Kyivan Musings, Pt. I
As dawn broke upon a morning late in the spring of a year sometime near the mid-point of the first millennium AD, four royal orphans—three brothers, Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv, and their sister Lybid—found themselves approaching a placid band of water cutting across the Eurasian Steppe. Drawn by the lush beauty of the land beyond the opposite bank, they fashioned a boat and crossed the river. There they settled on the gently sloping hills rising above the river’s bank, forming a city around them. At least, so the legend goes…
The nomadic wanderers of Eastern Europe settled in the hills on the banks of the Dnipro River and founded a city in 482 AD which would become known as Kyiv, named after the eldest of the legendary founding siblings. To put this in context, Kyiv was founded a mere six years after the fall of Rome. Kyiv is old, very old.
Views of the Dnipro River in Kyiv, Ukraine by David Sercel
Kyiv became the initial powerhouse of the consolidated Slavic world, and by the ninth-century AD the mighty Kyivan Rus had grown around it, spanning five-hundred-thousand square miles from the Carpathian Mountains in the West to the Volga River in the East.
A relevant etymological note is that the word “Rus” comes from the Old Norse meaning “Seafarer” or literally “Rower.” When Viking Prince Oleg seized Kyiv in 882 AD he proclaimed it “The Mother of Rusian Cities”—meaning the mother of the cities founded by the seafaring Norsemen. This was a world built by travelers, explorers, and searchers.
Kyiv remained the center of Slavic culture, and the Eastern European Rus until it was sacked by the Mongols between November and December in the year 1240 AD.
Nearly five-hundred miles to the East, another city had grown around a wooden fort which had been consructed on the banks of the Moskva River. This city, which came to be known as Moscow, was first documented in the year 1147 AD (over six centuries after the founding of it's mother city, Kyiv—yes, that is correct, historically Kyiv is Moscow's mother).
After the fall of Kyiv in the thirteenth-century, the center of Slavic culture, and the “Rus-ian” world, shifted North and East and in the year 1283 AD the Grand Duchy of Moscow was founded by Daniel the First and served as a tributary vassal state to the Mongol Empire. Again, it is important to note that Moscow was founded under the shadow and control of the Mongol Empire—should it surprise us that there is a certain degree of insecurity, and a something-to-prove-ness implicit in the culture?
Moscow finally achieved independence in 1480 under Grand Prince Ivan the Third (nearly a thousand years after the emergence of Kyiv).
Is it any wonder that the possession of Kyiv is a historical prerequisite to any modern government wanting to claim the title of successor to the mighty Kyivan Rus and the rightful ruler of the modern Slavic world? This is far more potent than a simple and negotiable strategic concern or international posturing, and is a matter of cultural heritage, pride, and historical continuity.
Anyway, moving on...
Part II Coming Soon!
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