Download PDF | The Ruling Families of Rus: Clan, Family and Kingdom, By Christian Raffensperger (Author), Donald Ostrowski (Author), Reaktion Books, 2023.
320 Pages
Introduction: The Problem with Dynasty
Atypical dictionary definition of the word dynasty is ‘a line of hereditary rulers of a country’.' This rather innocuous definition conceals a historiographical problem. Apropos of this problem, the Polish historian Natalia Nowakowska, in her study of the Jagiellonian dynasty (c. 1385-1572), concluded that a change in the definition of the term occurred with the publication of the fifth volume of the French Encylopédie in 1755, which changed the meaning from any ‘government’ or ‘regime’ in general to the specific definition ‘a hereditary line of princes’.
Yet, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the usage of the term ‘dynasty’ to mean ‘a succession of rulers of the same line or family; a line of kings or princes’ pre-dates the other meaning of ‘lordship, sovereignty, power, regime’, which it now considers obsolete.’ For the history of Rus, the term ‘dynasty’ is woefully inadequate in relation to the dictionary definition and is misleading in relation to the source evidence. Historians have indeed focused on those who ruled, presenting them as part of a hereditary line, as the typical genealogical table of Rus rulers indicates. However, doing so overlooks half of our evidence; knowing who was married to each ruler and to those in line to rule, as well as who their parents and children were, is an essential part of understanding the context of our sources.
If we ignore their familial ties, we not only risk presenting, but indeed do present only part of the story they have to tell, ignoring the rest. But there is an even larger problem, that of anachronism. By using the concept of ‘dynasty’, we are imposing on the rulers of particular towns in Rus a mindset for which we have no evidence. Did Iaroslav the Wise consider himself a ‘Riurikid’ and a member of the ‘Riurikid dynasty’? Did Vsevolod ‘Big Nest’ Iurevich, or Alexander Nevsky?‘ There is no evidence that they did. One might respond that, surely, they must have positioned themselves as part of the Riurikid dynasty as a way to legitimize their claim to rule and increase their charisma, much as contemporary leaders do. Well, no.
The evidence tells us, instead, that until the second half of the fifteenth century, rulers in Rus legitimized their claim to rule a particular town by asserting that their father (and later, their father and grandfather, or some variation of father and brother, or father and uncle) ruled it.° We find no connection to Riurik or any assertion that they are part of a dynasty. We do not see the invocation of ‘a line of hereditary rulers’ going back to Riurik until the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, when such tales as the Story about Vladimir Kniazi began to appear (see Chapter Twelve).
If one wants to use the assertion of ‘my father ruled’ or ‘my father and grandfather ruled’ as the basis for a dynastic claim in terms of our dictionary definition of ‘a line of hereditary rulers’, then this assertion can only be used to support the claim that Iaroslav saw himself as a member of the Volodimer ‘dynasty’. Vsevolod saw himself as a member of the Iurevich ‘dynasty’ or, at most, of another Volodimer line, that of Volodimer Monomakh (his grandfather); Alexander Nevsky saw himself as a member of the Iaroslavich ‘dynasty’ or, at most, of the Vsevolodovich ‘dynasty’ (Vsevolod being his grandfather). In other words, any particular right to rule belonged to the immediate family, as evidenced by the invoking of ‘father’ along with ‘grandfather’, ‘brother’ and/or ‘uncle’, not to a larger dynastic entity. The point of this book is to explore the concept of the family rule of local towns and how that morphed through the centuries into the concept of the Riurikid dynasty, to which scholars are so fond of ascribing the first six hundred years of Rus history.
Another problem with imposing such a dynastic construct on pre-1500 Rus history is its lending an air of inevitability to the eventual outcome of the competition for the title of ruling family, which is exactly what the winning family wanted to achieve. The Daniilovich clan (the rulers of Moscow), a sub-branch of the Aleksandrovichi of Pereiaslavl who were, in turn, a sub-branch of the Iaroslavichi of Vladimir, won out in the person of Ivan 11. Why did that clan rule and not the Iaroslavichi of Tver, or the Daniilovichi of Galicia and Volhynia, or even the Olgierdovichi of
Lithuania? These other clans were all excellent candidates to become the inheritors of Rus. However, the dynastic rhetoric of texts such as the Stepennaia kniga, from the second half of the sixteenth century, presented the generational steps or degrees from Volodimer | to Ivan Iv as being divinely guided. In highlighting that apparently providential intervention, such works diminished the significance of competitors and _ historical alternatives. Those historians who are in ‘read—write’ mode tend to repeat such Muscovite rhetoric uncritically, much as the White House correspondents of today sometimes merely repeat verbatim the press briefings that they are handed.
Such panegyrical histories also diminish the role of wives, mothers and daughters in the process. The structure of Rus politics was defined by the rulers (kniazi), but the relationships among the ruling families were defined by the wives, mothers and daughters of the rulers, both through alliances formed by marriage and, more directly, through the influence of particularly well-placed, politically astute women like Iuliana Alexandrovna of Tver, the wife of Algirdas of Lithuania, and Sofia Vitovtna, who served as regent for her son Vasilii 11 during his minority.
By focusing on various ruling families rather than on the dynastic construct of the one family that finally won the right to rule, we hope to show the contingencies of history and the paths not taken. As the historian David McCullough wrote: ‘Because the outcome of great events becomes so well established in our minds, there is a tendency to think things had to go as they did. But there is nothing inevitable about history.’® For us, at least, the lack of inevitability makes the history of Rus richer and much more interesting.
WE WILL ATTEMPT
to keep the focus throughout this book on the members of the Volodimerovich clan and their descendants and, by doing so, demonstrate the multiplicity of identities inherent within that clan. We have chosen this technique as one that will help us to avoid problematic national or nationalistic terminology (which is anachronistic anyway) and will allow us to look at individual people and how they shaped their families, clans, and the growth of their own areas and polities. What follows is a brief overview and plan of the chapters to help orient the reader.
Chapter One lays out the background behind the kingdom of Rus itself, with a focus on the foundation of Rus by the Scandinavians, the kingdom’s early contacts with neighbouring powers and the Christianization of Volodimer Sviatoslavich. It also discusses the _historiographical complications inherent in writing about the kingdom of Rus — all of which create a foundation for the following chapters.
Chapter Two discusses a few key principles that will be used to further build a base for the rest of the book. The first part presents the argument for focusing on the Volodimerovich clan, rather than the more common Riurikid dynasty. The second part will discuss why the book is orientated around family ties — a particular focus on a married couple and their children provides a way to better understand what is going on with the larger clan, the kingdom and, most importantly, the individuals who make up those other entities. The final part will deal with the issues of collateral succession and inheritance in Rus. The collateral system of succession was a mutually agreed-upon grammar of ‘rules’. It had three major component parts: (1) eligibility (whether someone’s father had ruled, but only down to the fourth son); (2) self-regulation (whether the other members of the ruling family or clan recognized that person’s authority); and (3) external regulation (whether the towns-people accepted that person as the ruler of their town). The system had a certain flexibility built into it.
