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Порталус

© Kievan Rus

Дата публикации: 04 сентября 2007
Автор(ы): Thomas S. Noonan
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Ancient Russia →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1188914298


Thomas S. Noonan, (c)

Kiev was the first state to arise among the East Slavs. Created during the second half of the ninth century, it was named for the city of Kiev on the right (or west) bank of the middle Dnieper River, where its grand princes resided from about 880 until the second quarter of the twelfth century. Although the Kievan state had fragmented into a series of virtually independent principalities by the mid twelfth century, these principalities, as a whole, are referred to as Kievan Rus until the time of the Mongol conquest (1236-1240).

Terminology

There is some controversy about the proper name for the Kievan state and its inhabitants. The East Slavic tribes of the Kievan era formed the nucleus for the Great Russian, Ukrainian, and Belorussian (White Russian) peoples of later times. Those who wish to stress the Kievan ancestry of Muscovite Russia and the Russian empire prefer the term "Kievan Russia." On the other hand, the sources of the Kievan period employ the self-appellation "Rus" rather than "Russian." Consequently, those who wish to emphasize the fact that the Kievan state was not Great Russian prefer the term "Kievan Rus."

A similar dispute concerns the language of the Kievan period. Some scholars claim that a unified East Slavic language existed and call it Old Russian. Others believe that the various East Slavic tribal dialects never coalesced into a standard literary language that, in any case, should be known as Old Rus.

Territory

Kievan Rus lay almost entirely within the forest-steppe and forest zones. The early Kievan state was confined primarily to the region between Novgorod in the north and Kiev in the south. In the course of time, colonization and conquest expanded its frontiers westward to the Polish and Hungarian borders, northward to the lower Northern Dvina River, eastward to the upper Volga and Oka rivers, and southward to the border with the steppe zone. From the late tenth to early twelfth centuries, Tmutarakan on the Taman Peninsula of the northeastern Black Sea coast also formed part of the Kievan state.

The Early East Slavs

Since the East Slavs became the dominant ethnic group in the Kievan state, much attention has been devoted to their history in the pre-Kievan era. In particular, scholars have sought to determine when, how, and why they first settled in the lands of present-day Russia. Unfortunately, no consensus has been reached and these fundamental questions are still unresolved. The specialists who claim that the supposed Slavic homeland was located within Rus (usually placed between the middle Dnieper and the lower Danube rivers) have failed to prove that Slavs actually inhabited this area since time immemorial. Scholars who maintain that the Slavs migrated into the Russian lands from some other area disagree about where these Slavs came from, when they first migrated into Rus, and how they came to inhabit the Kievan lands. Given the nature of the historical, archaeological, and linguistic evidence, it is most difficult, if not impossible, to trace East Slavic prehistory earlier than the middle of the first millennium of the Christian era with any certainty.

Of the various theories concerning the development of the East Slavs since the mid first millennium, the most convincing argues that some of the Slavs located along the lower Danube and adjacent regions began to migrate north and east into the forest-steppe on the right bank of the Dnieper starting in the sixth century. This migration was most likely an attempt to escape the harsh repression of the Avars, who had conquered the lower Danubian basin in the mid sixth century. In any event, the earliest undisputed Slavic sites within the Kievan lands are on the right bank of the Dnieper and date from the sixth/seventh centuries. These sites belong to the Korchak culture (named for the village of Korchak, west of Kiev), the eastern European variety of the Prague-type culture, and they indicate that the East Slavs of this time had a relatively simple agrarian society. By the eighth and ninth centuries, the East Slavs had settled the forest-steppe on the left (or east) bank of the Dnieper and had begun to colonize the forest zone of northern Russia.

