuanian tribes.165

Yaroslav's foreign wars included a successful effort in 1031 to recover from Poland the southwestern section which that country obtained in return for supporting Sviatopolk, and an unsuccessful campaign against Byzantium some 12 years later which proved to be the last in the long sequence of Russian military undertakings against Constantinople. But especial significance attaches to Yaroslav's struggle with the attacking Pechenegs in 1037: the decisive Russian victory broke the might of the invaders and led to a quarter-century of relative peace on the steppe frontier, until the arrival from the east of new enemies, the Polovtsy.165

At the time of Yaroslav the prestige of the Kievan state stood at its zenith; the state stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea and from the mouth of the Oka river to the Carpathian mountains, and the Kievan ruling family enjoyed close connections with many other reigning houses of Europe. Himself the husband of a Swedish princess, Yaroslav obtained the hands of three European princesses for three of his sons and married his three daughters to the Kings of France, Hungary, and Norway; one of his sisters became the wife of the Polish king, another the wife of a Byzantine prince. Yaroslav offered asylum to exiled rulers and princes, such as the princes who fled from England and Hungary and St. Olaf, the king of Norway, with his son, and his cousin Harold Hardrada.165

Yaroslav's great fame rests more on his actions at home than on his activities in foreign relations. His name stands connected with an impressive religious revival, and with Kievan law, education, architecture, and art. Yaroslav did leave an impact on the Russian Church, changing or confirming its organization, having an able and educated Russian, Hilarion, serve as the first native metropolitan, and building and supporting churches and monasteries on a large scale. He has usually been credited with a major role in the dissemination and consolidation of Christianity in Russia. Yaroslav the Wise has the reputation also of a lawgiver, for he has generally been considered responsible for the first Russian legal code, The Russian Justice, an invaluable source for knowledge of Kievan society and life. And he played a significant role in Kievan culture by such measures as his patronage of artists and architects and the establishment of a large school and a library at Kiev.165

Before his death Yaroslav assigned separate princedoms to his sons: Iziaslav, the eldest, received Kiev and Novgorod areas; Sviatoslav, the second, the area centered on Chernigov; Vsevolod, the third, Pereiaslavl; Viacheslav, the fourth, Smolensk; and Igor, the fifth, Vladimir-in-Volynia-always with their surrounding territories.165

By the reign of Vladimir's son, Yaroslav (ruled in Kiev 1019-1054), there were already numerous schools, hospitals, and libraries in Kiev.161