Chapter Three focuses on one of the most famous rulers of eleventhcentury medieval Europe, the son of Volodimer the Christianizer of Rus. Iaroslav married a Swedish princess, Ingigerd; together, they hosted multiple foreign rulers who spent time in Rus, and they married their children to royalty from Anglo-Saxon England, Norway, France, Poland, Hungary and Byzantium. This was not just a Rusian or a Volodimerovich family, but a family that intermeshed with all of medieval Europe.
Chapter Four deals with a ruler who had many names. In fact, many Rusian rulers had two names, a Christian one and a Rusian one; for Mstislav, these were Fédor (Theodore) and Mstislav. Like his father, however, Mstislav also had a third name, indicative of his mother’s family — Harald; this was for his maternal grandfather, the last Anglo-Saxon ruler of England, Harold Godwinson. Mstislav/Harald himself married first a Scandinavian princess, Kristin Ingesdottir of Sweden, and subsequently the daughter of the mayor of Novgorod, one of the few non-royal marriages for which we have sources. This family, like lIaroslav’s, was deeply interconnected with other medieval European families; however, Mstislav also solidified his own family’s hold on power in Kyiv, at the expense of other members of his clan.
Chapter Five focuses upon the ruler of Vladimir-Suzdal, an area of Rus between the Volga and Oka rivers, northeast of the Dnieper River valley and Kyiv. This area was one of new development and burgeoning wealth, and Vsevolod, following his father, Iurii Dolgorukii (‘Long-Arm’), and his brother, Andrei Bogoliubskii (‘God-Lover’),’ was keen to make the region a new centre of Rus. Vsevolod’s own marriages, entirely internal to Rus, demonstrate the changing focus away from the rest of medieval Europe, which would become one of the hallmarks of the family, while, at the same time, his and his family’s architectural and economic interests were still enmeshed with medieval Europe in general. This family of Volodimerovichi is typically viewed from the modern Russian historical perspective as foreshadowing the growth of Muscovy, although they are presented here in the context of the wider clan at the time.
Chapter Six deals with a contemporary and sometime rival of Vsevolod ‘Big Nest’ Iurevich, Roman Mstislavich. Roman is acknowledged to be the founder of Galicia-Volhynia (often considered a predecessor of western Ukraine) in the southwest of Rus. Roman’s world was a wide one, involving negotiations with other members of the Volodimerovichi to devise a system of succession for Kyiv, as well as intervention in Polish conflicts, attacks against the Polovtsy (who were steppe nomads), negotiations with the Hungarian king, the sending of emissaries to the Byzantine emperor and much more. He and his family stand in, then, not just for an interesting period in Volodimerovichi history, but as a break from the typical ‘Russian-centric’ narrative of progression from Kyiv to Moscow.
Chapter Seven deals with the famous ruler of Novgorod who fought the Teutonic Crusaders and conceded to the Mongols. Qagan Giiytik granted the rulership of Kyiv first to Alexander’s father and then to Alexander himself; while to Alexander’s younger brother, Andrei, he granted rulership over Vladimir-on-the-Kliazma during their sojourn in Qaragorum in 1248. Andrei fled Rus in 1252, when Khan Batu sent an army against Andrei in conjunction with an army against Andrei’s father-in-law, Daniil of Galicia, most likely because he saw them as involved in a papal anti-Mongol conspiracy. Batu gave the rulership of Vladimir to Alexander, while allowing him to remain the ruler of Kyiv. Alexander’s reign, his relations with the Mongols and Catholic Europe, and the story of his children involves international political intrigue from Rome to Qaragorum.
Chapter Eight concerns the grandson of Alexander Nevsky, LIurii Daniilovich, who was one of the first notable rulers of Moscow. In 1315, Iurii went to the Mongol capital of Sarai, gained the favour of Khan Uzbeg and married the khan’s daughter, Konchaka. As a result, he was the first ruler of Moscow to gain the patent (iarlyk) from the Mongols that gave him the right to collect taxes, and even negotiated for Mongol assistance in his own struggle against his Volodimerovich brethren in the city of Tver. Moreover, his son Ivan, later nicknamed ‘Moneybags’ (Kalita), cemented Moscow’s power through his continuing tax collection for the Mongols, using the metropolitanate authority to enhance both his own power (as well as vice versa) and ultimately his claim to being the ruler of Vladimir.
Chapter Nine shifts the focus away from the Volga—Oka River region back to the areas southwest of Kyiv. Here Iurii and his father Lev were rulers in Galicia—Volhynia in the fourteenth century, after the family line of Roman Mstislavich (discussed in Chapter Six) had died out. Like Roman, their rule engaged the various players who bordered on this region, such as the Tatars, Hungarians, Poles (including Iurii’s spouse), Byzantines (which entailed the creation of a new metropolitanate) and Lithuanians, new arrivals with whom Iurii contended. Within the kingdom, Iurii and his father shifted the power base of the region to the city of Volodymyr; [urii took the city’s emblem of a mounted knight for his own on his seals, on which he named himself ‘King of Rus, Prince of Volodymyr’.
Chapter Ten is the only one of the chapters to focus explicitly upon a specific woman as the centre of the family. Uliana was the daughter of the ruler of Tver, in the northeast region of Rus. She was the granddaughter of Iurii Lvovich from the southwest of Rus and, in her person, combined those two families. Furthermore, she was married to the powerful ruler of Lithuania, Algirdas. Uliana was a pivotal figure in the history of eastern Europe. It was her son, Jogaila, who inherited the right to rule in Lithuania, eventually taking Poland as well; she was the dowager involved in all the marital arrangements and political manoeuvring during the conflicts in Lithuania and Poland at that time. According to traditional dynastic language, her family would be treated as Algirdas’s family — but within the concept of families discussed in this book, we can see that Uliana is a powerful woman, the matriarch of a family and a member of the Volodimerovich clan as well.
Chapter Eleven focuses on the son of the famed ruler of Moscow, Dmitri Donskoi. Early in Vasilii’s reign, he fastened his power and ties to those of the Mongols through his submission to Khan Toqtamish, in exchange for a patent of rule, eventually gaining additional territories. However, Vasilii also benefitted from discord among the Mongols, which led him to build his own ties with the Lithuanians, including marrying Sofia, the daughter of Vytautas of Lithuania — although this did not mean peace between the two sides. This was a time of rising prosperity in Moscow, which saw artistic and technological advances via its connections with the rest of Europe, along with a return to a royal Byzantine marriage when Vasilii and Sophia’s daughter, Anna, married the Byzantine emperor, John vit Palaiologos.