The written sources of the Kievan era contain comparatively little information about early East Slavic history. The chroniclers, who all wrote several centuries later, noted some eleven major East Slavic tribes and their general locations. Unfortunately, their brief comments about the society and customs of these tribes usually take the form of a Christian commentary on the false practices of the East Slavic pagans. It appears, however, that the East Slavs had a political structure with tribal leaders or princes (kniazi) and elders, as well as various social customs. Archaeological data reveal that the East Slavs of the forest-steppe still had a relatively simple agrarian society in the mid ninth century. As before, clusters of a few small settlements were located along riverbanks. The people in these villages apparently practiced some form of slash-and-burn agriculture and made most goods for themselves. Study of the grains found at sites from this era point to the growth of wheat, rye, barley, and millet. Society was uncomplicated, local, and self-sufficient.

The migration of the East Slavs into the forest zone brought them into contact with a variety of non-Slavic peoples. Balts, for example, occupied the upper Dnieper basin, Belorussia, and west-central Russia, while West Finns and Volga Finns inhabited east-central Russia and much of the forest zone north of the Volga. As the East Slavs moved north, they displaced, killed, or assimilated the native Baits and Finns, although some pockets of those groups survived for many centuries. The process of assimilation left an important Baltic substratum among the Belorussians and a significant Finnic substratum among the Great Russians. Thus, while the East Slavs constituted the largest single ethnic group in the Kievan state, its population was multinational from the very beginning. In addition to the various Baits and Finns, there were Turks, Poles, Scandinavians, Jews, central and western Europeans, Greeks, South Slavs, and assorted Near Eastern peoples in the Kievan state.

The Origins of the Kievan State

The earliest Russian chronicles, which date from about the mid eleventh century, record that around 860 the East Slavic and Finnic tribes of northern Russia invited from overseas a certain Rurik and his Varangian (Viking) Rus to come and rule over them. Rurik and his followers established themselves as rulers of Novgorod and other towns of northern Russia, and his successors went on to develop the Kievan state. The descendants of Rurik, the Riurikovichi, provided all the princes of the Kievan era; and all the Muscovite rulers down to the son of Ivan the Terrible (Fedor I Ivanovich, d. 1598) traced their ancestry back to the semilegendary Rurik. Those who believe that the chronicle account is substantially accurate are known as Normanists, since they believe that Normans or Vikings established the Kievan state. On the other hand, various Russian scholars have long denied that Vikings from Scandinavia founded the first Russian state. These anti-Normanists maintain that the East Slavs established their own state; that the Vikings played a minor role, at most, in the creation of this state; and that there is no real truth in the "invitation" to Rurik.

Neither the Normanist nor the anti-Normanist approach is completely satisfactory. While the evidence for the ninth century is not abundant and can be interpreted in different ways, there is no doubt that some Vikings were active in different parts of present-day European Russia by the mid ninth century. By the second half of the ninth century, if not earlier, some of these Vikings had begun to settle in Russia. The origins of the Kievan state cannot be understood by ignoring these Vikings and their activities as the anti-Normanists too often do. On the other hand, Normanists have traditionally ignored the East Slavs and their society in the ninth century. The early Vikings who came to Russia had to deal with an established and developing East Slavic society. Nevertheless, the heart of the Normanist controversy revolves around the authenticity of the "invitation" to Rurik, and this writer believes that while the chronicle account may well contain inaccuracies, it probably contains more than just a few grains of truth.

Political History

The political history of the Kievan state can be conveniently divided into several periods, which are based on the reigns of the Kievan grand princes listed below:

Rurik, ca. 860-879

Oleg, 879-912

Igor, 913-945

Olga (as regent), 945-964

Svyatoslav I, 964-972

Yaropolk I, 972-980

Vladimir I, 980-1015

Svyatopolk I, 1015-1019

Yaroslav the Wise, 1019-1054

Mstislav (coruler), 1024-1036

Izyaslav I, 1054-1078

Vsevolod, 1078-1093

Svyatopolk II, 1093-1113

Vladimir II Monomakh, 1113-1125

Mstislav, 1125-1132

Yaropolk II, 1132-1139

The first period encompasses the reign of Rurik in Novgorod. Perhaps the most notable event came when two of his followers, Askold and Dir, left Rurik, went south down the Dnieper, seized control of Kiev, and from there led the first Russian attack on Constantinople in 860. The Kievan state thus possessed two major centers from its very inception: Novgorod in the north and Kiev in the south.

