From the “Russian Jerusalem” to the “Slavic Pompeii”

OLEKSII TOLOCHKO

Looking back at his childhood memories of Kyiv (at the end of the eighteenth century), Baron Filipp Vigel wrote: “In those days, Kyiv was a border city and vir­tually the capital of Little Russia; troops were stationed around it; to it flocked military officials, Ukrainian landowners for business and litigation purposes, de­vout Great Russian nobles with their families to worship the holy relics, and, fi­nally, just travelers who visited southern Russia for pleasure then as they visit foreign lands now.”¹

Kyiv was regarded as the culmination of the “Little Russian tour” - without visiting the Old Rus' capital, without worshipping at the Kyiv shrines, it was un­likely that the trip would have been considered even remotely successful.

Russian travelers found two cities in Little Russia where they authentically ex­perienced their own history. The first was Poltava, the site of Peter I's famous victory over Sweden's Charles XII. Russia, as it still believed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was born “of the genius of Peter.” On the Poltava bat­tlefield, the traveler could feel present at the birth pangs of the great empire.

This, however, was the “new” Russia, European and enlightened. To touch the source of “ancient” Russia, the traveler went to Kyiv.

The trip to Kyiv - without question, part of general fashion - had, however, a deeper meaning as well. As he approached the city, the traveler began to notice a crowd of pilgrims around him, and the closer to Kyiv one got, the larger the crowd. The traveler met pilgrims everywhere: at post houses, in towns and villages, on the roads; along with a throng of worshippers, the traveler crossed the Dnipro near Kyiv. He became a part of the mass of religious pilgrims and - willingly or not - he began to think of himself as a pilgrim to the holy sites.

Kyiv was just about the largest center of pilgrimage in the Russian Empire. Its Orthodox shrines and relics - the Kyivan Cave Monastery (Pechers'kaLavra) with the relics of saintly monks in caves, Saint Michael's (Golden-Domed) Monastery (Mykhailivs'kyi monastyr) with the relics of Saint Barbara - prompted tens of thousands of pilgrims to set out annually from all corners of the empire. Some of the travelers believed that there were up to a hundred thousand worshippers in Kyiv. The peak of the Kyiv pilgrimage fell on the patronal feast day of the Cave Monastery - the Dormition of the Mother of God. Worshippers went on pilgrim­age to Kyiv to fulfill a vow they had taken once, in the hope of being healed by the holy relics or to atone for their sins. Kyiv was considered to be a place where a person was able to atone for a crime, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century, for some who were guilty before the law, residence in Kyiv was even a substitute for their criminal sentence. Thus, for example, Aleksandr Annenkov, one of the first Kyiv “archaeologists,” found himself in the city, for especially cruel treatment of peasants; later, worshipping in Kyiv replaced imprisonment for the killer of Mikhail Lermontov - Nikolai Martynov.

The significance of Kyiv and the pilgrimage to Kyiv for the collective conscious­ness of Ukrainians was very accurately conveyed by Ivan Pereverzev, the author of the Topographical Description of the Kharkiv Vicegerency (Topograficheskoe opisanieKhar’kovskogo namestnichestva) published in 1788:

The inhabitants of southern Russia, separated from one another by dis­tance, by various governing bodies, by social customs, by language, and some by religion (the Union), attract the eye of the spectator, who is not without knowledge of what he is seeing noting. When they gather to wor­ship in Kyiv from the east, from the Volga and the Don, from the west, from Galicia and Lodomeria and places that lie closer to Kyiv, they see one another not as foreign, but as seemingly kindred, albeit considerably distant in words and deeds, which seems a strange phenomenon to both sides; but, in general, all these scattered compatriots still retain filial respect for the mother of their ancient home, the city of Kyiv.²

The usual metaphor for Kyiv in the travel diaries of the nineteenth century, as well as in the memoirs of travelers, was the “Russian Jerusalem.”

Worship at the shrines of Kyiv was almost the main purpose of visits to Kyiv by royal personages, sporadic during the eighteenth century and increasingly fre­quent in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Whatever the traveler's motives for traveling through Little Russia, approaching Kyiv, he began to imagine himself a pilgrim, to feel in his soul religious delight at his imminent visit to the Orthodox shrines of Kyiv. Added to the religious feel­ing was the experience of a picturesque landscape.

As a rule, travelers approached Kyiv from the Left Bank, and the majestic panorama of the “golden-domed city,” which opened before their eyes, set a mys­tical mood from the start: “In the western part of the sky, above a gray bank of fog, Kyiv opened. The holy city stood as if in the air or in the sky, and the rays of the rising sun, burning on its golden-domed churches, presented a magnificent and new sight on earth!”³

Not a single traveler missed the opportunity to pour out on the pages of his travel journal exalted impressions of contemplating “the eternity-competing stronghold of Russia” (Otto von Gun), “the holy city” (Glagolev).