Chapter Twelve deals with the aftermath of an internal clan conflict between Vasilii 11 Vasilevich and his uncle Iurii Dmitrievich, as well as with his two sons, Vasilii Kosoi and Dmitrii Shemiaka. When Vasilii 1 eventually won out in 1453, he appointed his own son, Ivan, as co-ruler and ended the receiving of patents (iarlyki) by local Rusian rulers from the khan of the Orda, declaring that they now had to receive such patents from him. Ivan himself undertook a number of changes in the organizational structure of Muscovy and brought in Italian engineers and architects, who gave the Moscow Kremlin the look it has today. Ivan used the title of tsar sparingly and judiciously to grant safe passage to merchants and diplomats through his realm (a function that the khan of the Orda used to exercise). It was during his reign and that of his son that the construct of the Moscow rulers being descended from Riurik came into existence (making them the scions of the Riurikid dynasty), thus giving their particular family line precedence over other Volodomirovich family lines.
The Epilogue marks the end of this book but not of the family lines; the story of the Volodimerovichi certainly does not end with the last of the families discussed herein. There are still members of the family today who bear the title of kniaz and claim descent from Volodimer Sviatoslavich the Christianizer. This chapter will take us to the end of the clan’s tenure as rulers of Moscow in the late sixteenth century and follow the continuing importance of the clan in Romanov Russia.
As a whole, one can see that The Ruling Families of Rus really is about families and individuals, rather than focusing upon any one dynastic progression from male heir to male heir. We have attempted to define the place of Rus in the medieval world, as well as highlight the important role that women played in these families and clans. We have tried not to be bound by any national structure of history writing — situating these Rusian families both within Rus and in the wider world, rather than binding them in any modern historical narrative that is read back in time. These efforts should make for a historical representation that is as true to the time as we can make it and should provide a thorough introduction to the Volodimerovich clan and its component parts, as well as the territories over which they ruled.
What Is the Kingdom of Rus?
THE RULING FAMILIES OF RUS is about Rus; but what is, or rather was, Rus? Why use this descriptor? This chapter will be bookended by historiography, beginning with a brief discussion of what this polity has been called and ending with a discussion of how it has been represented in some of the scholarship published in the last hundred years. In the middle, we present a narrative developing the early centuries of Rus, from its foundation to the rule of Volodimer Sviatoslavich, the Christianizer of Rus. In this way, we hope to provide a background for subsequent chapters, which discuss the families that ruled this early polity and their many successors throughout the next five hundred years.
You would only rarely find the Kingdom of Rus on an early map if you were to go looking for it. Most representations of medieval Europe do not include much of eastern Europe; although Rus was a large polity by the eleventh century, stretching from the Gulf of Finland in the north and nearly down to the Black Sea in the south, it simply does not appear in them. Take, for example, the map opposite, which is based upon an image from a popular textbook of medieval European history (illus. 4).
As one can see, there is no eastern Europe shown and certainly no Rus, as a kingdom or anything else. Other maps, such as those produced by John Haywood, do show the polity, but simply refer to it as ‘Russia’, which raises another issue.' Russia is a modern state and has incorporated the territories ruled by Rus since roughly the eighteenth century, but before that time, there was a variety of polities that exercised control over the territory that the medieval peoples knew as Rus. These included the Lithuanian, Polish, Ottoman and other polities. Similarly, in the recent past of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the modern state of Ukraine occupied much of the territory formerly ruled by Rus, on the Dnieper River. As one might imagine, the issue of what to call this area has been quite contentious and politically fraught over the years. At the end of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century, Mykhailo Hrushevsky (who served as the first president of the Central Rada of Ukraine, following the collapse of the Russian Empire, and who was a well-known historian) wrote a multivolume History of Ukraine-Rus’, in which he traced the history of the territory of his modem-day Ukraine back to its beginnings in the first millennium cE. This was part of the process of creating a national background and a claim to power for Ukraine, although he also produced some excellent history in the process.’ Russian historians similarly claimed the territory of Rus for themselves and for their national history in seminal works such as V. O. Kliuchevskii’s multi-volume History of Russia, which was written at the same time as Hrushevsky’s work.’ Even in the very recent past, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has claimed Rus for Russia as part of his justification of the invasion and annexation of Crimea and for the ongoing war against Ukraine by saying that ‘Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities.’* Given the politically loaded terminology of calling Rus either Russia or Ukraine, we have followed the policy (common in our own work) of using Rus, the name that was used by the denizens of the time, both internally and externally, to designate this territory. Further, we have continued to use this term when discussing events after the terminus post quem, or earliest possible date for, the kingdom of Rus, as each of the successor territories was still identifiable by this description and its rulers utilized the term for their titles.
The Beginnings of Rus
The story of the beginning of Rus is told in the Povest vremennykh let (PVL), often translated as “The Tale of Bygone Years’, the main Rusian source for much of the polity’s early history. The Pvt was written and compiled at the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries, and so the truth behind the information that it conveys about the foundation period in the ninth century would have already been lost by then to the dim mists of history, surviving instead via received wisdom that was recorded orally, if at all. Nevertheless, for the pvz, the story begins in the year 858/9, where it notes that ‘the Varangians [an eastern European name for Vikings] from beyond the sea imposed tribute upon’ multiple groups in the eastern European river systems.’ This was the first indication in the pvz of a Scandinavian presence in eastern Europe. However, if we look beyond this later Rusian source, there is a story in the Annales Bertiniani, a Frankish source from the ninth century, that tells of a group of ‘Rhos’ who were travelling from Byzantium through the Frankish territories to return home. They met with Louis the Pious, who decided that they were Sueones (Swedes, in the English translation) and denied them the ability to continue on their trip northwards.° Further, there is plentiful archaeological evidence that Scandinavians had been visiting the eastern shore of the Baltic for many centuries before that time.’ Typically, the evidence for the Scandinavian origins of the Rus is from finds of Scandinavian materials, such as weapons and glass beads, in the eastern Baltic, along with finds in Scandinavia that were transmitted from and through eastern Europe. Over the course of the eighth and ninth centuries, there was a rise in the transmission of Islamic and Byzantine coins to Scandinavia. The Islamic coins were minted in the Abbasid Caliphate, the capital of which was Baghdad; they were carried north via the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, and up the Volga to the Bulgars, eventually making their way to Scandinavia. These dirhams (the name for the Islamic coins) have been found in abundant coin hoards in both northern Rus and in Scandinavia, particularly on the island of Birka (illus. 5). The Byzantine coins were minted in Constantinople and followed various routes to northern Rus and Scandinavia. For instance, Byzantine coins and seals from the time of Emperor Theophilos (r. 829-42) have been found in Hedeby, Tissg, Birka, Ribe, Gnézdovo, Spillings, Gorodishche and Styrnas.
