Socioeconomic and Cultural Developments

The political history of Kievan Rus’ outlined in the last two chapters emphasized as much the disunity as the unity of the realm. During its first three stages of development, the first (the 87os-g72) witnessed the slow growth of the realm out­ward from the Kiev and Novgorod regions, while the third (1132-1240) witnessed the steady breakdown of any effective political authority over Kievan Rus’ as a whole.

The era of consolidation was clearly an exception. It could therefore be argued that most of Kievan Rus’ history during its first three stages, and certainly during its fourth stage (1240-1349), is not that of a unified realm or state. Rather, it is the history of several individual lands or principalities, each with its own ruler and each vying for greater independence vis-à-vis its neighbors and vis-à-vis the so-called senior ruler, the grand prince in Kiev. Aside from the general absence of political unity, Kievan Rus’ encompassed a vast territory, with regions that differed greatly in geography and in the language of the inhabitants. Tribal distinctions going back to the era of the dispersion of the Slavic peoples also persisted into the Kievan era. All these factors have prompted certain historians and linguists to see already in the Kievan Rus’ period of eastern European history a clear indica­tion of territorial differentiation that should be considered as the first stage in the subsequent distinct evolution of the Ukrainian, Belarusan, and Russian peoples.

Notwithstanding certain periods of political unity, therefore, the modern-day observer might legitimately ask why writers continue to discuss the historical expe­rience of Kievan Rus’ as a whole instead of tracing the histories of each of its com­ponent parts.

Demography and social structure

It is estimated that by the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries the total popula­tion of Kievan Rus’ was approximately seven to eight million people. At about the same time in western Europe, territorially much smaller Germany (the Holy Roman Empire) also had approximately eight million people, and France about fifteen million. Thus, the population density of Kievan Rus’ was very low compared with that of western Europe. On the other hand, nearly a million people lived in towns and cities. This meant that 13 percent of Rus’ inhabitants were urban dwellers, a percentage much higher than in any contemporary western European country.

Historians still debate whether it was international trade or the needs of the internal local economy that caused the rise of towns in Kievan Rus’. There is no question, however, that their numerical growth was rapid. For instance, whereas in the ninth and tenth centuries the chronicles refer to only twenty-three towns in Kievan Rus’ (thirteen of them located in Ukrainian lands), by the mid-thirteenth century there were close to 300. These numbers made an impression on outsid­ers, with the result that Scandinavian sources refer to Kievan Rus’ as the “land of towns” (Gardanki). The vast majority of these towns contained no more than 1,000 inhabitants, although a few (Chernihiv, Volodymyr, and Halych in Ukrain­ian lands; Novgorod, Vladimir-na-Kliazma, Polatsk, and Smolensk farther north) may have reached between 20,000 and 30,000 inhabitants by the early thirteenth century.

As for its social structure, the population of Kievan Rus’ was essentially divided into six strata, most of which included several subgroups. Of the six categories, three could be considered the ruling elite: the grand prince and his family; the druzhyna and boyars; and the church people. The other three, subordinate strata were the townspeople, peasants, and slaves.

It should be kept in mind that the references to these various social strata are to women as well as to men. Both customary and written law in Kievan Rus’ protected a woman’s right to property within the context of the family unit and accorded her personal protection equal to that accorded men. As a result, women not only worked alongside men as artisans and farmers, but in the absence of their hus­bands enjoyed legal rights to administer shops and fields - not to mention the leadership roles played by women in the princely social strata, who often func­tioned as regents and, in the case of Ol’ha, as grand prince in her own right.

The ruling social strata

The grand prince of Kiev and his offspring throughout the realm were originally of Scandinavian origin, as is evident in the names of the earliest rulers - Helgi (Oleh), Ingvar (Ihor), Helga (Ol’ha), Sveinald (Sviatoslav). By the late tenth century,

The Social Structure of Kievan Rus’

THE RULING SOCIAL STRATA

1 Princes (kniazi)

the grand prince and his family regional princes and their families

2 Prince's retinue (druzhyna) and boyars

3 Church people

hierarchs

clergy (priests, monks, deacons) church employees

THE SUBORDINATE SOCIAL STRATA

4 Townspeople

merchants

artisans unskilled workers

5 Peasants

freepersons (smerdy) half-free persons (zakupy).

6 Slaves (cheliad’jkholopy)

OTHER SOCIAL STRATA

7 Izgoi (persons whose social status had changed)

8 Frontier military settlers (Karakalpaks/Chorni Klobuky)

the princely strata had intermarried with notables in the local Slavic population with the result that the Varangian element was rapidly assimilated.

At the same time, the number of princes and their families increased. The increase was a result of the practice of dividing the realm among the sons and younger brothers of the grand prince, a practice that took greater hold following the reign of laroslav the Wise, when distinct dynasties were established in each of the lands or groups of lands of Kievan Rus’. The princely stratum was made up of all persons who were of royal blood. According to terminology that was to be devel­oped in the fourteenth century and applied retrospectively, this meant persons who were descendants of the semi-legendary Riuryk/Hroerkr and therefore part of the house of Riuryk - the Riurykids or the Riurykovyches.

As a result of intermarriage with members of the local Slavic elite as well as with Byzantine and, later, Polovtsian royal families, the pure Varangian element among the Rus’ princes progressively decreased. Nonetheless. Kiev’s princes retained the traditional Varangian attitude that the Rus’ realm - or, more precisely, that part of it they were able effectively to control - was their hereditary possession (votchina), to be exploited for whatever riches it might yield. It is not surprising, therefore, that the early Varangian rulers and their retainers lived apart from the rest of the population, which, like the countryside it inhabited, was perceived as an object for the exaction of tribute and for exploitation. The princes also took an active role in the economy, in regulating weights and measures, and in holding a direct or indirect monopoly over certain industries or trade. Further sources of income included fees for judicial services, customs and transit duties connected with domestic and international commerce, and sales taxes on certain products such as salt.

The next ruling stratum of Rus’ society comprised the druzhyna and boyars, who formed two distinct groups in the early centuries but became merged into one over time. The druzhyna, or prince’s retinue, was made up of the leading Var­angian warriors, who were closely connected with the Kievan realm. The Varang­ian element among the druzhyna was often renewed as a result of the practice followed by rival claimants to the Kievan throne, especially during the tenth and early eleventh centuries, of inviting soldiers from Scandinavia to participate in the interprincely conflicts. The druzhyna might also include local Slavs as well as individuals from the Magyar, Turkic, and other steppe peoples who found favor with Rus’ princes. In the second half of the eleventh century, the druzhyna began to merge with the boyars, the traditional elite of the local East Slavic population. This merger also coincided with the trend of the druzhyna to move away from the princely centers to the countryside, where they acted as administrative officials for and representatives of the ruling princes.

