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. The princes were expected to co-operate and to hold Kievan Russia together. When a vacancy occurred, they were to move up step by step, with the position in Kiev the summit. Some such moves did in fact take place, but the system quickly bogged down: it worked to break the natural link between a prince and his state, and it excluded sons from succession in favor of their uncles. At their meeting in Liubech in 1097 the princes agreed that the practice of succession from father to son should prevail. Yet the principle of rotation from brother to brother remained linked for a long time to the most important seat of all, that of the Grand Prince of Kiev.201

The reigns of Iziaslav, Sviatoslav and Vsevolod, the last of whom died in 1093, as well as that of Iziaslav's son Sviatopolk, who succeeded Vsevolod and ruled until his death in 1113, present a frightening record of virtually constant civil wars which failed to resolve with any degree of permanence the problem of political power in Kievan Russia. At the same time the Kievan state had to face a new major enemy, the Polovtsy, or the Cumans as they are known to Western authors. This latest wave of Turkic invaders from Asia had defeated the Pechenegs, pushing them toward the Danube, and had occupied the southeastern steppe. They attacked Kievan territory for the first time in 1061, and after that initial assault became a persistent threat to the security and even to the existence of Kievan Russia and a constant drain on its resources.201