Kievan Culture

Any discussion of the culture of a medieval society concentrates first and foremost on its religious beliefs and institutions. In the case of Kievan Rus’ we have two distinct religious, and therefore cultural, epochs to consider.

With the acceptance of Christianity, Kievan Rus’ was introduced to a new, sophisticated, and highly structured religion. In 1037, upon the arrival from Constantinople of the first in a long line of Greek metropolitans (only two non-Greeks would hold the office throughout the entire Kievan period), a metropolitanal diocese was established.

The cultural impact of the institutions of the church on Kievan Rus’ was overwhelming. The construction of just one cathedral, the famous St Sophia in Kiev, illustrates graphically how widespread the church’s influence was on the arts. Built in 1037 during the reign of Iaroslav the Wise, this splendid stone edifice, which was constructed by Greek artisans and modeled on the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, had five apses, five naves, and thirteen cupolas. Marble and alabaster columns supported a sumptuously decorated interior. For Kievans who were accustomed to modest wooden structures, this house of the Christian God must have been dazzling. And this was exactly the effect that the cathedral was meant to achieve, for the Greek church realized that the impact of great art on the senses often kindled religious reverence more effectively than did the influence of theology on the mind. To this end, the church supported the introduction of various arts and crafts. For example, the interior of St Sophia was embellished with numerous colorful mosaics and frescoes which recreated the human form with awe-inspiring realism.

Christianity’s impact on how the populace of Rus’ expressed itself intellectually was equally decisive. A written language, based on an alphabet originally devised by Sts Cyril and Methodius, Greek missionaries to the Slavs, came into use soon after 988. Unlike Rome with its insistence on the use of Latin in liturgical matters, Constantinople acquiesced in the use of native languages among its converts. Thus, Church Slavonic, a literary language based on a south-Slavic dialect and easily understood by all East Slavs, was utilized in church services and other religious observances. Gradually, it became the vehicle for both religious and secular literary expression of an increasing richness and variety.

As might be expected, most of the earliest examples of this written literature were associated with the Christian religion. Thus, excerpts from the Old and New Testaments, hymns, sermons, and lives of saints abounded. Some of the more notable of these were the Paterikon, a compendium of the lives of saints prepared by the monks of the Kievan Cave Monastery (Kievo Pecherska Lavra); the sermons and hymns of St Cyril of Turiv; and the writings of Ilarion, the metropolitan of Kiev in the mid 11th century, probably the most outstanding intellectual of Kievan Rus’. In his famous work, ‘On Law and Grace,” a panegyric on Volodymyr the Great that was read in the presence of Iaroslav the Wise in 1050, Ilarion skillfully counterpoised Christianity against paganism and described the Christianization of Rus’.

While Greek influence predominated in religious writing, it was less evident in the chronicles. Written for the most part by monks and imbued with a Christian worldview, the early Kievan chronicles were characterized by realism and richness of detail. They noted both the major issues of the time -princely conflicts and the struggle against the nomads – as well as details of specific events. The most important of these works was the “Chronicle of Bygone Years” as it has come to be known in scholarship. Associated with the names of two Kievan monks, Nestor and Sylvester, it was composed in 1111. Literary works were also produced by members of the secular elite. Despite his constant involvement in political affairs, Prince Volodymyr Monomakh wrote his moving and philosophical “Testament.” And there is reason to believe that the anonymous author of the most magnificent poetical work of the Kievan period, “The Tale of the Host of Ihor” (1185–87), belonged to courtly circles. While recounting the story of a disastrous campaign by a minor prince against the nomads, the author infused it with a passionate appeal to all feuding princes of Rus’ to unite for the common good. Using rhythmic verse, vivid imagery, rich language, and a strikingly intimate treatment of nature, the author created a moving literary masterpiece.

But written works, no matter how evocative, were inaccessible to Kiev’s illiterate masses. For them, oral literature – songs, proverbs, riddles, fairy tales, and especially oral epics or biliny - served as the repository of folk wisdom and creativity. Passed on orally from generation to generation, the biliny recounted the exploits of such popular heroes as the jovial peasant’s son Ilia Muromets, a kind of Slavic Paul Bunyan; the shrewd priest’s son Alosha Popovych; and the loyal nobleman’s son Dobrynia Mykytych – all members of Prince Volodymyr’s mythical retinue. Much like the Knights of King Arthur’s Round Table, these East Slavic paladins sallied forth from Volodymyr’s court to combat the forces of evil.

There are divided opinions among scholars as to the extent and level of formal education in Kievan Rus’. Undoubtedly members of the elite were exposed to learning. The chronicles inform us that in 988 Volodymyr ordered boyar children to be given an education; and his son Iaroslav established a school in Novgorod for 300 wellborn boys. Again, in Kiev the hub of this activity was St Sophia. By 1037, the cathedral housed on its premises a school and a library. The nearby Kievan Cave Monastery also had a library and some of its monks were renowned for their learning, which at that time meant primarily acquiring mastery of religious texts. Respect for learning was also evident among the princes. Iaroslav the Wise was noted for his love of books; his son Vsevolod is believed to have mastered five languages; and his daughter Anna was literate, an unusual attainment for a woman at the time and one that set her apart from most French women of the court when she became queen of France. But the question of how widespread education was among the masses is more difficult to resolve. The discovery in Novgorod of alphabets written on birch bark for use by schoolboys or of graffitti written on the walls of St Sophia is viewed by some scholars as an indication that the lower classes also had access to education. However, many other specialists believe that, by and large, education in general and familiarity with Byzantine-Christian culture in particular was the domain of the secular and ecclesiastical elites and thus remained out of reach for the masses.