The explorations of these Scandinavian travellers seemed eventually to turn to conquest or, at least, tribute-taking, as recorded by the pvt. However, only a few years later, the Pv says that: ‘The tributaries of the Varangians drove them back beyond the sea and, refusing them further tribute, set out to govern themselves.’® This expulsion of the tribute-taking Scandinavians is the real beginning of the creation story of Rus; while they were expelled by the local population, the locals proved to be unable to rule themselves and, thus, the ‘Varangian Rus’ were invited back to rule over them: ‘Our land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us.’ Thus, the author of the much later pvz account, writing at the behest of the descendants of these same Rus, or at least for people claiming descent from them, had now created a proper origin story — not one of conquest and bloodshed, but one where their ancestors were invited in as saviours and peacekeepers by a local population who were unable to take care of themselves.
The pvz tells of three brothers who came to eastern Europe and established a territory for themselves. The myth of three brothers as founders is quite a common one, found everywhere from medieval to early modern sources; the myth typically progresses with only one brother surviving and ruling all the territory.'° The eldest, and surviving, brother in this story was named Riurik; he has sometimes been identified with a ruler named Roric of Jutland, who was known from German sources in the earlier ninth century, although he is likely no relation. The Riurik who is mentioned in this story occupied territory and began taking tribute in what would become northern Rus, near Lake Ladoga and Lake Ilmen. The original settlements seem to have been at Staraia (old) Ladoga and Riurikovo Gorodishche, which have been excavated numerous times, and today are in the Novgorod region of Russia (illus. 6)."
These communities in the north would eventually be superseded by the region of Novgorod, which became the second city of Rus after Kyiv. Riurik died, according to the pvz, in 879, after which there began a complicated sequence in Rusian history, in which Riurik passed the right to rule to Oleg, who is listed as a kinsman, and ‘entrusted to Oleg’s hands his son Igor, for he was very young’.'* The complication here arises from the fact that Oleg is not the child of Riurik, but he does rule after him for 33 years (d. 912), ostensibly while raising Riurik’s young son, Igor. Igor then rules in place of Oleg until his own death in 945, a rule that lasted 32 years and a lifespan, if he was just one year old at the time of Riurik’s death, of some 66 years. This state of affairs is possible, of course, but is widely seen to be unlikely, especially since he remained subordinate to Oleg for the 33 years of Oleg’s rule. The narrative of Riurik-Oleg-Igor creates problems for the idea of a dynastic line founded by Riurik, which itself has other problems (as discussed in the Introduction), especially since Oleg’s rule was incredibly important in creating a Rusian polity, one that was based in Kyiv and engaged with the Byzantine Empire.
In 882, Oleg mustered his forces and began moving south along the river systems, taking Smolensk and Liubech, eventually arriving at Kyiv. Kyiv at the time was ruled by two different Scandinavian rulers — Askold and Dir.” Oleg’s taking of Kyiv offers multiple interesting lessons regarding contemporary attitudes to both rulers and the land, as well as how the encounter has been interpreted by modern observers. Using deception, he garnered a meeting with the two rulers and said to them, ‘You are not kniazia [rulers] nor from the family of rulers, but I am from the family of rulers.’'* While one must acknowledge that this text was written down approximately two hundred years later, this is still a fascinating statement, in which Oleg clearly states that there was a ruling family and that he was a part of it, while Askold and Dir were not. This appears to be in contrast to the idea expressed earlier that while Oleg was of Riurik’s kin, he was ruling only in Igor’s stead. However, immediately following this line of the story in the pvz, there is another odd moment when, after stating his own qualifications for ruling, Oleg then produced Igor and proclaimed him to be the son of Riurik.’? Subsequently, Askold and Dir were killed, and Oleg declared himself the ruler of Kyiv. Again, Oleg is the actor who is making all of this happen and who is a ruler from a ruling family, yet Igor and Igor’s connection to Riurik is still mentioned, even if in a seemingly offhand way. One possibility is that the eleventh-century chronicler had access to the various pieces of information about Oleg’s rule, Igor and the story of Riurik; he was attempting to knit them into one complete story and this was how he chose to achieve that, treating Oleg’s long rule as a sort of extended regency for Igor. Once Oleg was established in Kyiv, he was quoted as saying that it would become the ‘mother of Rusian cities’,’® which has, in modern times, been translated as the ‘mother of all Russian cities’ and is, thus, the basis for the statement that Vladimir Putin made regarding the annexation of Crimea and the war on Ukraine (as mentioned earlier). However, this modern claim of national rule does not seem to have been the intent of the early chronicler, who immediately followed that sentence with one saying that ‘the Varangians and Slavs and others who followed him [Oleg] were called Rusians [Rusiu].’!’ With this additional context, it seems clear that the intent of the chronicler was to note that Kyiv was to be the centre of the cities which were ruled by the Rusians, those who followed Oleg, whether they were Scandinavians, Slavs or others. Unlike Riurik, scholars are quite sure that Oleg is a genuine historical figure, as he appears in multiple sources. One of the most interesting incidents in his life and in the development of Rus is his raid on, and subsequent treaty with, Byzantium. There are three treaties recorded in the PvL; the first is dated immediately following Oleg’s raid in 907, while the second is recorded under the year (sub anno) 912 and begins with the phrase, ‘This is the copy of the treaty.’'® This second, much more formulaic, treaty conforms to the style established by the Byzantines and others around this same time; thus, it is believed by Frank Edward Wozniak Jr to be copied into the pvt from a then-extant original or copy.'’ The treaty has multiple signatories; on the side of the Byzantines are the emperors Leo and Alexander, while for the Rusians there are numerous individuals, the majority of whom bear Scandinavian names, such as Karl, Ingolf, Farulf and Vermund. The treaty reads much as one might expect of a modern treaty, in that there are mutual obligations covering punishments, theft and such similar affairs. Interestingly, the treaty appears in many ways to demonstrate the equality of the two sides; for instance, many of the clauses begin with stipulations that penalties or benefits apply to both Rusians and Byzantines (‘Christians’, as they are called in the text). As a final note to certify the importance and validity of the treaty, it was noted that ‘we have caused the present treaty to be transcribed in vermilion script upon parchment in duplicate’, so that both sides could possess a copy. This was Oleg’s last accomplishment; with the conquest of Smolensk, Liubech and Kyiv, he had created the polity of Rus, from Lake Ladoga in the north through to Kyiv in the south, and had established peaceful relations with the most powerful Christian empire in Eurasia — Byzantium.