The second period began soon after Rurik's death when his kinsman and successor, Oleg, moved south, invaded Kiev, killed Askold and Dir, and made Kiev the capital in 882. Having united Novgorod and Kiev under one ruler, Oleg initiated two major developments that were to characterize the period until Svyatoslav's death in 972. The first was the conquest of the East Slavic tribes and their conversion into tribute-paying subjects of the Kievan prince. This bloody struggle lasted until the late tenth century and saw the Kievan princes forcibly put down strong opposition and repeated revolts. By the time of Vladimir I, almost all East Slavs had been incorporated into the Kievan state.

As the Kievan state expanded, its early leaders sought to establish an active trade with Byzantium. Following the example of Askold and Dir, Oleg and Igor launched attacks upon Constantinople in 907 and 941-944 in order to force Byzantium to grant favorable trading conditions. It was Svyatoslav I, however, who had the most ambitious plans in this regard. Abandoning a highly successful campaign along the Volga in which he had destroyed the Khazar empire, Svyatoslav invaded Bulgaria at the request of Byzantium. Once established there, he announced his intentions to transfer his capital from Kiev to the Danube delta. But these plans had to be abandoned when the now alarmed Byzantines defeated Svyatoslav in 971. On his return journey to Kiev, Svyatoslav was killed (972) by the Pechenegs and his skull made into a drinking cup. With his death the days of the great Viking-like overseas expeditions came to an end.

The third period, an era of internal consolidation and development, is sometimes considered the high point of the entire Kievan era. Led by such famous grand princes as Vladimir, who introduced Christianity to the people of Kiev (988-989), and Yaroslav the Wise, the Kievan rulers concentrated on the establishment of those customs, practices, and institutions that came to characterize Kievan society. The basic problem faced by the grand princes of this period was how to unite and govern the vast lands and heterogeneous peoples that had been added to the Kievan state during the previous century.

While struggling to create a sound foundation for Kievan society, these grand princes also had to face a new and persistent threat from the Turkic nomads of the Russian-Ukrainian steppe: the collapse of the Khazar empire had left Kiev exposed to these Asian nomads. Seeking slaves and booty, the Pechenegs became a major danger during the tenth century. Despite the success of some of their raids, the grand princes of this period were able to contain the nomadic threat. Vladimir built a distant early warning system along the southern frontiers of Rus, and Yaroslav decisively defeated the Pechenegs in 1036. At the same time, relations with the Turkic nomads were not always hostile. These nomads acted as intermediaries in trade with the south and served as auxiliaries in the Rus armies; their leaders even intermarried with the Rus princely families. Nevertheless, the danger from the steppes became very real in the late tenth century.

After Svyatoslav's death, a protracted war of succession ensued among his sons, from which Vladimir I eventually emerged victorious around 980. During the first years of his reign, the chroniclers describe Vladimir as a staunch supporter of paganism as well as a lecherous prince who kept at least 800 concubines. Nevertheless, it was Vladimir who converted Rus to Orthodox Christianity. Christianity, however, had first appeared in Rus about a century earlier, and Vladimir's grandmother, Grand Princess Olga, was the most famous convert (ca. 955). Regrettably, the available sources do not explain why paganism proved unsatisfactory or why Orthodox Christianity was selected to become the new state religion. They simply tell of representatives of Islam, Judaism, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodoxy visiting Kiev and Rus representatives being sent abroad to obtain a firsthand look at these religions. Around 988 Vladimir I sent Rus mercenaries to help the Byzantine emperor Basil II (d. 1025), in exchange for his sister Anna's hand in marriage. When Basil failed to keep the bargain, Vladimir captured the Byzantine city of Tauric Chersonese (Chersonesus; modern Kherson) in the Crimea. He kept Chersonese until Basil's sister arrived, after which he converted, married Anna, returned Chersonese to the emperor, and went back to Kiev, where he began to convert his subjects by force. With the spread of Orthodox Christianity, Byzantine ideas and practices in music, art, architecture, literature, law, philosophy, political theory, and education took root in Rus.