The boyars are described in the early sources as the luchshie liudi “better peo­ple” or muzhi narochitie, “prominent men.” They were descended from the ruling groups within the local East Slavic tribes, or were persons who by their wealth or service to the Varangian princes were recognized as among the leaders of society. With the merger of the originally Scandinavian druzhyna and the Slavic boyars in the second half of the eleventh century, the group formed a stratum of great landowners. Although the land they acquired was frequently given to them as a reward or payment for services rendered the prince, the boyars had full title to the land as personal property (votchina) and were not required to render further service to retain it.

The third ruling stratum consisted of church people. They included not only the clergy, but all those who in some way served the church or its institutions - church singers, candle extinguishers, wafer makers, physicians, and other per­sonnel in hospitals and homes for the aged or for pilgrims. The clergy proper consisted of both the black clergy (monks) and the white clergy (parish priests and deacons).

The church that was established in Kievan Rus’ after the official acceptance of Christianity at the end of the tenth century followed the Byzantine model. Initially, most of the clerical personnel at all levels was of Byzantine origin, and the heads, or metropolitans, of the Kievan church were, with few exceptions, also Byzantines. Among the Byzantine features of church organization established in Kievan Rus’ were juridical autonomy, the tradition of asylum for persons who lost their social status (the so-called izgoi), and, most important, the right of church hierarchs and monasteries to own and exploit landed property. From the outset, the bishops and some monastic communities played an important role in the economic life of towns and cities, often sharing (or challenging) princely prerogatives over the control of weights and measures or over monopolies in the production or processing of certain goods. By the twelfth century, as a result of the growth of the monastic movement and its colonizing efforts throughout the vast Kievan countryside, the church had become one of the leading landowners in Kievan Rus’. During the fourth stage of Kievan Rus’ history, under Mongol hegemony (1240-1349), the church increased its wealth even further with the approval of the Mongol rulers, who often chose cooperation with the stabilizing force of the church (whose clergy the Mongols enriched further) rather than with the potentially disruptive secular Rus’ princes.

The subordinate social strata

Below the ruling strata were the townspeople, peasants, and slaves. Each of these strata had, in turn, several subgroups. As centers of political as well as economic and religious power, the towns included members of both the ruling and the sub­ordinate strata. Among the ruling groups were the local prince and/or his repre­sentatives, boyars, church hierarchs, and rich merchants (gosti) of local Rus’ or foreign origin (Armenian, Greek, German, and Jewish in Kiev; mostly German in northern Rus’ cities).

Most of the townspeople, however, were artisans and workers of various kinds (the so-called molodshieliudi, “younger people”). There was also a smaller number of well-to-do people (zhit'i liudi) who derived their status from the ownership of artisanal enterprises and who might also be in the service of the princely court. In subsequent writings, these workers and artisans have generally been described as the middle classes. In order to protect their economic interests, they organized into guilds which frequently corresponded with certain sections or streets in the city.

To express their views on political issues, townspeople spoke out at the viche, or public town meeting. Meetings took place in the open air of the town square whenever the need arose. While the viche never became a permanent or organized body with a fixed number of members, as a political body it played a decisive role at times in the chief cities of Kievan Rus’. For instance, some say it was the viche in Kiev that invited Askol’d and Dir to rule over the city in the mid-ninth century, just as it was the viche in Kiev that called upon Volodymyr II Monomakh to become grand prince in 1113. The existence of the viche and its increasing influence dur­ing the twelfth century in the leading cities of Kiev and Novgorod has given rise to subsequent descriptions of Kievan Rus’ as a democratic society. In practice, how­ever, the viche often became the instrument of only the most powerful elements in the city, the rich merchants. Similarly, the leading urban official, the tysiats'- kyi, fluctuated between supporting the interests of the ruling authorities and sup­porting those of the urban masses. As commander of the city militia (as distinct from the troops of the prince’s retinue), the tysiatskyi was originally elected by the townspeople of each city, although eventually the holder of the post was appointed (except in Novgorod) by the local prince, usually from among the boyars.

The largest number of inhabitants in Kievan Rus’ were the peasants, who lived in the countryside and were divided into several groups differentiated by their legal status. The so-called smerdy, or rural freepersons, lived on their own land or on the land of the princes. They engaged in agriculture and cattle raising. All paid taxes to the prince. Those settled on the prince’s land were also expected to pro­vide horses for his troops and to supply men for his army in time of war. The smerdy often lived in large communal settlements.

In the pre-Varangian and early post-Varangian eras, these communal units were composed of extended families called zadruga, but by the tenth or the eleventh century the familial units had been transformed into territorial units in which the members were united by common social and economic interests. These territorial units came to be known as the verv in the southern Rus’ lands and as the mir in Novgorod and the north. Living in unprotected rural areas, the smerdy were the group who most often felt the brunt of the nomadic invasions and, perhaps even more destructive for them, the interprincely feuds. By the time of the era of disin­tegration (1132-1240), it had become common for a Rus’ prince, when attacking his rival, to destroy the rival’s livestock, grain stores, and villages and to carry off his peasants, making them slaves and settling them on his own lands or selling them to the Polovtsians. Even the most benevolent of the princes, Volodymyr II Mono­makh, was not averse to such practices. Besides the ravages of the Rus’ princes and the nomads, local boyars - themselves interested in expanding their landholdings and controlling the rural population - often took advantage of economic or other crises to gain full or partial control over the peasantry. In this way, the interprincely wars and the economic greed of the boyars combined to reduce many smerdy from the status of rural freepersons to some degree of servitude or to full slavery.

Among those whose status changed were the so-called zakupy, or half-free per­sons. They included persons, some of whom were peasants, temporarily deprived of their freedom. The reason was often indebtedness, although they could regain the status of freepersons by paying a fee. The numbers of zakupy fluctuated. They generally rose during periods of declining economic conditions, which were caused, in part, by the interprincely wars and nomadic invasions. Such periods of economic decline also coincided with efforts on the part of the local boyars to increase the profits from their own landholdings by keeping control over the pro­ductive capacity of the zakupy. Their control made it even harder for the zakupy to attain emancipation or to return to the smerd, or freeperson, category.

At the bottom of the social order were the slaves, known originally as cheliad’ and later as kholopy. They were the outright property of their owners and had no rights. Owners were not even held liable for killing slaves. A person other than the owner who killed a slave was liable only to pay the owner a monetary fee, as one would for an animal. The greatest source of slavery was the frequent conflict among boyars and princes, in which the victors often gained warriors captured in battle as well as peasants taken from the lands of the defeated belligerent. The existence of these two kinds of slave contributed to the evolution of temporary and permanent slavery. Captured warriors were considered temporary slaves, whose freedom could be obtained by political agreement. The stolen peasants became permanent slaves with no legal rights unless as individuals they were granted free­dom or somehow were able to purchase it from their owner.

Other social strata

At least two groups did not fit into any of the strata in the social order of Kievan Rus’. One of these consisted of the so-called izgoi, a heterogeneous body of peo­ple, including princes without territory, sons of priests who could neither read nor write, merchants who had gone bankrupt, and slaves who had bought their freedom. In short, the izgoi were people whose social status had changed and who therefore did not fit into the existing social order. The izgoi often found refuge on church lands.

