It was not intended that only the fertile Black Lands along the Dnieper, near to the civilizing center at Constantinople, should absorb the life currents.
All of Russia was to be vitalized; the bleak North as well as the South; the zone of the forests as well as the fertile steppes.

The instruments appointed to accomplish this great work were--the disorder consequent upon the reapportionment of the territory at the death of each sovereign--the fierce rivalries of ambitious Princes--and the barbaric encroachments to which the prevailing anarchy made the South the prey.
By the twelfth century the civil war had become distinctly a war between a new Russia of the forests and the old Russia of the fertile steppes.

The cause of the North had a powerful leader in Andrew Bogoliubski.

Andrew was the grandson of Monomakh and the son of Yuri (or George) Dolgoruki--both of whom were Grand Princes of extraordinary abilities and commanding qualities.

In 1169 Andrew, who was then Prince of Suzdal, came with an immense army of followers; he marched against Kief.