In 1832, on the way to the “Southwestern Region,” where he was to “rebuild” educational institutions after the Polish uprising, Ivan Sbitnev visited Kyiv. His “travel notes” perfectly convey the state of semi-religious ecstasy, semi-antiquarian enthusiasm, that the traveler experienced on his approach to Kyiv:

Is it possible to approach Kyiv with indifference, especially for the first time, as I did then, this once rich city, where the core of Russia's state life devel­oped, where Christianity began, which quickly spread through the Slavic tribes! With a sense of reverence, I visited the Cave Monastery and worshiped the holy relics of the saints in the Near and Far Caves; I also visited the Cathe­drals of Saint Sophia, Saint Michael, and Saint Nicholas and the Brotherhood Monastery. With trepidation, with a feeling of awe, I approached the place in the ravine where Prince Volodymyr baptized his people into Christianity.⁶

Meanwhile, more and more travelers from the capital went to Kyiv not with a religious purpose, but with an archaeological one. The end of the eighteenth cen­tury was marked by the discovery of the classical antiquities of the Northern Black Sea region. With the addition of the newly annexed Oriental lands of the Ottoman Porte and Crimean Khanate, Russia suddenly became the owner of the remnants of an ancient civilization. The discovery of the ruins of Greek cities in­trigued and excited the imagination of antiquarians and scholars.

The secular opening of Kyiv thus followed in the steps of religious pilgrimage, and the first travelers to the city were as much pious pilgrims to holy places as tourists interested in history and historical rarities. In 1823 Mikhail Speranskii, about to go to Chernihiv, wrote: “Maybe from there, being in the vicinity, I will take a look at Kyiv and its sacred antiquities”’* “Antiquities” is emphasized, but its placement next to “sacredness” is not accidental.

The term “opening” in this case is not just a metaphor. Despite the fact that Kyiv (along with the rest of Little Russia) was part of the Russian state since the middle of the seventeenth century, information about it among the Russian public until the beginning of the nineteenth century remained very, shall we say, theoretical, literary. Kyiv occupied an extremely important place in Russian history and, in general, in the public consciousness, but knowledge about the real city of Kyiv was extremely limited. Most well-read travelers considered Kyiv to be as it appeared on the pages of the chronicle - a magnificent capital. When they went to Kyiv, they expected to find visible and obvious traces of ancient greatness: cathedrals and palaces, or at least impressive remnants of these struc­tures, noble ruins like those of Pompeii or Herculaneum.

Catherine II was the first “scholarly” traveler to Kyiv. She considered herself a decent historian, had written her own version of the history of Kyivan Rus' just before the trip, and generally knew as much about Kyiv as could be known in the eighteenth century. The empress prepared for the trip carefully. In 1785 a brief note on Kyivan antiquities was compiled for her, and in 1786 (before the beginning of her travels!) a book was published under the title “The Journey of Her Imperial Majesty to the Southern Land of Russia, Undertaken in 1787,” which set out the history of the city and provided a brief description of its antiquities and topog­raphy. Unfortunately, nothing is known about Catherine’s expectations of the city, but the tone of her letters from Kyiv indicated disappointment: there were no antiquities in Kyiv, just as there was no ancient city itself. In letters to her son Paul, to Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, and to other recipients, the em­press complained repetitiously and in almost the same words that she is “searching for and cannot find” Kyiv: “This is a strange city: it consists entirely of fortifica­tions and suburbs, and I still can't find the city itself; yet, in all probability, it was at least as big as Moscow in the old days.”⁹ The empress wrote the same to her son: “Since I have been here, I have been searching for the city, but I have not yet found anything except two fortresses and suburbs; all these scattered parts are called Kyiv, and make one think of the past greatness of this ancient capital.”¹⁰

Count Louis Philippe de Segur, who accompanied the empress on her southern journey along with other envoys, approached Kyiv with similar expectations of finding the remains of the historical city: “Approaching Kyiv, you feel that special sense of respect that the sight of ruins always inspires. In addition, the picturesque location of this city lends charm to the first impression; looking at it, you remem­ber that here is the cradle of a great state, which was long in ignorance, from which it freed itself no more than a hundred years ago, and now has become so huge and powerful.”¹¹ The count was also deceived in his expectations. After a tour of the city (“when we explored this ancient capital with its surroundings”), when Catherine asked about the impression that Kyiv makes, the count replied: “Kyiv represents the memory and hopes of a great city.”¹² This aphorism very aptly conveys what Kyiv was and how it was seen by travelers: the contemporary city meant nothing; it was presented in its former splendor and power in hope of their restoration. Kyiv existed only in the past and in the future.

The search for ruins was not out of place in Kyiv. The contrast between the impressive image of the city in the annals and chronicles and its actual deplorable state of a small town always accompanied Kyiv. In the literature of the Polish Re­naissance, this contributed to the appearance of the topos of ruins as the distin­guishing feature of Kyiv. Ruins in a single image explained what Kyiv once was and what happened to it later.