The other group outside Kiev’s social structure were the Chorni Klobuky, or Black Caps. These were Turkic peoples from the steppes, such as the Pechenegs, Beren- dei, and Torks, who had been pushed out of their homeland by the arrival of the Polovtsians in the eleventh century. The Polovtsians, or Kipyaks, set up their own nomadic-sedentary state known as Desht-i- Qipyak (The Steppe of the Kipyaks). It was based in the region between the Donets’ and Don Rivers, from which, between the mid-eleventh and mid-thirteenth centuries, the Polovtsians were able to con­trol the Ukrainian steppe as far west as the lower Danube River and Carpathian Mountains. Despite their nomadic lifestyle, the Polovtsians established towns such as Sharukan,’ Sugrov, and Balin along the Donets’ River, from where they main­tained trade and other relations with Kievan Rus’. The Pechenegs, Berendei, and Torks, who were sworn enemies of the Polovtsians, sought refuge in the Rus’ lands. Known as the Chorni Klobuky, the refugees later formed the Karakalpak federa­tion, which remained loyal to the Rus’ princes. These “loyal Turks,” referred to in the chronicles as “our pagans” (svoipaganye), settled along the southern frontier of Kievan Rus’, in the valley of the Ros’ River, near the outpost of Torchesk. The Chorni Klobuky also had a permanent garrison stationed in Kiev, which together with their frontier forces came to play an important role in Kievan Rus’ society, often intervening in interprincely succession disputes and civil wars. The Chorni Klobuky along the southern frontier of the Kiev principality, like the politically strong boyars in Galicia-Volhynia, were exceptional phenomena, since most lands throughout Kievan Rus’ had the same social structure.

The legal system

Another integrating feature of Kievan Rus’ society was the legal system. A legal code was written down in the eleventh century, and it became the standard used by all courts throughout the realm. The result was that, through the legal system, the inhabitants of Kievan Rus’ - regardless of which principality they resided in or which prince controlled it at a given time - acquired or were able to recognize a common tradition in which there were certain recognized norms of behavior.

In this regard, the most important development was the codification known as the Ruskaia Pravda/Pravda Russkaia, or Rus’ Law, which was first compiled at laro­slav the Wise’s behest during the mid-eleventh century (the Short Version, with forty-three sections). The code was later supplemented by his successors, especially Volodymyr Monomakh, during the twelfth century (the Expanded Version). The large number of copies of the Rus ' Law that have subsequently been uncovered suggests that it was widely used and served the practical purpose of allowing judges to render decisions on the basis of commonly accepted norms. In effect, the Rus' Law was a compilation of (1) customary law preserved in the form of oral tradition that had been in use in Rus’ territory since pre-Varangian times, and (2) princely decrees (in the Expanded Version) formulated in response to specific cases that therefore became supplementary to customary law. The Rus’ Law contained pro­visions for civil law (concerning property, obligations, family) and criminal law. The most notable aspect of the criminal provisions was that punishments took the form of seizure of property, banishment, or, more often, payment of a fine. Even murder and other severe crimes (arson, organized horse thieving, robbery) were settled by monetary fines. Although the death penalty had been introduced by Volodymyr the Great, it too was soon replaced by fines.

The Rus’ Law also reflected the generally equal status accorded women in Kievan Rus’ society. The murderer of a woman, for instance, was treated in the same manner as the murderer of a man. In contrast to the practice in several other contemporary European societies, if a wife in Kievan Rus’ survived her husband, she was not assigned a legal guardian, but functioned as head of the family and determined (unless it was otherwise stated in her husband’s will) when to grant sons their patrimony. When family property was divided, the wife kept and admin­istered her own share.

The economic order

The very rise of Kievan Rus’ was directly related to the needs of international commerce. The Varangian princes, beginning with Oleh in the last decades of the ninth century, were primarily concerned with securing control over the lands immediately adjacent to the lucrative north-south trade route, the great waterway “from the Varangians to the Greeks.” With this goal in mind, Oleh’s successors continued to subdue and periodically to reassert their authority over the various East Slavic tribes along the routes that connected the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Accordingly, the importance of international trade as an integrating factor in early Kievan Rus’ seems indisputable.

As for the realm’s subsequent development, historians so far have been unable to resolve the question of whether international trade (V. Kliuchevskii) or agri­culture (B. Grekov) was the mainstay of economic life. Whereas both factors were present throughout Kievan economic evolution, their respective importance var­ied along with local and, especially, international political conditions. In a real sense, the Varangian Rus’ were the successors of the Khazars, in that they con­tinued the tradition of international commerce that linked Central Asia and the Middle East with the markets of Byzantium and Europe. Like the Khazars, the Rus’ gained control of the international trade routes, from which they derived income in the form of customs duties paid by merchants and traders. Also, like the Khazars and even the Scythians before them, the Rus’ dominated the local East Slavic and Finnic populations, from whom they exacted tribute (especially furs and hides) and, later, taxes.

The products of this international trade remained essentially the same from the time of the Scythians to that of the Khazars and the Varangian Rus’. From the lands of Kievan Rus’ came honey, wax, flax, hemp, hides, sometimes grain, and the particularly valuable furs and slaves. These were exchanged for wines, silk fab­rics, naval equipment, jewelry, glassware, and art works (especially icons, after the introduction of Christianity) from Byzantium, and for spices, precious stones, silk and satin fabrics, and metal weapons from Central Asia and the Arab Middle East. The basic pattern thus saw Kievan Rus’ as a supplier of raw materials, for which manufactured goods, especially luxury items, were received in return.

Trade routes did change, however. The so-called Saracen route along the Volga River, used by the Varangians to connect their bases in the Rostov-Suzdal’ region with the Khazar Kaganate and from there farther south across the Caspian Sea to the Middle East, by the late ninth century had been replaced in importance by the Baltic-Black Sea trade route. The goal of the new route, which passed through Kiev, was Byzantium. In good conditions, the trip by boat from Kiev to Constanti­nople took six weeks.

