BOOK NOTES: New monograph deals with contest for the legacy of Kyivan Rus'

BOULDER, Colo. - The contest for the legacy of Kyivan Rus' - the core area of which approximately corresponds to the territory of present-day Ukraine - has been enmeshed in historical, cultural and political controversy for a period of more than 900 years and is still a matter of contemporary relevance. However, no scholarly monograph has been devoted to the subject, and such discussions of it as appear in general histories of Russia and in monographs and articles on Russian and East European historical, cultural, and political developments have been distorted by an uncritical Russo-centrist point of view that exclusively identifies Kyivan Rus' with modern Russia. This uncritical view has been unconditionally accepted not only by Russian scholarship, but also by most specialists of Russia in the Western scholarly community.

In the Middle Ages, from the early 10th century until 1240 with the destruction of Kyiv, Kyivan Rus' was a major European multi-ethnic country with vast territories strategically located at the crossroads between east and west, and north and south, along the Dnipro River with access to the Baltic Sea in the north and the Black Sea in the south. Members of the Kyivan Rus' dynasty married members of major dynasties of Europe, including Byzantium. Kyivan Rus' was also a center of commerce through which important trade routes ran, the famous "route from the Varangians to the Greeks" being one example. The "golden domed" capital city Kyiv - the cradle of East Slavic Christianity, accepted from Byzantium - was perceived as "the second Constantinople" and consequently assumed the status, and became a symbolic image, of the most sacred and venerable religious center of Rus'.

In his book "The Contest for the Legacy of Kyivan Rus'," the author, Prof. Jaroslaw Pelenski, shows how various competitors throughout the centuries have attempted to claim succession to Kyivan Rus'. He focuses on the origins of these claims, particularly those of Muscovy, who waged the most relentless struggle for the Kyivan legacy, as attested both in Muscovite sources and in a Russian scholarly literature permeated with ideological preconceptions, artificially construed paradigms, and even outright falsifications.

Because of its political, economic, and religious significance, Kyivan Rus' became a target for numerous competitors - Chernihivia, Suzdalia-Vladimiria, Galicia-Volynia, the Golden Horde, Lithuania, Muscovy and Poland - that succeeded for various periods of time in ruling over its territory. The legacy of Kyivan Rus' became an object of particular contention among its descendants, first of Chernihivia, Suzdalia-Vladimiria and Galicia-Volynia, and subsequently of Muscovy and the Lithuanian-Ruthenian state, and eventually of the three East Slavic peoples, the Ukrainians, the Russians and the Belarusians, with the latter conflict continuing to the present day.

By challenging established views based on rigorous analysis of sources and by providing new interpretations of the subject, the author concludes that the preponderance of existing evidence shows Ukraine to be the primary, senior and most legitimate successor to the legacy of Kyivan Rus'.

Prof. Pelenski is professor of Russian and East European history at the University of Iowa, president of the V.K. Lypynsky East European Research Institute in Philadelphia, foreign academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and director of its European Research Institute in Kyiv.

Prof. Pelenski's 325-page book, comprising 12 chapters (most of which have been previously published in scholarly journals), seven maps and 41 illustrations, has been published by the East European Monographs series of Boulder, Colo., and is distributed by the Columbia University Press. The book (ISBN 0880332743) can be ordered from the Columbia University Press, 136 South Broadway, New York, NY 10533: 1-800-944-8648. Cost: $42 plus $4.95 for shipping.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, November 8, 1998, No. 45, Vol. LXVI

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