Upon Oleg’s death in 911, Igor finally assumed rule over Rus. In 903, according to the pvz, Igor married a woman named Olga from Pskov.’ Although these are the Slavic variants of their names, both are originally Scandinavian — Helga for Olga, and Ingvar for Igor. Their marriage in 903 and the birth of their son Sviatoslav, who was a minor at the time of Igor’s own death in 945, represent another problem in the line of succession of early rulers. If Olga was fourteen at the time of her marriage, a reasonable conjecture based upon marital age during this period, she would have been 55 in 945.*' Sviatoslav does not seem to have taken up ruling on his own until 964.** If he had been a minor waiting to come of age, as the PvL suggests, this would be perhaps at sixteen years of age; thus, he would have been born in 948, after Igor had already died. All these issues present a fatal problem for a continuous line of descent from Riurik to Sviatoslav.
Igor, like Oleg before him, raided Constantinople and established a treaty with the Byzantines. However, unlike Oleg’s, Igor’s raid was an unmitigated disaster, with the Rusian ships being burned by Greek fire, a toxic combination of ingredients known only to the Byzantines that they used to protect Constantinople.** Greek fire, most likely made from naphtha and quicklime (calcium oxide), was pumped through pipes and would burn even on the surface of water, making it an excellent weapon to stop naval attacks on the city — only sand and vinegar would quench the fire. Though Igor was defeated, the pv. immediately records a second attack three years later in which Igor is successful and the Byzantines surrendered and negotiated a new treaty. This second attack is possibly a face-saving device by the chronicler, who did not want Igor to be perceived as a failure in his conflict with Byzantium. When we look at the resulting treaty, Igor’s defeat can be seen in its less favourable terms, whereby the Rusians receive fewer privileges than they did in the earlier treaty that Oleg negotiated. Despite that shortcoming, the treaty is another formal document, copied into the PvL and attested by both the Byzantine and Rusian signatories. In this instance, the Rusians are not uniformly non-Christian, as they seem to have been in the first treaty, which is evidence of the slow progress of Christianity in Rus. The Rusian signatories also represent another very interesting element of this treaty as there are, once again, many of them; the majority of the named individuals are sent as personal representatives of the Rusian elites. Igor’s envoy, Ivar, is the first to be named, as one would expect, but he is followed by a representative of Sviatoslav, Igor’s son; one is named for Olga, who is here given the title kniaginia (queen); a representative of Igor’s nephew and many others, including other representatives present on behalf of women.** The presence of all of these representatives confirms the power structure of Rus, with Igor and Olga at the top but with many other key participants, both male and female. Furthermore, the document states that there was a chancellery, an office producing sealed documents, in Kyiv, as merchants from Rus were required to bring sealed documents as proof of their peaceful intent when trading with Byzantium. However, given the status of this treaty as a document copied into the chronicle, not merely a recollection by the chronicler, we can suggest that its provisions are accurate and thus the governance of Rus was developed and documented from an early pre-Christian period. Even though Igor was unsuccessful in his attack on Constantinople, the presence of this important treaty with Byzantium in the pvz tells us much about Rus in the tenth century.
Igor’s death immediately following the record of his treaty with Byzantium in 945 gives us further important information about the power structure of Rus. His warband, the personal entourage of warriors that a ruler of whatever rank kept with them and was responsible for, was discontented because other warbands seemed to have been treated better — in a nutshell, they wanted more of the loot. To get them more money, Igor decided to enforce a second tribute upon one of the groups subordinate to him, a group that the Pv termed the Derevlians. For all concerned, this ended up being a bad decision, in part because Igor had already taken tribute from the Derevlians that year; it seems that this was a regular process when a new ruler took power in Kyiv. The first thing that Igor did was to move out and resubjugate the tribute-paying groups that had been subordinate to his predecessor. The loyalty of those groups, largely based on fear and intimidation, one imagines, was directed towards an individual, not towards any idea of a larger political entity such as we might see in the Byzantine Empire of the period. This tribute-taking was an annual affair, we believe; Igor’s attempt to take a second tribute from the Derevlians was an affront both to them and to this process — thus, they refused to pay and fighting ensued. Igor was killed, his warband did not get their pay increase, and the Derevlians felt empowered by their defeat of Igor, leading to their ruler proposing to marry Igor’s widow — Olga.
Olga was in charge of Rus following Igor’s death, largely due to the fact that their only known son, Sviatoslav, was a minor. Mal, the ruler of the Derevlians, thought to marry Olga and thus take over Rus, perhaps telling us something about Olga’s status and that of Rus as a whole. However, this story has become conflated with folk tales that demonstrate Olga’s position as a ‘wise woman’, as the Pvz calls her. Over a series of four linked tales, she buries, burns and murders Mal’s envoys in increasingly clever ways, and eventually even burns down the Derevlian town with a manoeuvre also attributed to others in such folk tales, including Harald Hardrada. As a condition of making peace with the town, she asked for birds from each house as tribute. Once she had received this tribute, her soldiers tied burning brands to the birds’ feet and released them to return to their homes, setting the entire town ablaze, thus completing her revenge on the Derevlians for killing her husband.
This was not Olga’s only recorded action as the ruler of Rus. She too is a historical character as she appears in multiple primary sources from Rus, Byzantium and the German Empire. Olga is the first ruler of Rus to visit Byzantium with a peaceful purpose, although what that purpose was is debated. In the pvz’s telling of the story, Olga goes to Constantinople to convert to Christianity.” Much as with the tales of her revenge against her husband’s killers, she is portrayed as a clever woman who is able to outwit her foes. In this situation, Olga does not use her wisdom to find a way to kill her opponent, the Byzantine emperor, but instead demonstrates her superior knowledge of Christianity to trick him. Following the plot of the story, the emperor was smitten with Olga and desired to marry her, but she was not yet a Christian. She declared that she would convert to Christianity only if he would baptize her and stand as godfather, a requirement for baptism in the medieval church. Olga is baptized, the emperor proposes, and Olga displays her knowledge of the law, noting that because the emperor stood as godfather to her, under Christian law, it would be unlawful for them to marry; at which point the emperor says simply, ‘Olga, you have outwitted me!’ While the story is largely taken up with conversion and a Christian history lesson in the voice of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Pvz entry concludes the story on an odd note; after her return to Kyiv, the emperor sends for the agreed-upon trade goods (slaves, wax and furs) and soldiers to aid him in battle. Olga refuses to send them, however, noting that she would only do so if the emperor came to Kyiv and remained there for as long a period as she had spent in Constantinople. Given the tone of the earlier part of the story, this is a strange ending, a rebuke to the Byzantine emperor. A partial explanation for this shift in tone might be found in the other sources regarding Olga.