Vladimir may well have decided that only one of the prophetic religions could provide the unifying force for his diverse realm. In such a case, the close trade ties with Byzantium, which went back almost a century, made Orthodoxy the natural choice. There was one problem, however. The subordination of the head of the Rus church, the metropolitan, to the head of the Byzantine church, the patriarch, provided the emperor with an opportunity to use religion to influence Kievan secular affairs. This difficulty was not readily resolved, and continued until the reign of Yaroslav (d. 1054).

Following Vladimir's death, his sons fought the second protracted war of succession. After the Battle of Listven in 1024, the two remaining contenders, Yaroslav and Mstislav, divided the Kievan state along the Dnieper, with Yaroslav ruling the right bank and northern Rus while Mstislav ruled the left bank and Tmutarakan. When Mstislav died in 1036 without an heir, Yaroslav became grand prince of a reunited Kievan Rus.

Yaroslav's reign as undisputed grand prince (1036-1054) was one of the most brilliant periods in the entire history of Kievan Rus. The Pechenegs were soundly beaten, the famous cathedrals of St. Sophia in Kiev and Novgorod were built, learning and education were strongly encouraged, and the codification of Rus's first written law code, the Russkaya Pravda, was begun. There is no doubt that Kiev under Yaroslav was one of the most advanced capitals of Europe.

While Yaroslav fostered the spread of Byzantine culture and art, he simultaneously fought to maintian the rights of Rus vis-à-vis Byzantium. In 1043, for example, commercial conflicts with Byzantium led him to launch the last Rus attack on Constantinople. Although a Byzantine-appointed metropolitan reached Kiev in 1039, the problem of religious subordination was not settled, and in 1051 Yaroslav temporarily appointed his own choice, the Rus Ilarion, as metropolitan. Although Yaroslav was not completely successful in dealing with Byzantium, he clearly ranks as one of the greatest grand princes of Kiev.

The death of Yaroslav inaugurated the fourth period, a time in which Rus was beset by two great problems. In the mid eleventh century the Polovtsy/Cumans replaced the Pechenegs as rulers of the steppe. From this time until the early thirteenth century, the Polovtsy raided the Kievan lands periodically and, as often as not, defeated the Rus armies. The danger from the steppe was exacerbated by the increasing political disunity within Rus. In an attempt to avert the bloody civil wars that had followed the deaths of Svyatoslav and Vladimir, Yaroslav, on his deathbed, drew up a plan for dividing political power among his sons. Soon after his death, however, a new struggle for the succession erupted. In this struggle the power of the grand prince in Kiev was slowly eroded. Members of the princely family increasingly saw themselves as autonomous local rulers rather than as the grand prince's local representatives. Few princes respected the lands of their rivals, and Polovtsian auxiliaries were frequently used to destroy the lands of these rivals. Attempts by the Rus princes to restore stability at several peace conferences failed. Thus, the period after Yaroslav was characterized by the decline of the grand princely power, the growth of powerful but competing local interests, and incessant Polovtsian raids.

These centrifugal trends and the constant nomadic raids were temporarily halted by Vladimir II Monomakh (d. 1125) and his sons. Their reigns thus represent the fifth period in Kievan history. Monomakh, who was already famous for his victories over the Polovtsians, was selected in 1113 as grand prince in order to heal the violent social conflicts that erupted after his predecessor's death. His reforms eliminated the worst abuses and, despite the brevity of his reign, he was the last great grand prince of Kiev. While Mstislav (1125-1132) was able to preserve the stability and unity created by his father, the reign of Yaropolk II brought the resurgence of local interests and the renewed weakening of central authority. This time no Kievan prince was able to reverse the centrifugal trends.

The sixth and final period in Kievan history encompasses the century before the Mongol conquest and was distinguished by the breakdown of the Kievan state into several virtually independent principalities. The number of principalities varied because emerging cities within a principality constantly attempted to assert their independence and strong princes almost always sought to conquer weaker neighboring principalities.