Not everyone who wrote in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries about the ruins of Kyiv had actually visited the city. Those who had been there had seen more than enough ruins. Drawings by Abraham van Westerfeld made in 1651 in­dicate that there were still many relics of the past left in the city, quite impressive in size. If the fashion for the Little Russian tour had started a century earlier, trav­elers would have enjoyed plenty of mysterious and melancholy ruins. Visible re­mains of Old Rus' buildings began to disappear rapidly from the Kyiv landscape at the turn of the seventeenth to eighteenth century. The inhabitants of the city regarded the sites of ancient buildings as quarries from which they obtained build­ing material. The relatively peaceful time and the material consolidation of the Orthodox Church promoted new construction in the city. In the second half of the seventeenth to the early eighteenth century, the walls of Old Rus' churches and cathedrals were dismantled for repair and renovation of other buildings so thoroughly that sometimes stone was removed even from the foundation ditches. The “reconstruction” and “restoration” of Kyiv shrines, begun by Petro Mohyla and continued by his successors, destroyed more remnants of ancient Rus' than during all previous centuries combined. The Golden Gate was relatively more fortunate: it served as the entrance to Kyiv for the entire time, but it gradually fell into disrepair, threatened to collapse, and its remains were covered with earth in 1750.¹³ By the middle of the eighteenth century, nothing in the appearance of Kyiv was reminiscent of antiquity. When in 1760, in compliance with a Senate de­cree, an order was issued to write a “Description” of the city, its author stated: “In Kyiv, almost no traces of the remaining ruins of the old fortified towns and hill­forts are visible today, except that, according to popular reports, there was a sizable residence above the Lybid River.”¹⁴

As of the second half of the eighteenth century, the traveler could no longer admire the romantic ruins of Kyiv. As he approached the ancient capital, he did not know this yet and expected a revelation from touching deepest antiquity and extraordinary sanctity. Disappointment set in pretty quickly.

In 1804, the famous Metropolitan Platon of Moscow visited Kyiv. He also kept a travel journal, which was published in 1813. The metropolitan, of course, was primarily a pious pilgrim, but - in the spirit of the times - combined pilgrimage with an archaeological tour. He visited all the religious shrines of Kyiv, but being a well-read person who was interested in history, he always wrote down historical information about them, as well as his own impressions and conclusions.

Platon was shown the sites and remains of ancient history. On Askold's Grave, where the first blood of Old Rus' history was spilled and, according to tradition, Princess Olha built the Church of Saint Nicholas, Platon saw “a small stone church, already on the verge of dilapidation, but the structure is not old.”¹⁵ The site, however, was picturesque, and the metropolitan allowed himself to be per­suaded. In Kyiv itself, he was shown the Golden Gate and the Church of Saint George. He was told about the gate that “atop it stood a gilded angel, which was then and is now the coat of arms of Kyiv.”¹⁶ The gate that the learned metropolitan examined was most likely new, built after 1750.¹⁷ At the foot of the hills, Platon was shown the site called “Khreshchatyk,” containing a spring, and told that it was precisely here that Volodymyr baptized his sons.¹⁸ The pavilion over the spring was built in 1802 (in 1804, a monument to the Baptism was erected there, about which von Gun remarked dryly: “Architecture and taste in this monument do not captivate the eye”).

The metropolitan was disappointed by Kyiv:

It is very remarkable that although the [Saint] Sophia, Cave Monastery [Dor­mition], Saint Nicholas's Cathedrals, and others, not only in Kyiv but also in Chernihiv [...] are ancient, and others more than 700 years old, and where we would we expect to find traces of antiquity, we clearly see that in all those churches, the icons, iconostases, painted walls are all a display of antiquity, but it appears that they were painted and made either recently or in the sev­enteenth or eighteenth century.¹⁹

The metropolitan's overall conclusion was pessimistic: there were more “an­tiquities” to be found in Moscow: “It is clear that various enemy depredations destroyed everything ancient and necessitated rebuilding everything.”²⁰

Even Kyiv's greatest “antiquity,” the Church of the Tithes, inspired doubts. The metropolitan knew from the Chronicle that Volodymyr had erected a splendid building. What Platon saw made him think: is this really what we are talking about? The Church of the Tithes “has no external or internal splendor, and the structure does not seem to be that old. And therefore, whether it is that famous Church of the Tithes, and whether it stood in this place, is some­thing that I leave to other, local scholars to tackle with greater curiosity.”²¹

Ironically, the metropolitan recognized the Transfiguration Church in Berestove as the only real antiquity in Kyiv. This he determined by the “al fresco” and the Greek inscriptions.²² The church's appearance, frescoes, and inscriptions all date to the time of Petro Mohyla.

Kyiv made exactly the same impression of “newness” on another pious tourist - Prince Dolgorukov. Six years after Metropolitan Platon, he was led along the same route and shown the same, mostly fictional, evidence of ancient history. Askold's “dilapidated” grave was already demolished, and in its place the prince saw “a round stone church with a dome in the new fashion,” and he therefore doubted whether this had really been Askold's burial.²³ The prince also inspected the Church of the Tithes and

he sighed at the sight of its desolation and poverty; there is nothing anymore to attract the eye, everything has fallen into decay; imagination alone gives value to both the site and the church. It is unquestionable that from such remote times, the Tatars, the Poles, and the fires all left their mark on the Church of the Tithes, and from a most magnificent [structure] brought it to its wretched state. But I never thought that it would be as abandoned and despised as I found it.²⁴

From the Church of the Tithes, the Prince went to inspect another building supposedly from the time of Volodymyr - the Church of the Three Holy Hier­archs (Tr'iokhsviatytel's'ka), built on a hill where Perun and the rest of the pagan idols used to stand: “The church is old, but not ancient. It is likely that all these historically famous churches have already been restored several times after the destruction of Kyiv, and some have been completely rebuilt: it is enough if, at least, the places where historical events took place have been preserved.”²⁵ Metropolitan Platon doubted this: Nestor wrote that Perun stood on a hill, but there is no hill there: “is this compatible with the truth, we cannot say.”