The main Byzantine source that records Olga’s visit to Constantinople is called the Book of Ceremonies — it is exactly what it sounds like, a prescriptive book on how to complete various ceremonies in Constantinople, recorded using actual examples of embassies, receptions and dinners, to make it clear where people should sit, how much money they should receive, what hymns should be sung and so on. It records Olga’s visit as an example of the visit of a ruler of Rus. It is quite a positive reception in that Olga is treated very well. She sits near the emperor and empress and both she and her party are given gifts at the various stages of the visit.*° In this account, though, there is absolutely no mention of baptism. In fact, while the Pv~ account says that Olga took the Christian name ‘Helena’, after the fourth-century emperor Constantine’s mother, the Book of Ceremonies only refers to her as Olga, not Helena.*’ Interestingly, it does record a priest in her entourage, by the name of Gregory, although there is no indication of who he was or where he came from. The majority of her entourage was made up of representatives of the rulers of Rus, much as in Igor’s treaty, and then merchants, who accounted for well over half of the people involved. The 43 merchants who were included, twice the number mentioned in the treaty of 945, might well suggest that the purpose of the visit was for trade, rather than religion; this perhaps provides an insight into why trade goods were mentioned at the end of the Pvz’s entry regarding Olga’s visit to Constantinople. Given the differing purposes and times of composition of the two sources, it is much easier to take the Book of Ceremonies as a record of what actually happened (as it is a source
uninterested in aggrandizing Olga, or Rus), as opposed to the PvL, whose folkloric-type tales about Olga seem aimed at depicting her cleverness.
However, other sources do note her baptism, such as John Skylitzes, who records quite briefly that Olga ‘came to Constantinople after her husband died. She was baptized and she demonstrated fervent devotion, then she went back home.’” It is obviously a much terser account than those in either the pvt or the Book of Ceremonies, as it does not provide details of almost any kind, but it does record her baptism in Constantinople. Similarly, a source from the German Empire corresponds with that, saying that Olga requested a bishop and priests from the Ottonian emperor Otto 1.”° Given the religious politics of the time, the potential to convert a nonChristian ruler and their polity would be a major coup, and thus Otto responded positively, ordaining Adalbert, later Archbishop of Magdeburg, and sending him to Rus with an entourage.*° Adding a further wrinkle to this story, this source does refer to Olga as ‘Helena’, the baptismal name recorded in the pvr for her, but this is not present in either of the Byzantine sources, as we discussed earlier. Regardless, Adalbert’s mission to Rus was not successful; he returned to the German Empire in 962, citing pagan opposition to his missionary activities.*' This pagan opposition may have coincided with the ascent to power of Olga’s son, Sviatoslav, as he was a confirmed non-Christian. Thus, while Olga has gone down in history as a Christian, and even as a saint, in the pvz and later Eastern Orthodox traditions, her conversion is still surrounded by a bit of mystery.’ As for the political aspects, Olga seems to have been well aware of the importance of conversion, beyond mere religion; although she approached Byzantium for her personal conversion, she reached out to the German Empire for a bishop to help spread Christianity in Rus, keeping her polity independent from any one set of imperial influences.
Sviatoslav, Igor and Olga’s son, maintained an eventful rule over the Rusian polity. He was active on multiple fronts. One of his military actions was to attack the Khazar khanate, a semi-nomadic polity located on the lower Volga River, controlling the steppes to the south and east of Rus. The Khazars had long been rivals with Rus for dominance over the region and were recorded in the same Pv entry with Riurik taking tribute from a different set of groups. Sviatoslav attacked the Khazars and defeated them, taking their city of Sarkel (Bela Vezha) in 965.** At the same time, he also attacked and defeated the Iasians, Kasogians and Viatichians, which George Vernadsky has suggested was part of a broader effort to move eastward and take control of territory towards the Volga, inclusive of the northern Caucasus.** However, before he could continue that campaign, Sviatoslav was distracted by affairs to the southwest of Rus, in the Balkans. The Byzantines, using their typical strategy of arranging for one neighbour to attack another, recruited Sviatoslav to attack the Bulgars, who had become problematic neighbours.*? Sviatoslav enjoyed his campaign on the Danube so much that he decided to move his capital there, describing it as the place ‘where all the riches come; gold, brocaded silk, wine, and various fruits from the Greeks, from the Bohemians and Hungarians, silver and horses, from Rus’, furs, wax, honey, and slaves’.*° Sviatoslav’s desire to be on the Danube permanently presented a major difficulty for the Byzantines, who were happy to have him fight the Bulgars, but not to take their place and become a threat to their empire. Thus, Emperor John Tzimiskes marched out to fight Sviatoslav’s army, which ultimately resulted in a peace treaty in which Sviatoslav would return to Rus, but would be well looked after.
However, on his trip home to Kyiv, Sviatoslav was killed by the Pechenegs, a nomadic group from the steppe, and his skull was made into a drinking cup for their leader. It is suspected by scholars that the Byzantines were behind this assassination of the Rusian leader, but there is, of course, no evidence.””
Sviatoslav did not leave a legacy of shifting the Rusian polity to the Danube, but he did leave an important mark on the internal politics of Rus. When he decided to go to the Danube, he appointed his sons as his subordinate rulers within Rus, each of them to a major town: Iaropolk in Kyiv, Oleg in Dereva and the youngest, Volodimer, in Novgorod with his maternal uncle, Dobrynia, as his regent.** This process wherein the ruler of Rus assigning his sons as subordinate rulers had not previously been recorded, but this was to become the normative model for rule within Rus. The ruler of Kyiv, typically, was the paterfamilias; he used his sons as his regional governors. There was no handbook, such as the Book of Ceremonies, recording who was assigned where or how such assignments were decided; thus, we are only left with the information recorded in the Pvx and other chronicles if we wish to piece together whether this was a system, or a more ad hoc arrangement of rule. For instance, was every son given a city to rule? Possibly, but in addition, we do not necessarily know all the names of the children of the rulers of Rus. Were women able to rule? Again, possibly, but we have only a couple of examples of women who ruled cities, and they are the widows of the male rulers. Regardless of all that we do not know, this process of assigning cities to sons and male relatives would come to be normative in Rus after this time.
Volodimer and the Christianization of Rus
Volodimer took power in 980 and ruled for 35 years, transforming Rus in many ways and becoming the touchstone for future rulers. Although Volodimer lived an active life, we will focus largely here on one series of events related to his religious decisions, through which we can see a variety of changes in both internal and external affairs. At the beginning of Volodimer’s reign in Kyiv, he decided to change the worship practices within Rus.” The Christian chronicler was not pleased by the erection of ‘idols’ but he did at least provide the names of the gods and goddesses — Perun, Khors, Dazhbog, Stribog, Simargl and Mokosh.* It is incredibly important that we know the names of these deities, as they represent a blending of different non-Christian religious traditions from Slavic, Scandinavian, Baltic and Iranian backgrounds.*: Modern historians have assumed that Volodimer’s intent was to create a united pantheon from elements of the various religious traditions that were worshipped within Rus, in an attempt to create a unified religious structure without wholesale conversion to a single monotheistic religion, as had taken place around him with the conversion of the Poles to Christianity, the Volga Bulgars to Islam and the Khazars to Judaism. The end goal would then be creating a religious structure that would unite his population. If that was the case, Volodimer’s bold attempt to create a new religious tradition failed and, in just a few years, he was seeking out conversion opportunities among the various monotheistic religions.
