Rus' Khaganate

Rusʹ Khaganate (Russian: Русский каганат, Russkiy kaganat, Ukrainian: Руський каганат, Ruśkyj kahanat), or kaganate of Rus is a name applied by some modern historians to a hypothetical polity suggested to have existed during a poorly documented period in the history of Eastern Europe between c. 830 and the 890s.

The fact that a few sparse contemporaneous sources appear to refer to the leader or leaders of Rus' people at this time with the word chacanus, which might be derived from the title of khagan as used by groupings of Asiatic nomads, has led some scholars to suggest that his political organisation can be called a "k(h)aganate". Other scholars have disputed this, as it would have been unlikely for an organisation of Germanic immigrants from the north to adopt such a foreign title. Some historians have criticised the concept of a Rus' Khaganate, calling it a "historiographical phantom", and said that the society of 9th-century Rusʹ cannot be characterised as a state. Still other scholars identify these early mentions of a Rus' political entity headed by a chacanus with the Kievan Rus' state commonly attested in later sources, whose princes such as Vladimir the Great, (r. 980–1015) Yaroslav the Wise (r. 1019–1054), and perhaps Sviatoslav II of Kiev (r. 1073–1076) and Oleg I of Chernigov (r. 1097–1115) were occasionally identified as kagans in Old East Slavic literature until the late 12th century.