While Metropolitan Platon compared the antiquity of Kyiv with Moscow's, Prince Dolgorukov compared it with Novgorod's. But the comparison was also not in favor of the ancient capital of Rus': “Kyiv is old, but its antiquity is not as visible, not as tangible, as Novgorod’s. There the centuries are clearly depicted on every church building, on every bell tower spire, and they testify to the longevity of that city; here everything is something new, more fashion, less age.”²⁶

The most prepared of all the early travelers to recognize “antiquities,” Ermo­laev, was in Kyiv in the same year of 1810 as Prince Dolgorukov. He shared the prince’s overall impression of the city. About the Dormition Cathedral the ar­chaeologist noted: “The main church of the Kyivan Cave Monastery no longer has its original appearance. Batu Khan’s invasion and the fire of 1718 completely transformed it. It was reconstructed for the last time under Peter I, as can be seen from the exterior decorations.” The Saint Sophia Cathedral appeared a little better: “The Cathedral of Saint Sophia, although now also not in the same state as when it was built in 1037 by Grand Prince laroslav [the Wise], generally suf­fered less than the Kyivan Cave Monastery.” The Church of the Tithes and the Church of the Three Holy Hierarchs (Saint Basil’s) made a very depressing im­pression on Ermolaev:

The Church of the Tithes would have been even more interesting, but there was only one view left of it. I deduced this from the remains of a Slavic in­scription embedded in the wall, which I cannot read because of the loss of many letters and the scrambled state of the rest; moreover, the handwriting style of the letters themselves is not of the age of Volodymyr. As for the Church of Saint Basil, built by Grand Prince Volodymyr I on the site where Perun once stood, it has now been so rebuilt that only a corner of its old walls is visible; and in order to erase its memory more quickly, it has been renamed in honor of the Three Hierarchs.

Prince Dolgorukov expressed himself even more critically in 1817: “In our days it is better to see the beautiful Kazan Cathedral on the Neva, with its splendid narthex, than Volodymyr’s Church of the Tithes near the Dnipro, which has not preserved any beauty, [and] near which pigs graze among the weeds and wild herbs.”²⁷

In an era when Kyivan archaeology had not even begun yet, churches really were almost the only “antiquities” available for contemplation. The disappoint­ment of Russian travelers by their appearance was understandable: if Kyiv was the old capital of Rus', its antiquity was intuitively expected to resemble that of the old Great Russian cities - Novgorod, Moscow, and Vladimir. In Kyiv, all the main buildings were rebuilt in a style that would later be called “Ukrainian Baroque.” This style clearly did not fit in with the image of “Russian” history and “Byzantine” Kyivan Rus'. This sometimes led to curious conclusions. Glagolev, reflecting in 1823 on what Kyivan churches looked like, would try to “antiquate” them in a fantastical way. This architectural style, he would assert, was neither Gothic nor Byzantine, but probably an imitation of the taste of the Indian pago­das, to which it bore a striking resemblance. It was desirable that archaeologists determine its origin more precisely.²⁸

If the churches did not disappoint, the appearance of modern Kyiv, which for some reason was also expected to present the appropriate age-related grace and nobility, was disappointing. The same Sbitnev, who had left inspired lines about his anticipation of visiting Kyiv in 1832, wrote:

For all that, I must admit that the interior of Kyiv disappointed me. A lot of dilapidated, half-ruined huts in Pechersk, Khreshchatyk and Old Kyiv and crowds of Jews disfigure the city somewhat. If you take away from it the magnificent cathedrals and monasteries, buildings in the fortress, gov­ernment agencies, high schools, and a score of private houses, Kyiv becomes an insignificant city... Could I have ever thought that this populous city, visited by the inhabitants of almost all of Russia, standing on such a rich, navigable river, existing for almost fifteen centuries, and being for a long time the capital of the grand princes, had made so little progress in internal improvement?²⁹

The reason was ever the same familiar Kyiv problems - Tatars and Poles: “The reason for Kyiv's slow march to prosperity, to which it has a full and deserved right, I believe, is the frequent destruction by the Tatars, internecine battles of the princes, and especially the oppression of Poland, under whose rule it has long suffered.”³⁰

Seven years before Sbitnev, Kyiv was visited by Aleksandr Griboedov. In letters from Kyiv, he admired its “antiquities,” imagined historical scenes, but, as he him­self confessed, he “barely noticed the present age”:

Here I lived with the dead: the Volodymyrs and Iziaslavs completely captured my imagination; behind them I barely noticed the present age... The scenery is magnificent; from the high bank of the Dnipro, the views change at every step; add to this the sanctity of the ruins, the gloom of the caves. How reverently you enter the darkness of the Cave Monastery or the Saint Sophia Cathedral, and the sense of spaciousness your soul experiences when you come out into the white light: the greenery, the poplars and vineyards, which we do not have!³¹

