The Pantheon on the Hill, and Then the River

Before the conversion there was an attempt at the opposite. The Primary Chronicle records that on taking Kiev, Vladimir set up idols on the hill outside the palace: Perun the thunder god in wood with a silver head and a golden moustache, and beside him Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl and Mokosh, and that sacrifices were offered to them. Assembling several gods of different Slavic and Iranian derivations into one official group is a state project rather than an inherited cult, and it looks like an effort to give a young principality a single religious centre. The chronicle also records a killing under that regime, a Varangian Christian and his son taken by lot for sacrifice and refusing, whom it treats as the first martyrs of the Rus.

The dismantling was as public as the erection. After the baptism in 988 the idols were pulled down, some cut up and burned, and Perun was tied to a horse tail, dragged down to the Dnieper, beaten with sticks the whole way, and pushed into the water with men appointed to follow it downstream and push it off the banks until it passed the rapids. The chronicler is clear that this was staged to be watched. A god is unmade in public by the same authority that set it up.