Beginning in the tenth century, when the Dnieper and Volga trade routes were increasingly threatened by the Pechenegs, and then in the twelfth century, when they were cut off by the Polovtsians, the international trade pattern of Kievan Rus’ shifted. Novgorod turned its attention away from the south and toward the eco­nomic sphere of the Baltic Sea, trading the products of the far northern Rus’ lands (especially furs) directly to northern and western Europe. In the south, the east-west overland route to Galicia increased in significance, especially because Kiev came to depend on Halych for the valuable medieval commodity salt (the basic preservative of food), which after the twelfth century could no longer effec­tively be brought up the Dnieper River from the Crimea. Aside from its east-west salt route, Galicia was crossed by several international trade routes that connected

The Voyage from Kiev to Constantinople

The exceedingly important political, socioeconomic, and cultural relations between Kievan Rus’ and the Byzantine Empire were made possible by the famous great waterway “from the Varangians to the Greeks,” which connected Kiev with Constantinople along the Dnieper River and Black Sea. The Byz­antine emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (reigned 913-959) left for his son and successor an invaluable “instructional manual” on how to rule - De Administrando Imperia - in which the following description of the Scandinavian- Rus’ warrior-traders and their voyages is given:

The monoxyla which come down from outer Rus’ [i.e., northern Rus’] are from Novgorod, where Sviatoslav, son of Igor, prince of Rus’, had his seat, and others from the city of Smolensk and from Teliutsa and Chernihiv and from Vyshehrad. All these come down the river Dnieper, and are collected together at the city of Kiev, also called Sambatas. Their Slav tributaries, the so-called Krivichians and the Len- zanenes and the rest of the Slavonic regions, cut the monoxyla on their mountains in time of winter, and when they have prepared them, as spring approaches, and the ice melts, they bring them to the neighboring lakes. And since these lakes debouch into the river Dnieper, they enter thence on to this same river, and come down to Kiev, and draw the ships along to be finished and sell them to the Rus’. The Rus’ buy these bottoms only, furnishing them with oars and rowlocks and other tackle from their old monoxyla, which they dismantle; and so they fit them out.

And in the month of June they move off down the river Dnieper and come to Vyty- chiv, which is a tributary city of the Rus’, and there they gather during two or three days; and when all the monoxyla are collected together, then they set out and come down the said Dnieper River. And first they come to the first barrage [rapid], called Essoupi, which means in the Rus’ and Slavonic languages: ‘Do not sleep!’; the bar­rage itself is as narrow as the width of the Polo-ground [a great stadium in Constanti­nople]; in the middle of it are rooted high rocks, which stand out like islands. Against these, then, comes the water which wells up and dashes down over the other side, with a mighty and terrific din. Therefore, the Rus’ do not venture to pass between them, but put in to the bank hard by, disembarking the men on to dry land leaving the rest of the goods on board the monoxyla; they then strip, feeling with their feet to avoid striking on a rock. This they do, some at the prow, some amidships, while oth­ers again, in the stern, punt with poles; and with all this careful procedure they pass their first barrage, edging round under the river-bank. When they have passed this barrage, they re-embark the others from the dry land and sail away, and come down to the second barrage, called in Rus’ Oulvorsi, and in Slavonic Ostrovouniprach, which means ‘the Island of the Barrage.’ This one is like the first, awkward and not to be passed through. Once again they disembark the men and convey the monoxyla past, as on the first occasion. Similarly they pass the third barrage also, called Gelan- dri, which means in Slavonic ‘Noise of the Barrage,’ and then the fourth barrage, the big one, called in Rus’ Aeifor, and in Slavonic Neasit, because the pelicans nest in the stones of the barrage. At this barrage all put into land prow foremost, and those who are deputed to keep the watch with them get out, and off they go, these men, and keep vigilant watch for the Pechenegs.

The remainder, taking up the goods which they have on board the monoxyla, con­duct the slaves in their chains past by land, six miles, until they are through the bar­rage. Then, partly dragging their monoxyla, partly portaging them on their shoulders, they convey them to the far side of the barrage; and then, putting them on the river and loading up their baggage, they embark themselves, and again sail off in them. When they come to the fifth barrage, called in Rus’ Varouforos, and in Slavonic Voul- niprach, because it forms a large lake, they again convey their monoxyla through at the edges of the river, as at the first and second barrages, and arrive at the sixth bar­rage, called in Rus’ Leanti, and in Slavonic Veroutsi, that is ‘the Boiling of the Water,’ and this too they pass similarly. And thence they sail away to the seventh barrage, called in Rus’ Stroukoun, and in Slavonic Naprezi, which means ‘Little Barrage.’ This they pass at the so-called ford of Vrar, where the Khersonites cross over from Rus’ and the Pechenegs to Kherson; which ford is as wide as the Hippodrome, and, measured upstream from the bottom as far as the rocks break surface, a bow-shot in length. It is at this point, therefore, that the Pechenegs come down and attack the Rus’.

After traversing this place, they reach the island called St Gregory, on which island they perform their sacrifices because a gigantic oak-tree stands there; and they sacrifice live cocks. Arrows, too, they peg in round about, and others bread and meat, or something of whatever each may have, as is their custom. They also throw lots regarding the cocks, whether to slaughter them, or to eat them as well, or to leave them alive. From this island onwards, the Rus’ do not fear the Pechenegs until they reach the river Selinas. So then they start off thence and sail for four days, until they reach the lake which forms the mouth of the river, on which is the island of St Aitherios. Arrived at this island, they rest themselves there for two or three days. And they re-equip their monoxyla with such tackle as is needed, sails and masts and rudders, which they bring with them. Since this lake is the mouth of this river, as has been said, and carries on down to the sea, and the island of St Aith- erios lies on the sea, they come thence to the Dniester River, and having got safely there they rest again.

But when the weather is propitious, they put to sea and come to the river called Aspros, and after resting there too in like manner, they again set out and come to the Selinas, to the so-called branch of the Danube River. And until they are past the river Selinas, the Pechenegs keep pace with them. And if it happens that the sea casts a monoxylon on shore, they all put in to land, in order to present a united opposition to the Pechenegs. But after the Selinas they fear nobody, but, entering the territory of Bulgaria, they come to the mouth of the Danube. From the Dan­ube they proceed to the Konopas, and from the Konopas to Constantia, and from Constantia to the river of Varna, and from Varna they come to the river Ditzina, all of which are Bulgarian territory. From the Ditzina they reach the district of Mesem­bria, and there at last their voyage, fraught with such travail and terror, such diffi­culty and danger, is at an end.

source: Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio, translated by R.J.H. Jenkins, 2nd rev. ed. (Washington, D.C. 1967), pp. 59-63.

Kievan Rus’ with Poland and central Europe toward the west and, across the Car­pathians, with Hungary toward the south.

International trade was generally controlled and exploited by the princes and rich merchants. But Kievan Rus’ also had a flourishing domestic commerce, one that initially served the rich urban dwellers and the ruling strata, but later attracted peasants from the countryside, who exchanged their agricultural products, cattle, and honey in the local town markets for cloth, metal implements from the local iron industries, and salt from the Crimea and, later, Galicia. The number of domes­tic handicraft industries continued to grow (scholars debate their number, as being from forty to sixty-four distinct industries), with particular emphasis on building products, military hardware, household implements, religious wares, and the arts.

The relationship between international trade and local agricultural production as the basis of the Kievan economy was directly affected by the changing interna­tional situation. In a real sense, Kievan Rus’ had become economically and politi­cally important because the traditional trade routes connecting Byzantium and Europe to Central Asia and the Orient through the eastern Mediterranean were disrupted by the rise of Islam and Arab control of the Middle East beginning in the last decades of the seventh century. In this situation, a northern route that con­nected Byzantium and the Middle and Far East with northern and western Europe was made possible by the Khazars and their successors, the Rus’.