In Kyiv, as Prince Dolgorukov rightly noted, “only imagination gives value to both the place and the church.” Imagination allowed Griboedov to talk about the “sanctity of the ruins,” which, of course, he could not see. The same rich imagi­nation led von Gun in 1806 to write: “Every step here is reminiscent of remote antiquity and every glance rests upon countless treasures. Here you think of hav­ing been transported to Italy, into the middle of Rome.”³²

If anything, travelers “anticipated” the antiquities of Kyiv; they were ready to emotionally experience touching them, to “recognize” them in any feature of the old city, even if the visible and tangible remains could not be found.³³ This state of mind of antiquities seekers was perfectly conveyed by Count Nikolai Rumi­antsev’s letter after his first visit to the ancient capital of Rus':

Every state glories more in its antiquities, the more strongly they show the spirit of the people and the greatness of its feeling. Our blessed Fatherland so far excels all known peoples in spirit and in feelings, that it can glory in and be proud of its antiquities the more particularly. I myself experienced recently in Kyiv, the holy city of Olga and Vladimir, how pleasant it is to the heart of a son of the Fatherland to see its celebrated antiquities, treading in the tracks where the great once walked; how pleasant it is even to the most distant descendant to convey himself in thought to their centuries, hidden in the mists of time, bringing to life in his memory their deathless existence.³⁴

Travelers saw ruins only in their imagination, and their absence was compen­sated by special attention to nature and the landscape, descriptions of which for the most part fill the pages of their journals. If the city, the appearance of its churches, and the language of its inhabitants have changed, then at least nature has remained immutable and witnessed the beginning of history. The same mountains, the same river, were in Kyiv at the time when the Apostle Andrew came there; they saw the arrival of the first Varangian princes, the baptism of the Kyivans in the Pochaina River, the construction of a great city by Iaroslav, and, in a certain sense, it was the natural landscape of Kyiv that became a historical monument, proof that history happened.

Rumiantsev belonged to those people of the turn of the century who in their youth (1770s) made their own “Grand Tour.” In St Petersburg, the Rumiantsev brothers met Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (the same person to whom Catherine complained about the lack of antiquities in Kyiv). Grimm took the trouble to take the brothers to Holland to study at Leiden University. From there, the Rumiantsevs went to Paris, and from France - via Switzerland (where they met Voltaire in Geneva) - to Italy.³⁵ It can even be assumed that the “Society of the History and Antiquities of Russia,” sponsored by the count, was modeled on the famous “Society of Dilettanti.” Rumiantsev, therefore, had something to com­pare antiquities with. He saw a “real” reference model and tried to find something similar in Kyiv. The count initiated and paid for large geographical expeditions (such as the one on the eloquently named brig Riurik under the command of Captain Otto von Kotzebue, 1815-18), as well as a series of smaller “archaeological” expeditions (led by Pavel Stroev and Konstantin Kalaidovich). In the last years of his life, despite his poor health, Rumiantsev himself made a number of trips to see antiquities (to the Caucasus and Crimea, 1823; Novgorod, Moscow, and Kyiv; the Resurrection Monastery, Volok, Gorodishche, Staritsa, and Rzhev, 1822). In addition, the count was one of the biggest collectors of historical rarities, which later formed the basis of the Rumiantsev Museum.

Starting from 1815, Rumiantsev corresponded with perhaps the only expert in Kyiv antiquities of the time, Berlyns'kyi.³⁶ The Kyiv antiquarian sent the count descriptions of documents and materials pertaining to the history of Kyiv “mainly [...] during the period of Polish rule,” but Rumiantsev was interested in some­thing completely different: he asked Berlyns'kyi “to find something that relates to the times of primeval Kyiv.” In response to the plan of Kyiv sent him by Berlyn­s'kyi with “an interesting interpretation of those places, sites, and religious build­ings mentioned in our ancient chronicle,” the count outlined a whole program of archaeological research: “Do not lose sight of the fact that the most primitive times in our histories are those that I would like to see explained and supple­mented; please look for the tombstone inscriptions around and inside the ruins of the most ancient destroyed and forgotten churches and monasteries, whose memory you restore so successfully in your note.”

Rumiantsev hoped to find ancient manuscripts: perhaps the parchment chron­icle of Nestor (for, indeed, where else could it be preserved in its original state, if not in Kyiv?), ancient letters, originals of the Kyivan Cave Patericon, possibly Russkaia Pravda (Rus’ Law), old lists of metropolitans, synodiks, for example, of the Kytaivs'ka Pustyn (Monastery), where they prayed for their founder, Andrei Bogoliubskii.³⁷ This correspondence demonstrates not only the then rather su­perficial knowledge of Kyiv's history, but, mainly, how high the expectations of Russian antiquarians were of Kyiv's antiquities. Like every European, Rumiantsev believed that the natives had simply forgotten their history. Their past was much better known to specialists in the capitals, and all that was needed was to push the lazy aborigines to energetic work, and rarities of extraordinary antiquity would be found.

