A letter to U.S. News & World Report (09/12/99)

A letter to U.S. News & World Report

The following is the text of a letter to the editor sent to U.S. News & World Report by one of The Weekly's contributors.

Dear Sir/Madam:

I picked up a copy of U.S. News & World Report's special double issue "The Year 1000" at the newsstand last week; having now read through it, I have mixed feelings.

The information covering Western Europe is generally accurate; however, when it comes to Eastern Europe, your text contains numerous distortions.

I will only cite the three most egregious:

Most disappointing is your equating "Kievan Rus" with "Russia." They are not the same thing! The medieval entity of Kievan Rus' was eventually absorbed by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Its modern day successor state is Ukraine - with its capital of Kiev. The forerunner of today's Russia, Muscovy, was not even established until the mid-12th century. It was called Muscovy until the beginning of the 18th century when Tsar Peter I changed the name to "Rossiya," but which in English is translated as Russia.

I realize there are many old textbooks and atlases, most dating back to Soviet times, that still confuse Rus' with Russia. However, I would expect a publication of your stature to have done its homework, consulted more current sources (may I suggest "The Origin of Rus' " by O. Pritsak, Harvard, 1981, or "The Emergence of Rus' ", 750-1200 by S. Franklin and J. Shepard, Longman, 1996), and been able to see past the disinformation so carefully planted by Russian historians to glorify their past. (Vernadsky, whom you site, slavishly bought into the Russian/Soviet historical myth in his writings of the 1940s and 1950s.)
In the ancient texts Vladimir is referred to as "velekyi kniaz," which translates as grand prince, not king. He neither adopted Eastern Orthodoxy nor was one of his ancestors Catholic because such ecclesiastical distinctions did not exist before the church schism of 1054. He simply became a Christian, as had his grandmother some 30 years earlier.
The term Viking refers to the adventurers who ravaged western Europe. In Eastern Europe they were referred to as Variahy (Varangians). Your text and fold-out map give the impression that it was the Vikings (really Varangians) who settled and colonized Rus' (not Russia). In fact, Eastern Europe was well populated by Slavic tribes. The Varangians (never that numerous) established themselves among the ruling elite of Kyiv and carved out a vast commercial empire (Kyivan Rus'), somewhat reminiscent of the type of trading empire set up some 800 years later in Canada by the Hudson Bay Co.

Although your aim in creating this special issue was a noble one, I must say that, on the whole, I found the effort disappointing. I now wonder whether to trust some of the statements relating to the history of areas with which I am less familiar, e.g. the Far East.

I had always considered U.S. News' writing to be better researched and less biased than the popular fluff of the other newsmagazines. I finished this issue disillusioned.

I hope that U.S. News will consider publishing an amendatory statement relating to these and any other factual errors in a future issue, or at least print some of the correction letters that are bound to flood your office.

Ingert Kuzych Ph.D.
Springfield, VA 22150

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