Background

The traditional starting point of Galician history is the year 981, when, according to the Rus’ Primary Chronicle, the grand prince of Kiev, Volodymyr (reigned 980-1015), went to the Liakhs and took Przemysl, Cherven, and other cities.

Kievan Rus’ was itself no more than a loosely knit federation of principalities, each with its own ruler or rulers representing various branches of the founding Rurykovych dynasty and nominally subordinate, though more often than not independent of the senior, or grand prince residing in Kiev. More important as a unifying factor was culture and religion. Galicia received Christianity in its eastern Orthodox form from Kiev in the late tenth century and later a cultural language, Old Slavonic, from the same source.

It was also arrangements reached within the Kievan political order that pro­vided Galicia, in the second half of the eleventh century, with its own branch of the Rurykovych dynasty, the Rostyslavyches from Prince Rostyslav (d. 1065), grandson of the powerful prince of Kiev, laroslav the Wise (reigned 1019-1054). Rostyslav’s three sons, the real founders of the Galician dynasty, divided the

realm and ruled from the fortresses of Zvenyhorod, Przemysl, and Terebovlia, but their successors during the twelfth century-Volodymyrko (reigned 1124-1153) and laroslav Osmomysl’ (reigned 1153-1187)-united these cities, founded a new capital at Halych (1141), and extended the principality’s territorial extent from its original base along the upper Buh and Dniester rivers toward the south­east as far as the Black Sea.

Like other lands within Kievan Rus’, Galicia experienced several periods of chronic wars caused by interprincely rivalry over the throne of Kiev and over each other’s principalities. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the princes of Kiev and especially neighboring Volhynia frequently attempted to take the Gali­cian throne. Galicia also had problems that distinguished it from other Kievan principalities. Both the neighboring Hungarian Kingdom south of the Carpathians and the Polish principalities to the west claimed Galicia as their patrimony and on numerous occasions invaded the region (sometimes at the invitation of Galician princes or discontented boyars). Finally, the boyars (a class of wealthy landown­ers) grew to be a politically and economically influential group, and after the twelfth century often served as a potent restraint on centralized princely authority; at times they contributed to internal chaos that was exploited by the Poles or Hungarians.

In 1199, the Rostyslavych dynasty died out, and the local boyars invited Prince Roman of Volhynia (reigned 1199-1205) to be their ruler. This heralded the establishment of a new branch of the Rurykovych dynasty-the Romanovyches -as well as the unification of Galicia and Volhynia through the person of their ruling prince. After a period of civil war, foreign invasion, and declining econom­ic fortunes, Galicia-Volhynia reached its apogee under Danylo (reigned 1238-1262) and his son Lev (reigned 1264-1301). And since Kiev had already lost its preeminent political and economic role by the early thirteenth century, Galicia-Volhynia replaced it as the dominant force within the southern Rus’ lands. This position was maintained even after the Mongol invasion, which devastated parts of Galicia in 1240.

However, at the moment of its seeming height, a period of decline set in, which ultimately was to prove fatal. The first decades of the fourteenth century wit­nessed the death of the last male in the Romanovych dynasty (1323), an increase in antiprincely activity on the part of the boyars, new friction with the Mongols, and frequent incursions on the part of the Poles, Hungarians, and a new power from the north, the Lithuanians. In 1340, the last Romanovych ruler (on the female side) was poisoned by the boyars. This act immediately plunged the kingdom into a period of internal civil war and anarchy as well as foreign invasion and diplomatic maneuvering that was to last for almost half a century, at the end of which Galicia was annexed by the Polish Kingdom.

Sources

The most important sources for the study of Galicia during the medieval period are the Old Rus’ chronicles. Of these, the Kievan Chronicle (covering the years 1113-1200) and especially the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle (covering the years 1201-1292) are of greatest value for Galician events. The Galician-Volhynian Chronicle has, like the other chronicles, survived only in later-day copies, the oldest of which is found in the second part of the so-called Hypatian text (from the early fourteenth century). The Hypatian text has been published four times.¹⁴ There are also annotated translations in English and Ukrainian.¹⁵ The Hypatian text and its second component part, the Galician-Volhynian Chronicle, have been the subject of numberous studies, mostly of a linguistic nature.