Exaggerated expectations sooner or later turn into disappointment. After an­other trip to Kyiv in 1821, Rumiantsev wrote to Aleksei Malinovskii about his unpleasant impressions of what he saw: “My heart broke in Kyiv when I saw the neglect of our antiquities that prevails there, no one is concerned about them, and everyone practically runs away from talking about them, afraid to show not only their unconcern but also that they know little of the history of our olden times.”³⁸

After the 1820s, ancient ruins began to reappear in Kyiv, but as a result of de­liberate attempts to find them. The new discipline of archaeology became indis­pensable, that is, the study of ancient remains in the Western manner - through excavations. In 1822 Evgenii (Bolkhovitinov), a scholar, historian, and antiquar­ian, became the metropolitan of Kyiv. A circle of antiquities lovers soon formed around him, and in 1823 they made the first attempt at archaeological excavations in Kyiv - the “digging up” of the Church of the Tithes.³⁹ The site was not chosen by chance. In addition to the fact that the Church of the Tithes was a kind of monument to the baptism of Rus', at this very time discussions were under way regarding its location. Kyiv's antiquities lovers knew that Metropolitan Petro Mohyla had found the relics of Saint Volodymyr there (the head of the prince was one of the important objects of worship at the Dormition Cathedral of the Cave Monastery). The excavations were expected not only to discover defini­tively and definitely the site and plan of the old church, but also to find new relics of the saintly prince. In 1824 both tasks were accomplished. The plan of the church was found (and it proved that in antiquity the church was much larger than the dimensions visible in the nineteenth century, which obviated the problem of location), also found was a sarcophagus with the remains of a man, which was declared to be Volodymyr's sarcophagus, and another, which was be­lieved to be the “grave” of Iziaslav.⁴⁰

One of the indefatigable participants in the excavation of the Church of the Tithes was Kindrat Lokhvyts'kyi, a “fifth-grade official,” as he called himself, a lover of antiquities, an eccentric, and a mystic. He would become the most ener­getic archaeologist of Kyiv of the next decade. Like all the “first” archaeologists of a particular site, Lokhvyts'kyi was naively convinced that he would find material remains of all the events described in written monuments underground. History, the early archaeologists were confident, lay as if frozen under the ground. Once the layer of earth was removed, the artifacts would match the written history to the very last detail. Lokhvyts'kyi, in fact, found everything he looked for: he found the remnants of the cross of Saint Andrew, the grave of Prince Dyr, the first Chris­tian Church of Saint Elijah, the remains of the city gate of the time of Princess Olha, the Church of Saint Irene, and he excavated the Golden Gate. Most of his finds were fictitious - flights of imagination, a naive attempt to connect some­thing found underground with the chronicle reports. But in at least two cases - the excavations of Saint Irene's Church (1833) and the Golden Gate (1832-33) - Lokhvyts'kyi “guessed” correctly.⁴¹ Excavations from under the later rubble of the Golden Gate were particularly successful. It so happened that the tsar (who was generally interested in Kyiv and its antiquities) was in Kyiv at the time. Tsar Nicholas I “passed between the open walls” of the gate, and this probably made an impression on him: Lokhvyts'kyi was later awarded a state scholarship, as well as a grant for further excavations.⁴²

The excavations in Kyiv in the 1820s and 1830s, despite all their naivety and am­ateurism, and despite the fact that Lokhvyts'kyi, for example, destroyed more than he researched, had one important consequence: they showed that there were ruins of an ancient city under the ground, and that these ruins could be “revealed” and exposed to the eyes of the interested.

Archaeology in the first decades of the nineteenth century included many dif­ferent things. One of its important aspects was to establish the ancient topography of the city and then map it. At the end of the eighteenth century, this was done by the Kyiv native Maksym Berlyns'kyi, and by the beginning of the nineteenth century, special expeditions from St Petersburg were undertaken for the same purpose (Borozdin's and Ermolaev's). Creating “historical plans” and locating antiquities on the map of a modern city became a favorite occupation. Scholars searched for old and forgotten names of localities, rivers, and landmarks known to them from the chronicles and documents. They identified certain localities with them, sometimes even renaming them so as to restore the “more correct” historical names. Specially equipped artists made sketches of any remnants of antiquities - mosaics, frescoes, and archaeological curiosities. Architects drew plans of churches, their cross sections, and sometimes even reconstructions of an ancient type. All this created a body of documentation, which in its totality “revived” ancient history, made it “visible,” tactile.

There were enough old methods, as well. With the arrival in Kyiv of Mykhailo Maksymovych, the city became the scene of constant “archaeological pilgrimages.” Maksymovych led his scholarly acquaintances, visiting celebrities, and writers on tours of the city, pointing out to them with the confidence of an expert the in­visible places of great events of antiquity. He identified for them historical land­marks, names of mountains mentioned in the chronicles, and so forth. The main thing retained in the memory of such tourists (and among them were Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Pogodin, Vasilii Zhukovskii with the crown prince, and Aleksandr Turgenev) was the image of Kyiv's untouched, almost wild nature. Admiring na­ture replaced the contemplation of ruins and fully satisfied the poetically disposed personalities’ sense of history. Ironically, the place that made an impression on the seekers of Kyiv antiquities was the hill on which Saint Andrew’s Church stood. As Maksymovych recalled, it was here that Zhukovskii peered into the distance of the Dnipro, imagining “Olha’s city” Vyshhorod in the haze, and Gogol - looking in the opposite direction - visualized the “ancient” sites of Kozhemiaky and Ku- driavets.⁴³ The experience of the past near the newly built church was particularly acute and intense: the space that opened from Saint Andrew’s Hill provided a unique opportunity to locate historical mirages at will.

