The question of why Rus chose Orthodoxy — shaped by Vladimir I’s conversion and the Volga connection with neighbouring Muslim civilisations — remains one of medieval history’s great turning points.
Researchers have offered multiple explanations. It is essential to revisit these reasons — especially as Islamic civilisation in its first four centuries was by no means distant from the Rus.
The Abbasid Caliphate in the early fourth century AH/ninth century CE dispatched a major embassy to the lands of the Rus, led by Ahmad ibn Fadlan. His travel account remains one of the earliest descriptions of pagan Rus society — a people who, by that time, had not yet built a settled civilisation or learned culture.
The Russians appear on the Stage of History
From the second millennium BCE onward, the lands later called “Russia” were home to peoples linked to the Indo-European and Ural-Altaic families, alongside other groups. Details about their identities and institutions remain limited in historical records.
In what is now southern Ukraine, Greek and Iranian settlements left early imprints, while wide trade networks tapped the forest resources west of the Urals along the Kama and Volga rivers. Yet these contacts had only a modest effect on local communities.
Between the fourth and ninth centuries CE, Huns, Avars, Goths, and Magyars swept across the region, but their passage did not alter the cultural fabric of the Eastern Slavs, who steadily expanded south and east from homelands between the Elbe River (in modern Germany) and the Pripet marshes (Belarus/Ukraine).
By the ninth century, a new landscape emerged. Caravans and adventurers flowed from northern Europe via the Baltic, and from Islamic and eastern centres via the Black Sea. This widened exposure drew Eastern Slavic communities into broader networks of interaction and prepared the ground for their earliest political formations.
Early Rus sources such as the Primary Chronicle (also “Tale of Bygone Years”) attributed to the monk Nestor, together with Arabic geographers like al-Mas‘udi and Ibn Rusta, provide limited glimpses of these developments. Archaeology adds more: Abbasid and Umayyad silver coins found across eastern Europe indicate several phases of growth. From about 770 to 830 CE, commercial scouts penetrated the Volga region extensively (as noted by Ukrainian and British encyclopaedias).
Operating from early bases at the eastern Baltic river mouths, Germanic-Scandinavian bands with a trading-military character (as Constantine Porphyrogenitus records in De Administrando Imperio, cited by the Britannica) pushed into Slavic lands in search of amber, furs, honey, wax, and timber. They met little resistance, as no strong local authority regulated the interplay of trade, tribute, and raiding.
Concurrently, southern trade networks based in northern Iran and North Africa (per Ibn Khurradādhbih’s Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik) were active in the lower Volga and Don, and to a lesser extent along the Dnieper — pursuing similar goods, especially slaves.
Around 830 CE, trade waned along the Don and Dnieper, but intensified northward in central Volga lands, where Scandinavian traders working from Ladoga and Onega (north-west Russia) founded a new centre. Islamic and Western sources at this time mention the first ruler of the Rus, titled “Khagan,” reflecting Khazar influence. This polity — the Volga-Rus Khaganate — is seen as the immediate political forerunner of Kievan Rus. In subsequent decades, the Rus (with other Scandinavian Varangians) expanded raids along major river routes and neighbouring civilisations.
The Famous Account of the Rus’ Conversion
In the late tenth century, Kievan Rus — the nucleus of the first Russian state — underwent a decisive religious transformation under Prince Vladimir I (978–1015). According to the Primary Chronicle (12th century), Vladimir assessed several major religions before choosing Byzantine Eastern Orthodoxy. The options reportedly included Islam, Judaism, Latin (Western) Christianity, and Slavic pagan practices. Envoys were sent to examine these religions at their centres before the prince embraced Byzantine Orthodoxy, moved by political, cultural, and spiritual considerations.
Despite the Chronicle’s legendary layers, its concrete details — notably place references — suggest earlier sources and eyewitness memories. It records the arrival in 986 CE of Volga Bulgar Muslim envoys offering Islam to Vladimir. He listened attentively to Islamic principles but refused due to prohibitions on pork, the requirement of circumcision, and especially the ban on wine, punctuated by the much-cited remark: “The delight of the Rus is drinking.”
Afterwards came an envoy from the Pope in Rome presenting Latin Christianity as monotheistic truth. Vladimir replied that his forefathers had not accepted it and that he would not either — echoing western reports of Emperor Otto I’s failed mission in 961 CE to Christianise the Rus through German missionaries.
Next, according to the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations (online), envoys from the Khazar Jewish Khagan — called in old Rus’ texts the “Jews of Khazaria” — presented their law. Vladimir questioned them about their land and dispersion; dissatisfied with the answers, he accused them of inviting the divine wrath they themselves acknowledged had led to their scattering.
Finally, Byzantine (Greek) Orthodox emissaries appeared. The Chronicle portrays their spokesman not as an ordinary preacher but a skilled philosopher, whose long homily criticised rival faiths and warned of eternal fire for rejecting the “true belief,” as he understood it. His sermon summarised sacred history from Adam to Christ and the apostles whose teachings the Greeks preserved. Vladimir was impressed, especially after viewing an iconic image of the Last Judgement. He lavished gifts on the philosopher but said he would take time before deciding, though his inclination towards Byzantine Orthodoxy had clearly strengthened.
A key factor favouring Orthodoxy was the close, older relationship between the Rus/Ukrainians and Byzantium, the heart of Eastern Christianity. In 988 CE, Vladimir married Princess Anna, sister of Emperor Basil II — securing a political-religious alliance with Constantinople and expediting the conversion of Kievan Rus.