14 Polnoe sobranie russkikh lietopisei, vol. II: Ipatievskaia lietopis' (St Petersburg: Arkheografi- cheskaia kommissia 1843), 2nd rev. ed. (St Petersburg: Arkheograficheskaia kommissia 1908; reprinted Moscow: Izd. vostochnoi literatury Instituta istorii AN SSSR, 1962); A.S. Petrushevych, ed., Volynsko-Halytskaia litopys' sostavlennaia s kontsem XIII vika 1205-1292 (L’viv 1871), supplement to Lyteraturnyi sbornyk Halytsko-russkoi Matytsy, [III—IV] (L’viv 1870-71); Lietopis' po Ipat'evskomu spisku (St Petersburg: Arkheograficheskaia kommissia 1871).

15 George Perfecky, The Galician-Volynian Chronicle: The Hypatian Codex, pt 2, Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies, vol. XVI, pt 2 (Munich: Fink Vlg. 1973); L. Makhovets’, “Halyts’ko- volyns’kyi litopys,” Zhovten’, XXXIII, 7 (L’viv 1982), pp. 14-87.

16 R.P. Dmitrieva, comp., Bibliografiia russkago letopisaniia (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademii Nauk SSSR 1962); George Perfecky, “Studies on the Galician-Volynian (Volhynian) Chronicle,” Annals of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the United States, XII, 1-2 (New York 1969-72), pp. 62-112.

Izydor Sharanevych and the establishment of the chronicle’s chronology (the Hypatian text had no dates) by Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi are invaluable.^[194] The Galician-Volhynian Chronicle as well as other Rus’ chronicles and western Euro­pean, Byzantine, and Arabic sources for the history of medieval Galicia are discussed in works by Ivan Lynnychenko, Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi, Vladimir Ikonnikov, Dmytro Bahalii, and Vladimir Pashuto.^[195]

General histories of Galicia-Volhynia

The medieval Galician-Volhynian principality and later kingdom marked the only time when the area was more or less independent.

Besides glorifying the era of Galician princely rule, Zubryts’kyi also put forth two propositions that were to become standard in writings on the subject: that the Rus’ population of Galicia was autochthonous, and that it originally was settled much farther west than the nineteenth-century Polish-Ukrainian ethnographic boundary. Other surveys of medieval Galician Rus’ history were published by the local scholar, Izydor Sharanevych, who brought his coverage down to the mid­fifteenth century,^[198] and in briefer works by the Galician philologist lakiv Holo- vats’kyi and the Russian and Polish historians Mikhail Smirnov and Anatol Lewicki.^[199]

Since medieval Galicia was part of the Kievan federation, and since both Russian and Ukrainian writers consider Kievan Rus’ the starting point for the development of their respective nations, it is not surprising that Galician Rus’ often figures to a greater or lesser degree in Russian and Ukrainian national histories. Russian historians generally give Galicia only scant attention, because they consider it a peripheral area, i.e. the farthest western land of Kievan “Rus­sian” influence, but one which had little impact on developments that eventually led to the growth of Muscovy. The best representative of the Russian national school is Sergei Solov’ev, who in the second and third volume of his monumental History of Russia from Oldest Times discusses at some length events in the Galician principality and Galician-Volhynian Kingdom.^[200]

Medieval Galicia plays a more important role in Ukrainian national histories, since the area is viewed as one where the “true” culture of Kiev was preserved (something much different from what later arose in Muscovy)-at first indepen­dently, then within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, until it was carried on later in Ukrainian history during the Cossack era. The idea of Galicia as a crucial link in the Ukrainian historical continuum from Kievan Rus’ to the present was developed by the greatest Ukrainian historian, Mykhailo Hrushevs’kyi. As a result, the Galician-Volhynian principality is given much attention in two volumes of his History of Ukraine-Rus’,^[201]