The Kievan Rus were the first organized state located on the lands of what is modern Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Sources ascribe its founding to Rurik in the mid-9th century. His successors ruled territory of varying extent along the Dnieper, Western Dvina, Lovat-Volkhov, & upper Volga rivers until the Mongol (Tatar) invasion of 1237-40.
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The Mongol (Tatar) conquest and fall of Kiev in 1240 led by Batu, grandson of Genghis Khan, pushed the Russian state north to center around Novgorod, ending the rule centered about Kiev. In the 14th century Ivan I (1325-40) organized the princes around Moscow, and achieved some success dealing with the nearby Mongol Khans to whom they paid tribute. Ivan III ("The Great" 1462-1505) would formally renounce the overlordship of the Crimean Tatar rule in 1480. The "Time of Troubles" between the death of Boris Godunov (1605) and the rise of the first Romanov ruler (Tsar Mikhail) in 1613, marked the end of the Muscovite era and Rurikid dynasty, and the rise of the Romanov dynasty which lasted until the Russian Revolution in 1917.
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