Kiev, now the capital of one such principality, was constantly threatened by the neighboring rulers of the Chernigov, Galician-Volynian, and Suzdal principalities. As a result, the princes of Kiev tended to wield very limited power for short periods of time. The political decline of Kiev can be compared with the growing political power of Suzdal in the upper Volga region. Under such men as Yuri Dolgoruki (Long Arm, d. 1157), Andrei Bogoliubskii (1157-1174), and Vsevolod Bolshoe Gnezdo (Big Nest, 1177-1212), the Suzdal princes sought to assert their independence from both townsmen and boyars within their domain while extending their power eastward into the Volga Bulgar lands, northwestward into the Novgorod lands, and southwestward toward Kiev.

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Novgorod exploited the breakdown of Kiev's power to create its own form of self-rule. The prince here was not hereditary, as elsewhere, but a military commander who served at the pleasure of the city assembly (veche). At the same time, oligarchs and townspeople fought for control of the veche. Novgorod also emerged as the chief center for Rus's Baltic trade, for it was there that German and Rus merchants met to exchange their goods. Kiev, Suzdal, and Novgorod typify the diversity found within Kievan Rus during its last century.

The constant conflicts among the Russian principalities made them prey to foreign attacks. Enemies such as the Polovtsians, Hungarians, Poles, and Germans, however, were never able to conquer the Russian lands. Thus, the Russian princes were completely unprepared for the Mongol invasion of 1236-1240, even though the Mongol victory over a group of Russian princes at the Battle of the Kalka River in 1223 should have served as a warning. The Mongols conquered one by one the Russian principalities, which never seriously attempted a united resistance. The Kievan period now gave way to the era of Mongol rule.

Kievan Society and Economy

Numerous efforts have been made to categorize or label Kievan society. Many Soviet scholars, for example, have tried since the early 1930's to demonstrate that Kievan Rus was feudal. They argue that its predominantly agricultural economy was characterized by large estates worked by an enserfed peasantry, and they expressly reject the views of pre-Revolutionary scholars who emphasized the importance of foreign trade and slave labor. No label yet suggested for Kievan society is completely satisfactory. The Kievan period lasted for four centuries and the Kievan lands stretched from the steppe to the Arctic and from Poland to the western Urals. Furthermore, the population of the Kievan state included a variety of ethnic groups at different stages of development and with divergent social patterns. No one label can possibly describe such a diverse society accurately. Consequently, it would be better to abandon the effort to find some single, all-encompassing term and instead focus upon the diversity within the Kievan socioeconomic structure.

The overwhelming majority of the people were peasants. Because of the paucity of sources, the relative importance of slash-and-burn agriculture, as opposed to some form of crop rotation, is not clear. There is also a lack of precise information on the nature of the basic social unit; the commune, the extended family, and the nuclear family all have their advocates. Nevertheless, the life of the average peasant was probably governed more than anything else by the fact that primitive implements, traditional methods, and little fertilizer led to very low grain yields. The peasants lived most of the time at subsistence level, with barely enough to feed themselves and their few animals (domestic animals such as cattle and pigs were also raised). As a result, the peasantry was always very dependent upon the surrounding forest for its survival. The forest supplied wood for homes, implements, and warmth, as well as the animals needed for meat and pelts. Animal skins could also be exchanged for other goods. The abundant fish from forest streams and the many berries and mushrooms from the woods provided other sources of food that were often more reliable than subsistence farming. Given this situation, it is misleading to debate, as some have done, whether agriculture or forest products were more important in Kievan society. Both were essential for the peasant. In addition, this dual dependence on forest and farm meant that peasants settled in small numbers over large areas, creating a land-intensive, low-density way of life.