By the twelfth century, however, Arab control over the eastern Mediterranean was ending. The main reasons for the end of Arabic hegemony were internal dis­sension and the impact of the Crusades, whose leaders in the course of the elev­enth century established a European outpost on the eastern shores of the Medi­terranean in the form of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. As a result, nearby Antioch and other eastern Mediterranean ports, with their products from the Orient and Middle East, were once again open directly to Byzantium and to western Europe. Italian merchants from Genoa, Pisa, and, especially, Venice (to whom Byzantium gave its trade monopoly in 1082) became the primary beneficiaries of the new international trading pattern. In this sense, regardless of the mid-eleventh-cen­tury Polovtsian presence on the Ukrainian steppe that disrupted trade along the Dnieper River, the Baltic-Black Sea route would have declined in importance as a source of wealth for Kievan Rus’.

It is no mere coincidence that the period of disintegration in Kievan Rus’ (1132­1240) coincided with the changing pattern of international trade. Faced with this new situation, the ruling strata in Kievan Rus’, in particular the boyars, attempted to derive new wealth by controlling larger and larger tracts of agricultural land, the products of which could be sold in the cities and traded for whatever practical and luxury items might be manufactured in the growing domestic industries of Kievan Rus’, or might still be imported, especially from central Europe via Galicia. This desire for more land had two effects: (1) a struggle between the boyars and the princes that contributed to general instability and the enslavement of free peasants (smerdy), and (2) a slow but inevitable transformation of the economy of Kievan Rus’ from one which depended primarily on international trade to one which was based more and more on agriculture.

Byzantine cultural influences

The third and perhaps most influential of the integrating factors in Kievan Rus’ was culture. And when speaking of culture it is essential to recall the role of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire. In a real sense, Kievan Rus’ was the cultural child of Byzantium. For the Varangian and East Slavic Rus’, as for the many other sedentary and nomadic civilizations in the Balkans and north of the Black Sea, Byzantium was a magnet attracting all those who hoped to capture the imperial capital, New Rome - Constantinople, or to trade with it and live within its culture and economic orbit.

During its more than a thousand years of existence from the fourth to the mid-fif­teenth century, the political fortunes of the Byzantine Empire changed many times. After a profound internal crisis (the iconoclast controversy) and the external threat posed by the Islamic Arabs in the east and the First Bulgarian Empire in the Balkans during the eighth and first half of the ninth centuries, the empire’s strength was restored, and it entered a new period of revival and prosperity during the second half of the ninth century. The period of revival lasted for almost two centuries (843­1025) and has come to be known as Byzantium’s golden age. The empire’s territori­al extent was stabilized in Asia Minor and in the Balkans south of the Danube River, and its influence was renewed over the southern Italian Peninsula in the west and the Crimea in the northeast. Trade, commerce, and learning flourished to restore the Byzantine Empire as the dominant power in Europe. It was precisely during this golden age that Kievan Rus’ came into existence and was drawn into the Byzantine sphere or commonwealth. Having developed within Byzantium’s cultural orbit, the religion, literature, architecture, and art of Kievan Rus’ were all originally inspired by and often directly based on Greco-Byzantine models.

Acceptance into the Byzantine Commonwealth began with the adoption of the empire’s official ideology, Christianity in its Eastern, Greco-Byzantine form. At the beginning of Byzantium’s golden age, the empire was able to draw not only the Rus’ but also many other Slavic peoples into its Christian fold. Its success was pri­marily a result of the missionary work between the 860s and 880s of two brothers, Byzantine civil servants, and fervent Christians, Constantine - or Cyril, to use his later monastic name - and Methodius. Not only did they bring the new faith to the Slavs, but Cyril created an alphabet (the Glagolitic) and a written language for them. Although the Cyril-Methodiun missions were initially conducted among the West Slavs, in particular those living in the Great Moravian Empire (the present- day Czech Republic, Slovakia, southern Poland, and northern Hungary), it was among the South and East Slavs that the Byzantine Christian tradition was to have its greatest impact. The original written language created by Cyril and Methodius (called Old Church Slavonic) was derived from Macedonian dialects spoken in the Balkans. It was their disciples, however, who created a new Slav script based on Greek letters that came to be known as the Cyrillic alphabet, which to this day is used by the East Slavic and most South Slavic peoples.

Chapter 5 noted how, in the wake of the Varangian Rus’ attack on Constan­tinople in 866, a Christian mission was established in Kiev and an archbishop

The Byzantine Empire

AND ITS Attitude TOWARD KIEVAN RUS’

The Byzantine Empire comprised roughly the eastern half of the Roman Empire, and after the fall of Rome in ca. 476, it carried on the imperial herit­age for another thousand years, until it fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. The terms Byzantine and Byzantium to describe the empire are of even later origin. The citizens of the empire as well as its rulers always considered and desig­nated themselves first and foremost as Romans (Greek: romaioi), even though Byzantium was based along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Greek was used as the language of administration and culture.

The Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire actually came into being before the fall of Rome, when Emperor Constantine I (“the Great,” reigned 306-337) decided to transfer his capital to the east. The site chosen was a small Greek settlement, Byzantion, located on the narrow straits of the Bosporus, which separate Europe from Asia and strategically connect the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmora and eventually the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas. When the new imperial capital was ready in 330, it was renamed Constantinople in honor of the emperor who had had it built, the same Constantine who also made Christianity the official religion of the empire. Hence, the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire had three basic components: (1) Roman political tradition (with its heritage of written law and authority centralized in a supreme ruler), (2) Hellenic culture (which carried on the tradition of classical Greece), and (3) Christian belief.

During its more than a thousand years of existence, the boundaries of the Byzantine Empire changed often. Its greatest territorial extent was reached in the mid-sixth century under Emperor Justinian I (reigned 527-565), when it encompassed the northern and southern shores of the eastern Mediterranean, including much of the Balkans, Anatolia, the southern Crimea, and the eastern shores of the Black Sea. Byzantium’s nadir came during its final days in the mid-fifteenth century, when the empire was reduced to the imperial capital of Constantinople, the Peloponnesos, and a few other scattered urban centers. For nearly a thousand years, however, and in cultural terms even longer than that, the Byzantine Empire continued to influence not only the lands under its direct political control, but also the many civilizations within what the late twentieth-century Russian-British historian Dmitry Obolensky called the Byz­antine Commonwealth. The commonwealth’s sphere included many Slavic peoples and Kievan Rus’. The Byzantine impact on Kievan Rus’ has perhaps been summed up best by the Ukrainian-American Byzantinist Ihor Sevcenko:

Throughout more than a thousand years of their history, the Byzantines viewed their state as heir to the Roman Empire, which pretended to encompass the whole civilized world. It followed that the Byzantine state, too, was a universal empire,

claiming rule over the whole civilized world: that Byzantine emperors were by right world rulers; that the Byzantines were Romans; and that they were the most civilized people in the world. True, they had improved upon their Roman ancestors in that they were Christians; also, by the seventh century the Latin component had all but disappeared from their highbrow culture, which from then on was essentially Greek; but, like ancient Romans, the Byzantines felt entitled to pour scorn on those who did not share in the fruits of civilization, that is, on the barbarians. The best thing these barbarians could do was to abandon their bestial existence, and to enter - in some subordinate capacity of course - into the family of civilized peoples headed by the Byzantine emperor. The way to civilization led through Christianity, the only true ideology, of which the empire held the monopoly. For Christianity - to be more precise, Byzantine Christianity - meant civilization.

