Grand Prince of Kiev (972–980), the eldest son of Sviatoslav I, whose war with his brothers ended when Vladimir the Great defeated and killed him to seize Kiev.
Yaropolk I was Grand Prince of Kiev from 972 to 980, the eldest son of the warrior-prince Sviatoslav I. When Sviatoslav died on his way home from the Balkans, his lands were divided among his three sons: Yaropolk received Kiev itself, Oleg the land of the Drevlians, and Vladimir the northern city of Novgorod.
The division soon dissolved into fratricidal war. Yaropolk defeated and killed his brother Oleg, and drove Vladimir into exile abroad. But Vladimir returned with a Varangian army, and by force and treachery overcame Yaropolk, who was murdered at a parley in 980 — leaving Vladimir sole ruler of Rus', the future Vladimir the Great.
Yaropolk was born about 958, the eldest son of Sviatoslav I, the last great pagan warlord of the Rurikid house, whose campaigns had shattered the Khazars and reached deep into the Balkans. Before setting out on his final campaign, Sviatoslav divided his realm among his sons, placing Yaropolk in Kiev, the chief city of the Rus'. When Sviatoslav was killed by the Pechenegs on his way home in 972, Yaropolk became grand prince.
Yaropolk is a shadowy figure, seen through the hostile lens of chronicles written to glorify the brother who overthrew him, and his character is hard to recover. Some traditions credit him with a mild disposition and even a leaning toward Christianity — his grandmother Olga had been a Christian, and he is said to have received envoys from the pope — which the later Christian chroniclers, oddly, did little to celebrate, committed as they were to the sanctity of his conqueror Vladimir.
What the record shows is a prince caught, like so many of his house, in the deadly logic of divided inheritance. Whether by his own ambition or that of his counsellors — one adviser is blamed for goading him into the war with Oleg — he was drawn into the fratricidal struggle that consumed his father's realm. He appears less as a villain or a hero than as a loser in the merciless contest among Sviatoslav's sons, remembered chiefly as the obstacle that Vladimir the Great had to remove.
The peace among Sviatoslav's sons did not last. War broke out between Yaropolk and Oleg, and in a battle near the Drevlian capital Oleg was killed in the rout, crushed as his men fled across a bridge. On hearing of Oleg's death and fearing Yaropolk, the youngest brother Vladimir fled from Novgorod overseas to the Varangians, and for a time Yaropolk ruled all of Rus'.
But Vladimir returned with a Varangian host, retook Novgorod, and marched on Kiev. Outmanoeuvred and betrayed by his own commander Blud, Yaropolk was lured to a parley with his brother, where two of Vladimir's Varangians ran him through with their swords.
Yaropolk was murdered at Rodnya in 980 at his brother's bidding. His death left Vladimir sole ruler of the Rus'. By one account Vladimir took Yaropolk's pregnant widow, and their son Sviatopolk — later "the Accursed" — would carry on the family's murderous rivalries in the next generation.
Yaropolk I is remembered chiefly as the brother whom Vladimir the Great overthrew to unite the Rus' under his own hand. His fall cleared the way for one of the great turning points of Russian and Ukrainian history: Vladimir's consolidation of Kievan Rus' and, a few years later, his conversion to Orthodox Christianity and the baptism of his people. Yaropolk's brief, war-torn reign stands at the threshold of Christian Rus'.