In the ninth century most East Slavs belonged to an unstratified agrarian society whose members dwelt in small, scattered villages. Within this society new groups began to emerge. The end of Khazar-Arab hostilities in the Caucasus led to the growth of Islamic trade with eastern Europe, a trade in which furs and slaves from eastern Europe were exchanged for Islamic silver coins (dirhams). It was this trade, centered in Khazaria and Volga Bulgaria along the Volga, that attracted the Vikings to Russia. Seeking the source of these dirhams, Viking merchant-marauders, along with East Slavic and other traders, soon established regular contact with Islamic merchants. To obtain the furs and slaves they needed, these merchant-raiders began to demand tribute in furs from the native population and to kidnap prospective slaves from nontributary peoples. Since these warrior-merchants were militarily superior, they gradually established their domination over the indigenous inhabitants. Thus, a multinational ruling group of merchant-warriors whose life was based on trade and whose centers were fortified towns slowly emerged within Rus.

Kievan Rus thus began with a dual socioeconomic structure: the vast majority of peasants living in scattered hamlets and the small, heterogeneous ruling group of the towns who monopolized foreign trade. During the next century or so, this pattern remained basically unchanged, although some alterations occurred. The establishment of the capital at Kiev led to an active trade with Byzantium, a trade that soon rivaled the older Eastern commerce along the Volga. As time went on, the conquered East Slavs and other subjects of the grand princes changed from tributaries into taxpayers, and a network of local governors collected taxes in local centers. Towns slowly began to develop as places of safety in wartime, as markets for international commerce and local trade, and as centers of political-administrative and ecclesiastical power. These emergent cities consisted of two main areas: the citadel or kremlin, usually located on a high, easily protected spot and serving as the residence of the prince and his retinue; and the commercial region, or posad, located outside the kremlin and containing the workshops and dwellings of merchants, artisans, and workers.

During the eleventh century, major changes began to take place in Kievan society. Rus trade with the Near East and Byzantium was temporarily disrupted because of the collapse of the Khazar state, the cessation of the influx of Islamic silver into eastern Europe, the Polovtsian conquest of the steppe, and the weakening of Byzantium. While Rus trade with the south continued, Novgorod's growing commerce with the Baltic gained in importance. By the early thirteenth century, Novgorod had concluded its first written agreement with the German merchants of the Baltic, and Smolensk had developed an active trade with the Baltic via the Western Dvina River and Riga.

Internally, the eleventh century marked the appearance of private property in land. The origins, extent, and significance of large private estates form one of the most controversial topics in Kievan history. This controversy will probably never be resolved, because the few sources of the time generally ignore this phenomenon and focus on political events. Furthermore, contemporaries never explained the meaning of various key terms used in the several documents that do deal with the problem. In any event, it appears that princely landholding dates from the eleventh century. Soon after, members of the princely retinues (boyars) and the church began to acquire estates. As already indicated, many Soviet scholars maintain that these estates were feudal in nature. This interpretation is not convincing, because recent scholarship, both Soviet and Western, has shown that many peasants preserved their freedom until the Muscovite era. The collection of taxes from these free peasants has apparently been confused with the extraction of manorial dues from serfs.

Recent research also suggests that private property was not as extensive as once thought, that it came from virgin forest rather than already occupied peasant land, and that these estates were worked not by serfs but by slaves and various semifree peoples who had special obligations to a landowner. Furthermore, large estates were primarily devoted to raising livestock rather than to producing food; princes, boyars, and the church obtained food primarily through taxes, legal fees, and subsistence payments to officials, all made in kind by free peasant taxpayers.

The picture of late Kievan society that emerges, while not clear in all details, contains great diversity in the lower stratum. Most people were still free peasants. Besides slaves, there were apparently an increasing number of semifree people who had become dependents. The slaves and dependents apparently provided the labor on the private estates.

The ruling groups were still very involved in trade, as can be seen in Novgorod, but the share of their total income derived from taxes and from their private estates was increasing. The merchant-marauders of the earlier period, who were all completely slavicized by now, had divided into professional merchants and members of the governing class. The retinue of the early princes was the nucleus for the boyar class, the medieval Russian parallel of the Western nobility. The boyars, however, did not possess fiefs, and thus had no service obligation to a prince or other lord. Boyars served princes for as long as was mutually convenient, and when they received land as a reward, it was in the form of an allod. Thus, the original trader-warrior group now contained a vast spectrum of merchants, princes, and boyars comparable with the many gradations of peasants.

