Ancient Russia (the other Russian and Russian Orthodox Church, Latin, Russian, Russian, Russian, Ruthenian, and other Gardar's scandals, later Gardariki) - the medieval East-Eastern Slavic state in Eastern Europe, which arose in the IX century as a result association of a number of East Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes under the rule of the princes of the dynasty of the Rurik dynasty.
In the period of the highest prosperity, Kievan Rus occupied the territory from the Taman Peninsula to the south, the Dniester and the Upper Wisla in the west to the Upper Northwest of the Northern Dvina in the north and the tributaries of the Volga in the east. By the middle of the 12th century, it entered into a state of feudal fragmentation and actually broke up into one and a half dozen Russian principalities governed by different branches of the dynasty of the Rurik dynasty. Until the Mongol invasion (1237-1240)Kiev, having lost its influence in favor of new centers of power, formally continued to be considered the main "table" of Russia, and the Kiev principality remained in the collective ownership of the Russian princes. As an ethno-cultural region, Russia continued to exist after the political disintegration, which subsequently played an important role in the process of unification of Russian lands