While the emotions experienced by the travelers were genuine, the landscape that evoked them could hardly be called authentic or ancient. It had changed significantly over the centuries. We know, for example, that two of the central Kyiv hills - Zamkova and Uzdykhalnytsia - were repeatedly “dug up” in the six­teenth and seventeenth centuries: their level was lowered so that the interior of the existing castle could not be viewed from the surrounding hills. The riverbed of the Dnipro, separated in ancient times from the city by islands, as a result of works carried out at the beginning of the eighteenth century, moved directly to the foot of the Kyiv hills and virtually destroyed the ancient Pochaina River, on which, in fact, Kyiv stood at the time of the chronicle.

The result of the miniature Kyiv pilgrimages - religious, antiquarian, land­scape-viewing - was an understanding of history. Old Rus' Kyiv, like Atlantis, began to rise from the ground, eclipsing for many an unsightly, poor, and disor­dered Polish-Jewish town on the outskirts of the empire, with its churches “in the new style.”

The discovery of Kyiv’s antiquities obviously led to a new perception of the city and its history. From the “Russian Jerusalem,” Kyiv gradually acquired the repu­tation of the “Slavic Pompeii” (although the metaphor itself would not be artic­ulated until the beginning of the next century).

Whose history, however, were the Kyiv antiquarians reviving from oblivion? For many of them, this question did not even exist. They “lived” completely in the ancient past, with little interest in its ideological connection with modernity. Russian travelers, of course, were uncovering their own Russian history in the city. Contemporary Kyiv - part of Little Russia - carried no weight, everyone tried to ignore it. After all, old Kyiv had nothing in common with Little Russian history. So, it seems, thought those who wrote the history of Ukrainians. For them, the Kyiv ruins were also the remnants of the historical existence of another people, something like the Greek cities of the Black Sea region or the Scythian mounds of the Ukrainian steppe. However, for people like Maksymovych, “local patriots,” the combination of Kyivan Rus' antiquities with Little Russian territory suggested some connection between them. Little Russia rested on the remains of ancient Rus'. Churches in the Ukrainian Baroque style were rebuilt old Rus' churches. Did not all this mean that the Little Russians “came from” Kyivan Rus'? Did this not mean that Russian and Little Russian history have a common be­ginning and a long joint continuation? Did this not mean, finally, that the history of Ukrainians is inextricably linked with the history of the Great Russians?

Two “discoveries” of the beginning of the nineteenth century - the discovery of Little Russia and Kyiv - would raise a number of questions for consideration in Russian, and not long after that, Ukrainian, thought about the origins, dura­tion, and relationship of the two histories.

Translated from the Russian by Marta Skorupsky

NOTES

Originally published as Aleksei Tolochko, “Ot ‘rossiiskogo Ierusalima' k ‘slavianskim Pompeiam,'” in Aleksei Tolochko, Kievskaia Rus’ i Malorossiia v XIX veke (Kyiv, 2012), 151-76. Copyright 2012 by Laurus Press and Oleksii Tolochko. Translated and reprinted with permission.

1 Zapiski Filippa Filippoviicha Vigelia, part 1 (Moscow, 1891), 36.

2 Opysy Kharkivs ’koho namisnytstva kintsia XVIII stolittia (Kyiv, 1991), 18. An­drei Glagolev wrote about this in 1823: “Devoutness and piety, in which the Russian people are rich and strong, belong to its distinctive features. A mil­lennium has passed, yet despite Batu Khan's and Polish captivity, it did not forget its Jerusalem, which shone the light of revelation in Russia.” Zapiski russkogo puteshestvennika A. Glagoleva s 1823 po 1827god (St Petersburg, 1837), 53.

3 Andrei Glagolev, Zapiski russkogo puteshestvennika s 1823 po 1827 god, part 1, Rossiia, Avstriia (St Petersburg, 1837), 79-80.

4 Ivan Dolgorukov, Slavny bubny za goramy ili puteshestvie moe koe-kuda 1810 goda (Moscow, 1870), 302.

5 Pis’ma iz Malorossii, pisannye Alekseem Levshinym (Kharkiv, 1816), 85-6.

6 “Zapiski Ivana Matveevicha Sbitneva,” Kievskaia starina 2 (1887): 305.

7 In addition, Nemtsevich found something like a museum in Mykolaiv, con­taining sculptures found in Panticapaeum, and the officer who accompanied him claimed that he had taken part in excavations there and even allegedly had opened the tomb of King Mithridates. Juliana Ursyna Niemcewicza Podroze historyczne po ziemiach polskich miedzy rokiem 1811 a 1828 odbyte

(St Petersburg, 1858), 327.