This growing diversity of Kievan society was also manifested in the towns. In them a large number of artisans and workshops produced a growing variety and number of goods; potters and smiths supplied everyday needs, and highly specialized craftsmen such as jewelers catered to a more limited market. These artisans challenged the power of the princes and boyars within the towns, and more than once an unpopular prince was replaced by the town assembly (veche), and hated boyars had their houses looted and were forced to flee.

In conclusion, no single term can adequately comprehend all the heterogeneous elements in Kievan society or describe the diversity of the economy. "Serfdom" and "feudalism" are not appropriate terms for Kievan Rus. Unfortunately, no one has yet come up with a label or term that is acceptable.


-- Thomas S. Noonan

FURTHER READINGS

Bibliographies

Among basic reference and bibliographic works, the following should be noted: Stephan M. Horak, comp., Russia, the USSR, and Eastern Europe: A Bibliographic Guide to English Language Publications 1964-1974 (1978); Paul L. Horecky, ed., Basic Russian Publications: An Annotated Bibliography on Russia and the Soviet Union (1962); Charles Morley, Guide to Research in Russian History (1951). Among the more specialized bibliographies is Peter A. Crowther, comp., A Bibliography of Works in English on Early Russian History to 1800 (1969).


Current American publications can be found in The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (1956-). Current western European works are treated in the European Bibliography of Soviet, East European, and Slavonic Studies, the first volume of which covered 1975.

See also the Bolshaia sovetskaya entsiklopedia, 30 vols., 3rd ed. (1970-1976), for which an English translation has been published: The Great Soviet Encyclopedia; and The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, 15 vols. to date.

Sources

The single most important source for the Kievan period is the Povest vremennykh let, or Tale of Bygone Years, often referred to in English as the Russian Primary Chronicle or the Nestor Chronicle. The Povest covers the time up to the early twelfth century and appears in two versions called the Hypathian and Laurentian. For a useful English version, see Samuel H. Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzer, eds. and trans., The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text (1953). Another chronicle which covers the Kievan era is The Nikonian Chronicle: From the Beginning to 1240, 2 vols., Serge A. and Betty Jean Zenkovsky, eds. and trans. (1984).

The period from the early twelfth century to the Mongol conquest is covered in continuations of both versions of the Povest. The continuation of the Hypathian version for the years 1118-1200 has been translated by Lisa Lynn Heinrich as The Kievan Chronicle (1978). A further continuation covering the period from 1201 to 1292 has recently been translated by George A. Perfecky, The Hypathian Codex, Part Two: The Galician-Volynian Chronicle (1973). One of the many chronicles of Novgorod and Pskov was translated by Robert Michell and Nevill Forbes as The Chronicle of Novgorod, 1016-1471 (1914).

The law codes, trade treaties, donative charters, and other documents of the Kievan period, while not numerous, form an invaluable source of information. The most important of these materials have been collected together in the first two volumes of the series Pamiatniki russkogo prava, I, Pamiatniki prava Kievskogo gosudarstva, X-XII vv. (1952), and II, Pamiatniki prava feodal'no razdroblennoi Rusi, XII-XV vv. (1953). The Russkaya Pravda has been translated into English by George Vernadsky in Medieval Russian Laws (1947; repr. 1955, 1969), 26-56.

Various non-Russian sources contain information on Kievan Russia: the Byzantine Constantine Porphyrogenitos, De administrando imperio, Gyula Moravcsik, ed., R. J. H. Jenkins, trans., 2 vols. (1962-1967); the Islamic Hudud al-'Alam, The Regions of the World: A Persian Geography 372 A.H.-982 A.D., V. Minorsky, trans. (1937, 2nd ed. 1970), and A History of Sharvan and Darband in the 10th-11th Centuries, V. Minorsky, trans. (1958); and the western European Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, Francis J. Tscham, trans. (1959); Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla; or, The Lives of the Norse Kings (various translations); The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, James A. Brundage, trans. (1961); and The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, Jerry C. Smith and William L. Urban, trans. (1977).