Throughout a millennium of propaganda, these simple tenets were driven home by means of court rhetoric - the journalism of the Middle Ages - of court ceremo­nies, of imperial pronouncements and documents, and of coinage.

By the ninth century, the following truths were held to be self-evident in the field of culture: the world was divided into Byzantines and barbarians, the latter including not only the Slavs - who occupied a low place on the list of barbaric nations - but also the Latins; as a city, the New Rome, that is, Constantinople, was superior to all others in art, culture, and size, and that included the Old Rome on the Tiber. God has chosen the Byzantine people to be a new Israel: the Gospels were written in Greek for the Greeks; in His foresight, God had even singled out the Ancient Greeks to cultivate the Arts and Sciences; and in Letters and Arts, the Byzantines were the Greeks’ successors. ‘All the arts come from us,’ exclaimed a Byzantine diplomat.... The Byzantines maintained these claims for almost as long as their state endured.

source: Ihor Sevcenko, “Byzantium and the Slavs,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies, VIII, 3/4 (Cambridge, Mass. 1984), pp. 289-290.

sent to Tmutorokan’. During the next century, not only did Christianity have a lim­ited presence in Kiev, but it was also not entirely clear to which sphere of the Chris­tian world Varangian Rus’ converts would give their allegiance. Princess Ol’ha, for instance, was baptized in Constantinople, but later she addressed a request to King Otto I of Germany, who obliged by sending a Latin-rite bishop with jurisdiction over the Rus’. In the end, when her grandson Volodymyr the Great finally decided to accept Christianity, it was to Byzantium that he turned. Therefore, when Volody­myr I made Christianity the state religion at the end of the tenth century, he began a process whereby the extensive Rus’ lands were endowed with a unifying ideology based on an imported religion that brought with it the more general influence of Byzantine Greek culture.

As early as during Volodymyr the Great’s reign (978-1015), Greek clergy, teach­ers, and artists came to Kiev, where they firmly established Byzantine models. A debate still continues over the exact ecclesiastical relationship between Byzantium and Kiev during Volodymyr’s reign. Was the early Rus’ church independent, or did it receive bishops from Byzantium, or Bulgaria, or Rome? Documented evidence indicates that, during the reign of laroslav the Wise, the Kievan church was defini­tively under the jurisdiction of the Byzantine ecumenical patriarch in Constantino­ple, that its first known head was a Greek (Metropolitan Ioann I), and that many of his successors were Byzantine Greeks.

Byzantine influence was also apparent in the monastic movement. Three types of monastic life were followed in Byzantium: (1) the life of the eremites, one of individual solitude, practiced in part on Mount Athos, along the northern shore of the Aegean Sea; (2) the life of the lavra, or hermits, who lived separately and were brought together by an abbot only for Sunday religious services; and (3) the life of the cenobites, in whose monasteries, eventually following the Studite rule, a highly organized and centralized community lived together and practiced identical disci­pline under the authority of an abbot. The second and especially the third types of Byzantine monasticism were most widespread in Kievan Rus’ and took the form of self-administered monasteries headed by an elected head (archimandrite or hegu- men), or a smaller number of hermitages (skyty) made up of secluded individuals who were ultimately dependent on a larger monastery. The term lavra came to mean a large monastery that was self-administered and not under the jurisdiction of a local bishop but rather the highest church authority in the region, in this case the metropolitan of Kiev. Only one such institution existed on Ukrainian lands in Kievan Rus’, the Caves Monastery (Pechers’ka Lavra) in Kiev itself.

Of the seventy or so earliest monasteries founded in the Rus’ lands before the thirteenth century, almost all were situated in or near cities. Moreover, the impor­tance of monastic establishments was not limited to the religious sphere. They also played a significant role in the economic and cultural life of Kievan Rus’. It was the monasteries that were largely responsible for spreading the Christian faith and therefore the Rus’ identity, and it was within monastic walls that chronicle writing and artistic production such as icon painting were undertaken. By far the most influential of the monasteries in Kievan Rus’ was the Monastery of the Caves (Pechers’ka Lavra), founded in 1015 just outside of the city of Kiev, along the cliffs on the right bank of the Dnieper River. The Monastery of the Caves played a deci­sive role in the capital city’s economy; it was the primary center of cultural life for all of Kievan Rus’; and it maintained its influence in the realm through the activity of numerous bishops who had been members of its community.

Because of the close relations with Byzantium in the religious and cultural spheres, it is not surprising that the direction of Kievan cultural life was directly affected by events in the great empire to the south. In 1054, soon after the end of Byzantium’s golden age, the beginnings of a division occurred between the Eastern and Western branches of the Christian Church, headed respectively by the pope in Rome and the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople. In that year, the pope accused the ecumenical patriarch of heresy and excommunicated him. To be sure, doctrinal and liturgical differences between the church in the East and West were present ever since the first centuries of Christianity. Much of the recent controversy, however, was related to the question whether any ecclesiastical see had the right to assert the kind of authority claimed by the pope in Rome. The year 1054 marked, therefore, the beginning of a process that was to result in two distinct Christian traditions: the Roman/Latin or Catholic Church in the West, and the Byzantine Greek or Orthodox Church in the East. At first, the divisions between the two Christian worlds were not impenetrable, and clerics, secular rul­ers, and intellectuals from Kievan Rus’ continued to maintain relations with the Latin West. Eventually, however, the differences increased to the point that a sub­stantial chasm was created between the two branches of the same faith. The result was that the East Slavs of Kievan Rus’ and its successor states were to remain in the religious and cultural sphere of the Byzantine, Orthodox East.

While it is true that Greek culture reached Kievan Rus’ via Byzantium, it was only Greek Christian culture that was of interest to the Rus’. Christian-inspired religious writings as well as Christian models in art and architecture were what dominated the cultural importations from Byzantium, while pagan authors of the Greek classical and Hellenic tradition that were represented in Byzantine human­istic thought remained alien. This is because Hellenism, with its non-Christian inspiration, was from the outset regarded with suspicion and before long was almost totally disapproved of in Kievan cultural circles.

Kievan Rus’ architecture

Christian models from Byzantium were sought after, copied, and adapted with­out restraint. Byzantium’s influence is most evident in the architectural style and building techniques (characterized by the use of narrow elongated bricks) of the literally hundreds of churches and monasteries erected in Kievan Rus’. The most outstanding of these was the Church of the Dormition, the so-called Tithe Church (Desiatynna) completed under Volodymyr the Great in 996, and the magnificent Cathedral of the Holy Wisdom, or Cathedral of St Sophia, begun in Kiev by laro­slav the Wise in 1037. The Cathedral of St Sophia was completed in 1100, and although its exterior has been radically altered over the centuries, the original interior, with its remarkable mosaics and frescoes, is still intact. The Kievan church took as its namesake the ultimate fount of Orthodoxy, the Hagia Sophia in Con­stantinople.

