The spread of Christianity in Russia
When Prince Vladimir the vast majority of the Russian population accepted the Christian faith, and Kievan Rus a Christian country.
Where a greater resistance was provided by the residents of the North and East of Russia. Novgorod rebelled against sent to the city of Bishop Joachim in 991. For the conquest of Novgorod took military expedition of Kiev, headed by Dobrynia and Potatoe. Murom residents refused to allow city son Vladimir, Gleb, and stated his desire to keep the religion of their ancestors. Similar conflicts arose in other cities of Novgorod and Rostov lands. The reason for such hostility is the commitment of the population to the traditional rites, it is in these cities formed the religious elements of the Gentile organization (regular and sustainable rituals, a separate group of priests - the Magi, magicians). In the southern, Western cities and rural areas pagan beliefs existed more as a superstition than as the consummate religion.
The faith that existed in the villages for decades and even centuries, only gradually overcome by the efforts of many generations of clerics. And now, still overcome. It should be noted that the pagan elements of consciousness have a high resistance (in the form of superstition). So many orders of Vladimir designed to strengthen the new faith were imbued with the pagan spirit.
One of the problems after the formal baptism was the education of subjects in a Christian spirit. This task was performed by the priests, the foreigners, mainly immigrants from Bulgaria, whose inhabitants in the ninth century converted to Christianity. The Bulgarian Church had independence from the Patriarch of Constantinople, in particular, could elect the head of the Church. This fact played a major role in the development of the Church in Russia. Not trusting the Byzantine Emperor, Vladimir decided to subordinate the Russian Church, the Bulgarian, and not Greek hierarchs. This arrangement lasted until 1037, and was convenient because Bulgaria used the service books in Slavonic language close to conversational Russian.
An immediate consequence of the adoption of Christianity by Vladimir and distribution in the Russian land was, of course, building churches. Vladimir immediately after the baptism commanded to build the Church and to put them in those places where before there were idols: so, there was a Church of St. Basil on the hill where the idol of Perun and other gods. Vladimir ordered to put the Church and determine to them the priests also and to other cities and to lead people to baptism in all the cities and villages. There is news that the Metropolitan with the bishops, sent from Constantinople, with Dobrynia, uncle Vladimirov, and Anastas went to the North, and baptized people; naturally, they went first along the great waterway, up the Dnieper river to the Northern end of this road – Novgorod the Great. Here were baptized many people, built a Church for new Christians; but the first time Christianity was not spread among all the inhabitants of Novgorod, in all probability, waterway preachers went to the East, to Rostov. It wasn't the first Metropolitan Michael, in the year 990; 991 year he died. It is easy to imagine how his death had to grieve Vladimir to his new position; the Prince could hardly comfort the other bishops and nobles; soon, however, he was called from Constantinople, the Metropolitan of new – Leon.
The Russian Church, which developed in cooperation with the state, has become a force uniting people of different lands in the cultural and political unity.
The transfer to Russian soil of the tradition of monastic life has given the peculiarity of the Slavic colonization of the Northern and Eastern Slavs of the Kievan state. Missionary activity in the lands inhabited by Finnish-speaking and Turkic tribes, not only brought these tribes into the orbit of Christian civilization, but also slightly eased the painful process of the formation of the Plurinational state. This state developed on the basis of national and religious ideas. It was not so much Russian, how many Orthodox.
When the people have lost faith - the state collapsed. State collapse of Russia took place reflected the ethnic disintegration of the system: although all principalities lived still Russians, and they all were Orthodox, the sense of ethnic unity between them was destroyed.
Acceptance of Christianity contributed to a widespread literacy in Rus', the purpose of education, the emergence of a rich, translated from Greek literature, the emergence of private Russian literature, the development of Church architecture and iconography.
Regarding the adoption of Christianity in Ancient Russia can say unequivocally only one thing: she became a new round in the development of public relations of the Eastern Slavs.