Various non-Russian sources describe the Mongol conquest of Russia and its immediate aftermath. For the Chinese sources see E. Brettschneider, Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources, I (repr. 1967). The basic Islamic sources are Ata Malik Juvaini, The History of the World Conqueror, J. A. Boyle, trans., 2 vols. (1958); and Rashid ad-Din, The Successors of Genghis Khan, J. A. Boyle, trans. (1971). The best-known western European sources are found in Christopher Dawson, ed., The Mongol Mission (1955), and R. A. Skelton, et al., eds., The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation (1965).

Literary and religious sources provide important information about many aspects of Kievan life often neglected by chronicles and charters: the twelfth-century epic poem The Song of Igor's Campaign, Vladimir Nabokov, trans. (1960), although its authenticity and dating have been questioned; "The Narrative, Passion, and Encomium of Boris and Gleb," trans. by Marvin Kantor in Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes (1983); and the Life of St. Theodosius, in G. P. Fedotov, ed., A Treasury of Russian Spirituality (1965), 11-49.

Many excellent collections of excerpts from sources of the Kievan period are available in different languages. For English works with excerpts from sources of the Kievan era, see Basil Dmytryshyn, ed., Medieval Russia: A Source Book, 900-1700 (1967, 2nd ed. 1973), 3-113; George Vernadsky, Sr., ed., A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917, I, Early Times to the Late Seventeenth Century (1972), 3-46, 61-64, 69-71; Serge A. Zenkovsky, ed., Medieval Russia's Epics, Chronicles, and Tales, rev. ed. (1974), 41-211, 249-255.

Studies

A good exposition of the Ukrainian approach to the Kievan era can be found in Michael Hrushevsky, A History of Ukraine (1941), 20-122. Single-volume studies of the Kievan era include B. Grekov, Kiev Rus, Y. Sdobnikov, trans., Dennis Ogden, ed. (1959); B. A. Rybakov, Early Centuries of Russian History, John Weir, trans. (1965); George Vernadsky, Kievan Russia (1948). The origins of the East Slavs and their early history are treated in Marija Gimbutas, The Slavs (1971).

The number of works dealing with the origins and early history of the Kievan state is enormous. The spectrum of opinion regarding these controversial problems is reflected in T. J. Arne, La Suède et l'Orient (1914); Imre Boba, Nomads, Northmen, and Slavs: Eastern Europe in the Ninth Century (1967); Nora Chadwick, The Beginnings of Russian History (1946); H. R. Ellis Davidson, The Viking Road to Byzantium (1976); Gerhard Laehr, Die Anfänge des russischen Reiches (1930); Henryk Paszkiewicz, The Origin of Russia (1954), and The Making of the Russian Nation (1963); Omeljan Pritsak, The Origin of Rus, I (1981); Ad. Stender-Petersen, Varangica (1953); Vilhelm Thomsen, The Relations Between Ancient Russia and Scandinavia and the Origins of the Russian State (1877); Alexander A. Vasiliev, The First Russian Attack on Constantinople in 860-61 (1946); George Vernadsky, Ancient Russia (1943), and The Origins of Russia (1959).

Specific aspects of Kievan history and society are examined in some detail in a variety of specialized studies: Martin Dimnik, Mikhail, Prince of Chernigov and Grand Prince of Kiev (1981), discusses the last years of the Kievan era and the early Mongol period; G. P. Fedotov, The Russian Religious Mind: Kievan Christianity (1946); John Fennell, The Crisis of Medieval Russia, 1200-1304 (1983), treats the period 1200-1240; Ellen S. Hurwitz, Prince Andrej Bogoljubskij (1980); M. W. Thompson, comp., Novogorod the Great: Excavations at the Medieval City (1967); M. N. Tikhomirov, The Towns of Ancient Rus, Y. Sdobnikov, trans., D. Svirsky, ed. (1959); Russell Zguta, Russian Minstrels (1978).

Опубликовано на Порталусе 04 сентября 2007 года

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