Which is an awesome idea and everything, but Russian, the language that developed from what the Rus spoke, sounds a lot more Slavic than it sounds, you know, Swedish. To illustrate, here is a Swede fighting a Russian over who founded Kiev. Kiev was founded by the Slavic ancestors of Russia. No, of course Kiev was founded by the Swedes. Right. Okay, so trade was hugely important to Kiev. Almost all of their wars ended with trade concession treaties, and their law codes were unusually devoted to the subject of commerce.