The conversion of Volodimer, and of Rus, is a process, but the story of the conversion is also a process. There is evidence that the Rusians converted to Christianity before Volodimer. The most authoritative source for the early Christianization of Rus is an encyclical letter of Patriarch Photius, which has been dated to 867. Citing the Rusian siege of Constantinople of 860, Photius informed the patriarchs and bishops that after the Bulgarians turned to Christ in 863, the Rus followed suit. As was the case with the Bulgarians, the Patriarch found it prudent to send a bishop from Constantinople. With some modifications, the story is repeated by Constantine vil in De administrando imperio, followed by mentions from several generations of Byzantine historians, including John Skylitzes and Joannes Zonaras. That the imperial court and patriarchate regarded the tenth-century Rusians as Christians is evident from the fact that the bishopric of Rus was enumerated in the lists of Christian sees, which were compiled during the reigns of Leo the Wise and Constantine vil. There is also an argumentum ex silentio (absence of evidence to the contrary): no Greek source recorded what would have been the second baptism of the Rus in 988.
The pvt chronicler records none of these things. Instead, he combines four different stories of the conversion occurring in the late 980s: (1) missionaries arrive at the court of Volodimer in Kyiv, uninvited; (2) Volodimer sends out ten good men to investigate other religions; (3) Volodimer demands marriage to Anna, the sister of the Byzantine emperors Basil and Constantine, if his plan to capture Cherson works; and (4) Anna tells him that he will regain his eyesight if he is baptized.** To these four stories we will add a fifth, which summarizes and elucidates additional information from other sources, to try and present a wider picture of the Rusian conversion. We will begin with the arrival of the missionaries, which is recorded in the pvz as happening in the year 985/6.* This entry of the pvz details the visits of four groups of representatives to Volodimer: Muslims from Bulgar, Germans as ‘emissaries of the pope’, Jewish Khazars and then the Byzantines, whom the Rus called Greeks. Each presented their way of life and their faith to Volodimer. In response to the first three, Volodimer ends the recitation with a pithy comeback. For the Muslims, he tells them that he cannot convert to Islam, where one does not drink alcohol, because ‘drinking is the joy of the Rusians.’ For the German Christians, he is unimpressed with the idea that all one eats or drinks is to the glory of God, for ‘our fathers did not accept that principle.’ To the Jewish Khazars, when pressed on their lack of a homeland (since they had been dispersed from Jerusalem), Volodimer says, ‘Do you expect us to accept that fate too?’ It is the fourth presentation, that of the Byzantine Christians, that offers a faith to which Volodimer will eventually convert; it is also with these representatives that Volodimer has the most recorded interaction. Their dialogue covers approximately twelve pages in the English-language translation of the pvt, which is perhaps indicative of the sympathies of the chronicler. But even with that final interaction, the entry for 986 ends with no resolution.
The pv_ entry for 986/7 begins with Volodimer calling together his advisors and questioning them about the religions that they had heard about. The possibility of Judaism disappears here and only the Muslim Bulgars, German Christians and Byzantine Christians remain.“ On the basis of the advice of his boyars and the city elders, Volodimer chose ten ‘good and wise men’ to go and visit each of the places to see how they worship, as that would tell them a great deal more than mere words about their religious practice. The emissaries set out and visited each place in turn; they described their finding that among the Muslim Bulgars, ‘there is no happiness . . . but instead only sorrow and a great stink,’* a common Christian critique of Muslims (and everyone else) in medieval European writing; the Germans were simply described as without ‘glory’; and yet, among the Byzantine Christians, once they entered the church, which was presumed to be Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, ‘they knew not whether [they] were on earth or in heaven.’ However, this entry also ends with no decision being made, although it is noted that Byzantine Christianity was good enough for Volodimer’s grandmother, Olga.
The entry for the year 988 brings the most elaborate of the four stories, in which Volodimer, without any mention of a prompt or casus belli, besieges the Byzantine city of Cherson on the north shore of the Black Sea.“° The siege was eventually broken when a man inside the city, Anastasius by name, shot an arrow out with information on how to cut the water supply to the city, allowing Volodimer to take Cherson. At that time, Volodimer sent a message to the Byzantine emperors Basil and Constantine, demanding the hand of their sister, Anna, in marriage. After some deliberation and discussion, Volodimer agreed to convert to Christianity as a way to gain the princess’s hand in marriage. She was sent to Cherson, but Volodimer still did not convert. Then he was struck down by blindness. Anna told him that the way to regain his eyesight was to be baptized. Volodimer was baptized by the bishop of Cherson and the priests who had accompanied Anna, and the two were married. After the wedding and his conversion, Volodimer returned the city of Cherson to the Byzantines as a wedding present. He and Anna proceeded back to Kyiv, where he threw the city’s idols into the Dnieper River and then herded the people of Kyiv into the water, to be baptized by the priests from Cherson and those in Anna’s entourage. In addition to founding other churches, assigning priests throughout the cities and inviting people to accept baptism in all the cities and towns, as well as taking the children of the best families and sending them for instruction in booklearning, the pvz tells us that Volodimer founded a church in Kyiv (apparently the Tithe Church (desiatinna)) in the next year, of which he appointed the liberator (or betrayer, depending on one’s point of view) of Cherson, Anastasius, as caretaker.*’
What do we make of this combination of four conversion stories, any one of which should have been sufficient to convert a ruler? The chronicler of the pvi seems to have been attempting to share the multiple stories that he knew of the conversion in the later eleventh or early twelfth century; rather than choosing one over another, he included all of them in the chronicle, serially. He does choose, however, to accept that Volodimer was baptized in the Church of St Basil in Cherson, rather than in Kyiv, Vasilev or other places mentioned by ‘those who do not know the truth’.
There are elements in each of those stories that we can include in our historical narrative, but it begins elsewhere. At that time, the Byzantine Empire was ruled by Basil 1 and Constantine vil, two brothers, and their sister Anna Porphyrogenita (so-called because she was born in the purple room of the imperial palace, while her father was still emperor), who was of great interest as a potential alliance for multiple possible dynastic marriage partners around Europe. For instance, both the king of France and the German emperor wrote to Basil 11, seeking to marry their respective sons to Anna Porphyrogenita. Basil 11, however, had a more serious problem in the late 980s: a revolt from first one and then two of his own generals.” A rebellion by his own generals meant that Basil 11 was short of soldiers; thus, he turned to Volodimer of Rus as someone who could assist him, both with his own additional forces and as a contractor who could procure mercenary forces from Scandinavia. Volodimer agreed, and we have a record of 6,000 soldiers being sent to assist Basil 11.