8 Vladimir Ikonnikov, Kiev v 1654-1855 gg. (Kyiv, 1904), 127 (a separate reprint from Kievskaia starina).

9 Russkii arkhiv 3 (Moscow, 1878): 131.

10 Russkaia starina 8 (November 1873): 671-2.

11 Zapiski grafa Segiura o prebyvanii ego v Rossii v tsarstvovanie Ekateriny II (1785-1789) (St Petersburg, 1865), 153.

12 Ibid.

13 D. Sapozhnikov, “K istorii Zolotykh vorot,” Kievskaia starina 5 (1886): 163-8.

14 “Opisanie Kieva sostavlennoe Kievskoi gubernskoi kantseliariei v 1760 g.,” in A. Andrievskii, Istoricheskie materialy iz arkhiva Kievskogo gubernskogo pravleniia, vol. 3 (Kyiv, 1888), 140.

15 “Puteshestvie vysokopreosviashchenogo Platona, mitropolita moskovskogo, v Kiev i po drugim rossiiskim gorodam v 1804 g.,” in Ivan Snegirev, Zhizn- moskovskogo mitropolita Platona, 4th ed., part 1 (Moscow, 1890), 132.

16 Ibid.

17 By the way, this gate was also dismantled in 1799. But it was confused with the old gate. Prince Dolgorukov, for example, was told that “the gate, the so- called Golden Gate, was recently torn down, just as in Vladimir, so that the material could be put to better use in another place.” Ivan Dolgorukov, Slavny bubny za goramy iliputeshestvie moe koe-kuda 1810 goda (Moscow, 1870), 260.

18 The Metropolitan doubted this: “As things stand now, it is almost impossible to immerse oneself here, unless it was larger then, or because water from the font in this place was sprinkled; however, this ancient tradition cannot be ignored. “Puteshestvie vysokopreosviashchenogo Platona,” 138.

19 Ibid., 134-5.

20 Ibid., 135.

21 Ibid., 136.

22 Ibid., 135.

23 “They say that Askold's Grave was on this very spot: there are no living and reliable signs, only a legend or a popular folktale. But who knows the truth? It is true that Askold left his bones in Kyiv, but permit me to doubt whether it was here or where Saint Nicholas's Monastery stands, or maybe half a verst higher or lower.” Dolgorukov, Slavny bubny za goramy, 282.

24 Ibid., 283.

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., 262.

27 “Puteshestvie v Kiev v 1817 godu, soch. kn. Ivana Mikhailovicha Dolgorukogo,” Chteniia v Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei Rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom univer- sitete 2 (1870), 126.

28 Glagolev, Zapiski russkogo puteshestvennika, 84.

29 “Zapiski Ivana Matveevicha Sbitneva,” 305-6.

30 Ibid., 306.

Pis mo V.F. Odoevskomy io iiunia 1825 g. in A.S. Griboedov, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1988), 515.

Poverkhnostnye zamechania po doroge ot Moskvy do Malorossii O. fon Guna, v trekh chastiakh (Moscow, 1806), 102.

In 1817, Prince Dolgorukov expressed his attitude to Kyiv's antiquities in the following words: “in Kyiv, every step is marked by a memorable antiquity, every step can deliver a page to the chronicler, but the remoteness of past centuries, when Kyiv was famous for its glory, likens all the legends about it to a fabulous tale.” “Puteshestvie v Kiev v 1817 godu,” 126.

D. Saunders, The Ukrainian Impact on Russian Culture. 1750-1850 (Edmonton, 1985), 205.

V.S. Ikonnikov, Opyt russkoi istoriografii, vol. 1, bk. 1 (Kyiv, 1891), 136. Fragments of the correspondents were published by Ikonnikov, see his Opyt russkoi istoriografii, vol. 1, bk. 1, 185-91.

Another misunderstanding, of course. A forged letter from the end of the sixteenth century, allegedly issued by Andrei lur'evich to the Kyivan Cave Monastery, claimed that its name was “Kytai” (see laroslav Zatiliuk, “Hramota Andriia Boholiubs'koho Kyievo-Perchers'komu monastyriu,” Ruthenica 7 [2009]: 215-35). This later gave rise to the belief that the Ky- ta'ivs 'ka Pustyn belonging to the Cave Monastery was founded by the prince. “Perepiska gosudarstvennogo kantslera grafa N.P. Rumiantseva s moskov- skimi uchenymi,” Chteniia v Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei Rossiiskikh 1 (Moscow, 1882): 191-2.

Tetiana Anan'eva, “Desiatynna tserkva: kolo vytokiv arkheolohichnykh doslidzhen' (1820-1830-ti rr.), in Tserkva Bohorodytsi Desiatynna v Kyievi. Do 1000-littia osviachennia (Kyiv, 1996), 15-23.

Ibid., 20-1.

However, in the case of the foundations and remnants of the walls of the church from the Old Rus' period excavated by Lokhvyts'kyi, which he pro­claimed to have been Saint Irene's Church, discussions are still ongoing. On Lokhvyts'kyi's excavations see: T. Anan'eva, “‘Zhurnaly i dela' Kondrata Lokhvytskogo: Testis classicus v mifologicheskom prostranstve,” in Kievskii al’bom 3 (Kyiv, 2004), 88-9.

M.A. Maksimovich, Pis 'ma o Kieve (Moscow, 1869), 56-8.