The historian Sergei Solovyov, in History of Russia from the Earliest Times, underscores that Vladimir’s baptism and marriage to Anna anchored Kievan Rus’ bond with Byzantium, opening the way for church institutions, ecclesiastical arts, and imperial-style architecture to enter the land — forging a new cultural-religious identity that would shape Russia for centuries.
Orthodoxy also appealed for additional reasons. It could absorb elements of Slavic popular custom. The festival known as Maslenitsa (“Pancake Week”), for example, was reframed within the church calendar, easing the transition to the new faith. As Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard argue in The Emergence of Rus, evangelisation proceeded with cultural pragmatism, adapting local habits into an Orthodox framework.
By contrast, Islam was perceived at the time as demanding tangible lifestyle changes — especially the ban on wine. The Primary Chronicle famously records the envoys’ line: “Drinking is the joy of the Rus; we cannot live without it,” highlighting the gap between pagan Slavic social norms and the requirements of Islamic law. This suggests that Orthodoxy’s institutional capacity to embrace local custom mattered more than direct theological disputation. One might add that the Bulgar Muslim envoys may have lacked the missionary tact to explain Islam’s gradualist approach to prohibitions (such as wine) in a way persuasive to pagan Rus.
Ultimately, Vladimir I — later styled “Saint Vladimir” — and leading nobles embraced Orthodoxy. The Chronicle describes a dramatic scene: idols were destroyed, beginning with Perun, and the people of Kyiv proceeded to the Dnieper River, where mass baptisms took place — young and old, of every class. The Chronicle dates this to 1 August (Eastern calendar) or 14 August (Western), a day later observed as a feast in the Ukrainian Church.
To organise religious life, Vladimir decreed a tithe (one-tenth) of state property for the Church, endowed clergy with rights, and by 1039 (per the Encyclopaedia of Ukraine online) the title of Metropolitan of the Rus’ appears. Christian literature and church culture spread through Ukraine and Rus’. Vladimir founded schools and churches, starting with Kyiv, while priests from Chersonesus (Kherson) — then Byzantine and a centre of Orthodoxy — helped teach in the Slavic language, making the liturgy accessible to the people.
Notably, adopting Orthodoxy did not impose Byzantine political dominance. Rather, it opened channels to neighbours far and near. Vladimir sought to grant the new Church a status within his polity comparable to that of Byzantium, and — as the Ukrainian encyclopaedia notes — Orthodoxy reinforced the religious unity of Vladimir’s political order.
Additional Reasons
Beyond the philosopher’s argument from Constantinople, deeper strategic motives influenced Vladimir’s sovereign decision. As both the Britannica and Ukrainian Encyclopaedia note, Kyiv’s economy and politics in the pagan era were tied to a strategic trade axis with Byzantium — the Baltic-to-Black Sea waterway via the Dnieper.
This geography oriented Kyiv more strongly towards Constantinople than towards the Volga routes leading to Islamic capitals further east. The commercial and fiscal tilt enhanced Constantinople’s role as primary trading partner, political arbiter, and cultural model for the Rus.
Franklin and Shepard likewise stress that trade routes themselves drew the early Rus’ elite into Byzantine structures, making that civilisation more familiar than others.
Equally important, Vladimir’s grandmother Olga, had embraced Orthodoxy decades earlier. According to Lev Gumilev in From Tribe to Nation, the influence of the Byzantine Orthodox Church had been spreading gradually before 988: churches and monasteries appeared, literacy and icon-painting advanced, and baptised and pagan communities coexisted before and after the official conversion.
Adopting a state religion also secured legitimacy and cemented alliances. Orthodoxy enabled Vladimir to strengthen marital and political ties with Constantinople (notably his marriage to the emperor’s sister) and ensured mutual recognition and benefits.
By contrast, Islam and Judaism were, in the Rus’ view, more tightly associated with rival neighbours: the Muslim Volga Bulgars, direct competitors of Kyiv; and the Khazars, who had adopted Judaism yet failed to inspire the Rus’. Islam, too, reached the Rus’ through south-eastern markets far from Kyiv’s core trade axis.
As George Vernadsky argues in Kievan Russia, the episode of Vladimir hearing foreign envoys — and sending his own to observe — encapsulates the religious-political competition of the age. His envoys were especially moved by the Byzantine liturgy at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, returning with glowing reports of its communal worship and visual-aural magnificence. For Vernadsky, the narrative reflects an elite preference for a solution promising international recognition and institutional integration through the Byzantine Church, rather than a fleeting spiritual impression.
As noted earlier, the Rus’ rejection of Islamic law — notably the ban on wine and pork and the circumcision requirement — connected to an elite culture of banquets and emblematic communal drinks. Orthodoxy, conversely, seemed better able to integrate folkloric and seasonal Rus’ elements within the new church calendar, reducing the cultural cost of transition — a point also discussed by André Poppé in his study of Kievan Rus’ Christianisation up to 1300.
Conclusion
These are among the main explanations proposed for why, at a decisive tenth-century crossroads, the Rus weighed Islam, Judaism, and Christianity — and chose Eastern Orthodoxy for a constellation of reasons: geopolitical alignment with Byzantium, trade routes and economic orientation, prior Byzantine influence and Olga’s example, the institutional capacity of Orthodoxy to accommodate local customs, and the Rus’ elite’s reluctance to accept Islam’s social prohibitions at that time.
One Ummah. One platform. One mission.
Your support keeps it alive.
Click here to Donate & Fund your Islamic Independent Platform