The monumental Tithe Church and the Cathedral of St Sophia, like all oth­er churches in Kievan Rus’, adopted the centralized Greek cross for their basic ground plan. Over the central transept was built a dome, often gilded on the out­side, around which were smaller domes. This form was in stark contrast to the basilica plan of western churches, with their long naves, transepts, and towers above their western facades. Kievan Rus’ church interiors also followed Byzantine models and were covered with glittering mosaics. The altars were separated from the congregation by a high screen, known as an iconostasis from the images of the saints, or icons, placed on it. The strict rules associated with icon painting were also transmitted from Byzantium and were followed almost slavishly in the monas­tery workshops of Kievan Rus’.

Kievan Rus’ language and literature

In the realm of literature, Kievan Rus’ was also inspired by Byzantium, although it soon began to diverge from Greco-Byzantine models. This was first evident in lan­guage. The Old Slavonic written language, which evolved from the ninth-century missionary activity of Constantine/Cyril and Methodius in the Balkans, eventually found its way to Kievan Rus’. Old Slavonic writings flourished in the First Bulgar­ian Empire, which had officially become Christian in 865. When the Byzantines destroyed the First Bulgarian Empire in 1018, several Bulgarian refugees fled to Kiev, where under the solicitous rule of Iaroslav the Wise they continued to propa­gate the Bulgarian version of what, after taking to itself various local elements, came to be known as Old Slavonic or simply Slavonic. This language served as the linguistic medium of the educated elite, and, most important, it was accepted as a liturgical language by the new church in Kiev, and thereby gained the prestige of a sacred language worthy to be used alongside the other cultured medium, Greek.

Book production first became relatively widespread during the reign of Iaroslav the Wise. He encouraged copyists to translate Greek works, especially historical and hagiographic writings, into Slavonic, and he set up a kind of research and copy­ing center as well as a library at the Cathedral of St Sophia in Kiev. Clearly, the vast majority of the literary production in Kievan Rus’ was religion-oriented - whether sermons, monastic statutes, or lives of the saints. Lives of the saints, known as chetyi minei, or readings for each month, were particularly popular and appeared in the form of translations from the Greek (Nicholas the Wonderworker, John Chrysostom, Andrew the Simple) or of original accounts of Rus’ figures. By far the earliest and most popular subjects were Volodymyr the Great’s martyred sons, Borys and Hlib, about whom several hagiographical works were written that stressed the need for younger princes to obey their seniors and condemned quarrels between rulers. The didactic and moralistic nature of much of Kievan literature was also evident in the famous Paterik, an anthology about the lives of the monks in Kiev’s Monastery of the Caves. First begun in the thirteenth century, the Paterik remained in manu­script form until it was published in the late seventeenth century.

While religious tracts dominated Kievan literature, there were some works that had a wholly, or at least partially, secular purpose. Among the more important of these are the chronicles, which are still our primary source of knowledge about the period. The best-known chronicle, the Poviest’ vremennykh liet (Tale of Bygone Years), generally referred to as the Primary Chronicle, owes its origin to the desire of Iaroslav the Wise to provide a historical foundation for his policy of unifying and centralizing Kievan Rus’. Begun at the grand prince’s court in the mid-eleventh century, it was copied and expanded several times at court and in monasteries during the second half of the eleventh century. A thorough revision was com­pleted in 1113 at Kiev’s Monastery of the Caves by the monk Nestor and later twice reworked by his monastic colleagues (ca. 1118 and 1123). It is these last two ver­sions that have come down to us, although only in copies from the late fourteenth

What Was the Language of Kievan Rus’?

What was the language of Kievan Rus’? is a question frequently asked, although it might be phrased more properly, What were the languages of Kievan Rus’? Since the territory covered by Kievan Rus’ today encompasses the lin­guistic spheres of Belarusan, Russian, and Ukrainian, it is often assumed that the answer must be an older form of one or of all three of those languages. Soviet and some western writers even use the term “Old Russian language” (drevnerusskii iazyk) to describe the linguistic medium supposedly used in Kievan Rus’. In fact, the language of Kievan Rus’ was not Old Russian, nor was it Old Belarusan or Old Ukrainian.

As in most medieval and even some contemporary societies, there were in Kievan Rus’ at least two types of language, the spoken and the written. Moreover, within each of these categories there were several variants. The spo­ken language had different dialects. The written language had various forms, depending on whether it was being used for commercial, administrative, reli­gious, familial, or other purposes.

Of the spoken language, modern scholarship has little direct evidence, since the written sources derive from the tenth century at the earliest and are in a literary medium (Old Slavonic) that was imported into Kievan Rus’ and was not based on the local speech. Faced with this source problem, scholars have turned to indirect evidence and have proposed several, often conflicting theo­ries. The controversy concerns two questions: (i) at what time, or during what transitional period, was an existing common Slavic spoken language replaced by the earliest stages of Ukrainian, Belarusan, and Russian? and (2) was the transition direct, or was it preceded by a period during which there existed a common East Slavic or Rus’ language, from which, in turn, Ukrainian, Belaru­san, and Russian subsequently developed?

Advocates of the second theory - a transition from a common East Slavic or Rus’ language to Ukrainian, Belarusan, and Russian - are not in agreement as to the date of the transitional period. Some place it during the tenth and eleventh centuries (A. Kryms’kyi), others in the twelfth (A. Shakhmatov, N. Trubetskoi, N. Durnovo, H. Lunt) or the fourteenth (I. Sreznevskii, T. Lehr- Splawiiiski) century. Soviet scholarship advanced the view that the supposed Old Russian language (drevnerusskii iazyk) spoken by all the East Slavic inhabitants of Kievan Rus’ did not begin to be replaced until the rise of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the fourteenth century, at the earliest. If that were the case, then the Ukrainian and Belarusan languages could be dated only from the fourteenth century. Some Ukrainian scholars, however (O. Ohonovs’kyi, S. Smal’-Stots’kyi, G. Shevelov), who are advocates of a linguistic continuum directly from a common Slavic language to Ukrainian, place the beginnings of Ukrainian in pre-Kievan times, that is, in the seventh and eighth centuries. Finally, among those who accept the existence of a common East Slavic lan­guage, there is debate regarding the number of regional dialects that may have existed. Did these dialects coincide with the early East Slavic tribal divisions, or, alternatively, with the speech areas of what later became Ukrainian, Belaru- san, and Russian? Or did they fit some other pattern? In short, apart from the existence of dialectal differentiation, there is nothing definitive that can be maintained about the spoken language of Kievan Rus’.