Both Ukrainian and Russian historians treat Kievan Rus’ as an integral part of their respective national histories. As might be expected, the question of who has the greater right to claim its heritage often arises. Traditional Russian historians, especially those influenced by the 19th-century Juridical School, argued that because Russians were the only East Slavs to create a state in modern times (the evolution of statehood was viewed by them as the pinnacle of the historical process), the Muscovite-Russian state’s link with the earliest East Slavic state was the most consistent and significant. By implication, because Ukrainians and Belorussians had no modern state of their own, their histories had no institutional bonds with the Kievan period. The influential 19th-century Russian historian Mikhail Pogodin went even further and claimed that Russian ties with Kiev were not only institutional, but also ethnic.³ According to his theory, after the Mongol destruction of Kiev in 1240, much of the surviving populace migrated from the south to the northeast, the heartland of modern Russia. Although this theory has long since been discredited, it still enjoys support among many Russian and non-Russian historians.

As the national consciousness of Ukrainians grew in the 19th century, so too did their resentment of Russian monopolization of the “glory that was Kiev.” The most forceful argument against the “traditional scheme of Russian history” was advanced in 1906 by Hrushevsky, Ukraine’s most eminent historian.⁴ Thoroughgoing populist that he was, Hrushevsky questioned the study of history primarily in terms of the state-building process. For him, the accumulated experience of an ethnically related people living on its ancestral lands was the focal point of history. He assumed, and several recent Soviet anthropological studies support his contention, that essentially the same ethnic stock occupied much of Ukraine from the time of the Antes of the 6th century to the 20th century. If people did leave central Ukraine as a result of Mongol attacks – and Hrushevsky downplayed the extent of the devastation and migrations – they returned when relative calm was restored. According to Hrushevsky, who was obviously not a Normanist, Ukrainians are the most direct descendants of the Polianians who played the major role in the development of Kiev and, therefore, this experience looms largest in Ukrainian history.

In Hrushevsky’s view, to assign the Kievan period a central place in the Russian past thus not only dilutes the uniqueness of the Poliano-Ukrainian achievement, but also burdens Russian history with an artificial or exaggerated appendage that obstructs the exploration of its true origins. If one does choose to use the state as a vehicle by which the Kievan heritage was passed on to future generations, Hrushevsky argued that it was the principalities of Galicia and Volhynia and, later, the Duchy of Lithuania (with its strong Ukrainian and Belorussian elements) that preserved more of this heritage than did the distant northeastern principalities of Rostov, Suzdal, Vladimir, Tver, and Moscow. What then is the relationship of Russian history to the Kievan period in Hrushevsky’s opinion? Just as Gaul, once a Roman province and now modern-day France, borrowed much of its sociopolitical organization, laws, and culture from Rome, so too did Moscow with regard to Kiev. But Moscow was not a continuation, or a second stage in the historical process begun in Kiev. Despite its numerous Kievan borrowings, Moscow’s roots, according to Hrushevsky, were embedded in the geographical, political, and ethnic conditions peculiar to the northeast.

Soviet historians take what appears to be a compromise position on the issue of the Kievan legacy. They argue that Kiev was the creation of all three East Slavic peoples – the Ukrainians, Russians, and Belorussians. More precisely, the common ancestors of all three nations – the so-called ancient Rus’ people (drevnerusskii narod) – constituted the population of Kievan Rus’.⁵ Soviet scholars continually emphasize how uniform and homogeneous the culture, language, customs, economies, and politics of the “ancient Russians” were. By stressing this point, they hope to make it difficult for “bourgeois nationalist historians” not only to claim a greater share of the Kievan heritage for one or another nation, but even to argue that any regional variations existed in the huge territory of Rus’. This emphasis on the ethnic and cultural uniformity of Kievan Rus’ leaves one with the impression that the “ancient Rus’” are a projection onto the past of the homogeneous Soviet nation that is planned for the future.

The view of Soviet historians, which is gradually supplanting the views of traditional Russian historiography on the question, is that because the three East Slavic nations evolved only after the decline of Kiev, there is no point in discussing which of them has the primary claim to its heritage. In explaining why the East Slavs broke up into three separate nations, the major reasons given are the impact of the Mongol invasion and the absorption of the Ukrainians and Belorussians into the Polish-Lithuanian state. This is a rather striking departure from the usual Marxist stress on internal socioeconomic factors to explain the development of nations. Moreover, it implies that were it not for these external factors, no differentiation would have occurred among the “ancient Russians.” If anything, the debate over the Kievan heritage only proves once more how closely political, ideological, and scholarly issues are interwoven in the historiography of the Kievan period.