We can suggest that Volodimer’s price was matriage with Anna Porphyrogenita, a marriage that would not only connect him to the Byzantine empire but increase his legitimacy as well, via his recognition by one of the most powerful and important empires of his day. However, to continue our conjecture, once Basil 11 won his victory, he did not send Anna to marry Volodimer; in response, Volodimer besieged and took Cherson. We know that the latter event happened and, given that Anna was then dispatched to marry Volodimer, we can suggest that taking a Byzantine city was the leverage required to force Basil 11 to hand over his sister. Christianization was a sine qua non for marriage. This, then, is our historical reconstruction of Volodimer’s conversion, a power play that had as much to do with politics as it did with religion; one that also allowed Volodimer to be in control of his own marriage and conversion, rather than subordinating himself to anyone else’s rule, even his brothers-in-law, the Byzantine emperors.
Volodimer and Anna did not have children together, but Volodimer had already sired a great many children from his relationships before he was Christianized. The pvz records that he had twelve sons and at least four daughters by four wives — one named Rogneda, and three women identified only by region (two Czechs and a Bulgar) — as well as by his brother’s wife, a Greek. The Pvz also claimed that he had ‘300 concubines at Vyshgorod, 300 at Belgorod, and 200 at Berestovo’.*! While these figures may be a selfconscious reference to Solomon, who is mentioned in this same entry, even the contemporary German chronicler referred to Volodimer as a ‘fornicatur immensus’!*?
Volodimer followed his father’s method of delegating power, and assigned his sons as rulers in various towns around Rus: ‘Vysheslav in Novgorod, Iziaslav in Polotsk, Sviatopolk in Turov and Iaroslav in Rostov’.* This list was amended as his various sons died, but it is clear that he was placing his sons in positions of power under him and that not all of his twelve sons received a town of their own to rule. This system of subordinate rulers, all chosen from the Volodimerovichi (sons of Volodimer), would set the tone for the future placement of members of the wider Volodimerovichi clan. As the clan grew over the decades and centuries, it spawned not just multiple families within it but new clans as well, often centred on particular towns, or regions, as hubs of power. However, none of this would have been possible without Volodimer acting as paterfamilias.
Historiography of Rus
As noted at the beginning of this chapter in relation to the name of this polity, there have been numerous works published on Rus over the years, from multiple different perspectives. Briefly here we would like to orient the reader in terms of a few of those debates and highlight what we are doing and why, in relation to these theories. Modern studies on Rus often take place within the framework of Slavic studies or, more specifically, Russian studies. This kind of framework can certainly be useful, but it is important to acknowledge that it is a vertical (or silo) framework of history. That is to say that the framework takes a later starting point, modern Russia for instance, and then looks at the history of the area that Russia today occupies as a way to help us understand what Russia was and why it came to be. Such a perspective causes problems for interpretation because there is a built-in explanatory framework of the end result — Russia.
This kind of work is conducted by excellent scholars; for example, one recent publication, Russia’s Empires, is an attempt to analyse ‘how and why Russia expanded to become the largest country on the globe and how it repeatedly fell under the sway of strong, authoritarian leaders’.* Rus is included in the book as the preliminary to everything else, with the authors pointing out that Rus was not Russia and did not have the centralization necessary to be Russia. Although only a single example, this is a clear demonstration of the problem with this kind of work — Rus was not Russia; it was its own polity and should be analysed on its own terms, not as a means by which to explain later history.
Other scholars have attempted a horizontal approach to situating Rus in a larger world. The classic example of this approach is the work of the Eurasian school of historical study. The Eurasian school was founded in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 1921 by Russian émigrés escaping the Bolshevik Revolution. It was an amorphous movement, the proponents of which held widely differing views. Among the core ideas that can be said to have been shared by the adherents and those influenced by the movement was an assumption that ‘Eurasia’ encompassed the area of the former imperial Russia. It is a different use of the term from that used by world historians, who consider ‘Eurasia’ to mean all of Europe and Asia combined.
Another core idea of the Eurasianists was a conceptualization of the culture of that area as being a blend of European and Asian elements (thus being neither wholly European nor wholly Asian), as well as a generally positive evaluation of all things Asian in that mix. In contrast, they advanced a negative critique of Eurocentrism and imperialist colonialism (including that of the Russian Empire) and gave priority to Russian Orthodoxy as the religious-cultural identifier of ‘Eurasia’. Among the scholars who could be considered part of this Eurasian movement were Nikolai Trubetskoi, George Vernadsky and Lev Gumilev.”
A few present-day scholars, such as David Christian, John LeDonne and Donald Ostrowski, have views that are similar in certain ways to some of these core ideas, but they eschew the religious priority of Orthodoxy and they base the area of focus on the geographer Halford Mackinder’s concept of the Heartland, calling it ‘inner Eurasia’.°° Doing so keeps the term ‘Eurasia’ reserved for use in the way that world historians employ it.
A similar horizontal view was taken in the early twentieth century by scholars such as Samuel Hazzard Cross, who discussed Rusian affairs in relation to what was going on at the time in Scandinavia and, to a lesser extent, in medieval Europe.’ This idea of situating Rus within medieval Europe has become much more prominent in the twenty-first century, with a string of books and articles by Christian Raffensperger, Yulia Mikhailova and Talia Zajac, to name just a few.°® These scholars are attempting to take Rus out of any vertical silo and instead view it as part of the medieval European world, comparing its experiences to what was going on not just in Scandinavia or Byzantium (areas that have been examined before), but in regard to England, the German Empire, Iberia, Poland, Hungary and much else. They suggest that this is the proper framework for viewing Rus, as Rus considered itself to be part of this medieval European world through dynastic marriages, religious interaction and much more.
Our framing for The Ruling Families of Rus attempts to be horizontally expansive, following the connections wherever they lead at the time. We have not created either a Russian history or a Ukrainian history book; instead, we have focused on the clan founded by Volodimer Sviatoslavich and, subsequently, the various individuals and families that made up that clan over the next five hundred years.
Since individuals like Iaroslav Volodimerovich married off their children into important families throughout Europe in the eleventh century, those alliances will be discussed. Similarly, we will follow the Mongol interactions of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and include the Mongol capitals of Sarai and Qaraqorum in our narrative. Since members of the wider Volodimerovich clan ended up ruled by Lithuania, we will include Lithuania in our broader picture, focusing on Uliana Alexandrovna. In this way, our goal is to keep the focus of this book on individuals, working within the framework of the ruling clans and families of Rus, rather than on any particular horizontal or vertical agenda. Thus, we present to the reader the ruling families of Rus, charted from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries.
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