With regard to written language, the existence of texts allows for less arbi­trary opinion, although here, too, there is debate as to how the texts should be classified. One thing is certain: the written language of Kievan Rus’ was not based on any of the spoken languages or dialects of the inhabitants. In other words, it had no basis in any of the East Slavic dialects, nor did it stem from some supposed older form of Ukrainian, Belarusan, or Russian. Rather, it was a literary language, known as Old Slavonic, originally based on the Slavic dialects of Macedonia, which were those best known to its creators, Constantine/Cyril and Methodius, in the second half of the ninth century. Old Slavonic subse­quently evolved on neighboring Bulgarian lands before being brought in its Bulgarian form to Kiev in the first half of the tenth century.

Following the conversion of Kievan Rus’ to Christianity in the 980s, Old Slavonic gradually began to be used in religious and secular writings. Then, in 1037, as part of laroslav the Wise’s efforts to enhance the cultural prestige of his realm, Old Slavonic was made the official language of the Rus’ church. As a sacred language used in church liturgies, Old Slavonic initially retained its Old Bulgarian form in Kievan Rus’. By about 1100, however, several local East Slavic elements had entered this imported literary language. The result was the evolution of a distinct Rus’, or East Slavic, variant (recension) of the language, known as Church Slavonic or, simply, Slavonic.

In a manner somewhat analogous to that of Latin in the medieval West, Church Slavonic was also used as a spoken language, especially by the clerical elite of Kievan Rus’ society. Whereas by the end of the Kievan period spoken Church Slavonic was limited to clerical circles, as a literary language it was to be used in some form by all the East Slavs - Ukrainians, Belarusans, and Russians - until well into the eighteenth century. Only in modern times, in particular in the nineteenth century, were the spoken languages of the East Slavs, whether Russian, Ukrainian, or Belarusan, gradually raised to a status that made them suitable for use as literary languages capable of replacing the Church Slavonic that had been the language of most writings since Kievan times.

Hence, to the question, What were the languages of Kievan Rus’? several kinds of answer are possible. With regard to the spoken language, informed hypotheses suggest that Slavic linguistic unity among the inhabitants of Kievan Rus’ began to break down at perhaps the time of the era of political disin­tegration during the mid-twelfth century, and that out of this differentiation Ukrainian, Belarusan, and Russian began to take shape in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The written language dates from the tenth century; ini­tially Old Slavonic, an imported linguistic medium based on Old Macedonian and Old Bulgarian, under some local influences evolved into a standard Rus’ or East Slavic version known as Church Slavonic.

Finally, the simultaneous existence of at least two distinct languages, liter­ary and spoken, that was characteristic of Kievan Rus’ society, set a pattern on Ukrainian lands for many centuries to come. Indeed, much of subsequent Ukrainian cultural development to the twentieth century is the story of the struggle between those leaders who favored the maintenance of a literary “high language” (Church Slavonic, Greek, Latin, Polish, or Russian) and those who preferred to raise the spoken Ukrainian vernacular to a level appropriate for intellectual and literary communication.

century (the Laurentian edition, based on the 1123 version) and the mid-fifteenth century (the Hypatian edition, based on the 1118 version).

Although the Primary Chronicle is the most famous, it was only one of many in its genre. Each of the major cities and principalities, including Kiev, Chernihiv, Vol­hynia, Galicia, and Pereiaslav in Ukraine, had its own chronicle. Some were rather dry compilations of unadorned historical facts, others, like the thirteenth-century Galician-Volhynian Chronicle, were interpretive histories (in this case showing the “thievery of the dishonorable boyars”) and stylized works of literature. It is inter­esting to note that the authors of each of the regional chronicles began by repro­ducing the text of the Primary Chronicle. In so doing, the medieval chroniclers, to quote the Soviet Russian literary scholar N.K. Gudzii, consciously revealed “their connection with the interests not only of one given province alone, but of the land of Rus’ as a whole.”¹

Undoubtedly, the best literary work associated with Kievan times and an incom­parable witness to the high level that Rus’ culture had reached in the medieval period is the Slovo o polku Ihorevi, or Lay of Ihor’s Campaign- Its literary qualities are so highly advanced that several scholars since its publication have suspected that it could not possibly have been written at so early a time. The skeptics (A. Mazon, A. Zimin, E. Kennan) have argued that the manuscript (found only in the late eighteenth century and first published in Moscow in 1800) was a forgery by an eighteenth-century East-Slavic patriot, or perhaps by the Czech Slavist Josef Dobrovsky, trying to show that ancient Kievan Rus’ had attained a level of culture higher than that of contemporary western Europe. Those who have accepted the authenticity of the Lay of Ihor’s Campaign (R. Jakobson, D. Likhachev, D.Cyzevskij) have argued that it was composed soon after the events recounted in the tale took place, and some (O. Pritsak) have suggested that its unknown author was probably a native of Galicia.

The story concerns the real-life exploits of Prince Ihor of Chernihiv, who set out in 1185 from his stronghold of Novhorod-Sivers’kyi, on the Desna River north­east of Kiev, to confront the Polovtsians. Ihor is captured by the Polovtsian khan Konpak, who tries to persuade him to be his ally in controlling all of Rus’. But Ihor refuses to accept a political alliance with the heathen Polovtsian enemy, vowing instead to die defending his Christian Rus’ homeland. In addition to the obvious attempts of the author to invoke a sense of Rus’ patriotism, the work is memorable for its aesthetically impressive poetic descriptions of the steppe and its portrayal of the emotional state of Ihor’s wife, who, waiting at home not knowing what has happened to her husband, is psychologically distraught.

The Lay of Ihor’s Campaign not only shows the high degree to which the civiliza­tion of Kievan Rus’ had developed, but also - together with other artistic forms, whether architecture, painting, or literature - makes it clear that common goals and cultural aspirations prevailed throughout the medieval Rus’ realm. The cultural products, along with the common social structure and economic base of the realm, make it possible to speak of a unified Rus’ civilization that began to take shape in the eleventh century and that lasted for another 300 years, whether radiating from its center in Kiev or, as later, evolving within the various principalities of the realm.

The Lay of Ihor’s Campaign

The following excerpt, with the lament of laroslavna for her beloved husband

Ihor, captures the lyrical beauty of this twelfth-century epic poem.

laroslavna weeps at dawn

On the walls of Putivl’ city, saying:

‘O Dnepr, son of Renown!

You cut through the mountains of stone, Through the Polovtsian Land!

You cradled the long boats of Svyatoslav Till they reached the army of Kobiak. Then cradle, O Lord, my Beloved to me, That I may not soon send my tears to him, To the Sea.’

laroslavna weeps at dawn

On the walls of Putivl’ city, saying:

‘O Bright and Thrice-Bright Sun! For all you are warm and beautiful! Then why, O Lord, did you send Your hot rays onto the troops Of my Beloved!

On the waterless plain,

Why did you warp their bows with thirst And close their quivers with sorrow!’

source: The Tale of the Campaign of Igor, translated by Robert C. Howes (New York 1973), p. 48.