The Gates of Europe

by Serhii Plokhy

  Dolgoruky’s rebellious son wanted none of that. He moved the capital of his principality from Suzdal to Vladimir and did his best to turn it into Kyiv on the Kliazma. Andrei did not leave Vyshhorod empty-handed. He took with him a local icon of the Mother of God (Theotokos) that later gained fame as the Vladimir Mother of God. The removal of a religious relic from the Kyiv region to Vladimir is a perfect metaphor for Bogoliubsky’s transfer of the symbolic power of the Rus’ capital from south to north. That Kyiv served as the seat of the metropolitan of all Rus’ enhanced its importance. Andrei, who had never considered his realm part of the Rus’ Land, wanted a metropolitanate of his own. Around 1162, seven years before the sack of Kyiv, he sent an embassy to Constantinople asking permission to install his own candidate as a new metropolitan. He was rebuffed—a major disappointment for the ambitious ruler, who had already made all the necessary preparations for the establishment of a metropolitan see. The newly built Golden-Domed Dormition Cathedral, not unlike the Golden-Domed Cathedral of St. Michael in Kyiv, was intended for a metropolitan but eventually housed a bishop.

  Andrei Bogoliubsky’s other project with unquestionable Kyivan roots was the building of a Golden Gate. Both the cathedral and the Golden Gate are still standing and serve as reminders of the Vladimir prince’s ambitions. Like Yaroslav the Wise before him, Andrei emulated the existing imperial capital so as to assert his independence of it. Interestingly enough, Andrei’s emulation went further than Yaroslav’s: he not only transferred icons, ideas, and names for his architectural projects from Kyiv to Vladimir but also gave Kyivan names to local landmarks. That accounts for the naming of rivers in the environs of Vladimir after their Kyivan prototypes: Lybid, Pochaina, and Irpin.

  Yaroslav the Wise and Andrei Bogoliubsky were both Rus’ princes and probably shared a similar ethnocultural identity, but their construction projects show that they had different loyalties when it came to the Rus’ lands. Yaroslav had a clear loyalty to Kyiv and to his vast realm extending from that city to Novgorod, which set him apart from Sviatoslav, who had no such bond, and Volodymyr Monomakh, whose primary allegiance was to the Rus’ Land around Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Pereiaslav. Andrei differed from his predecessors in his attachment to his own patrimony within the larger Rus’ realm. We should consider these changing loyalties of the Rus’ princes in the context of the development of multiple Rus’ identities as they emerge from the pages of the Rus’ chronicles and legal texts.

  The authors of the Primary Chronicle (the laborious task of recording events and commenting on them passed from one generation of monks to another) had to reconcile three different historical identities in their narrative: the Rus’ identity of the Scandinavian rulers of Kyiv, the Slavic identity of the educated elites, and local tribal identity. While the Kyivan rulers and their subjects adopted the name Rus’, the Slavic identity associated with that name, not the Scandinavian one, became the basis of their self-identification. Most subjects of the Rurikids, who ruled their realm from the Slavic heartland, were Slavs. More importantly, the dissemination of Slavic identity beyond the Kyiv region was closely associated with the acceptance of Christianity from Byzantium and the introduction of Church Slavonic as the language of the liturgy, sermons, and intellectual discourse of Rus’. Christianity appeared in both the Slavic and non-Slavic parts of the Kyivan realm in the garb of Slavic languages and Slavic culture. The more Rus’ became Christian, the more it turned Slavic as well. The Kyivan chroniclers incorporated local history into the broader context of the development of the Balkan Slavs and, more broadly still, into the history of Byzantium and world Christendom.

  On the local level, tribal identity gave way slowly but surely to identification with local principalities—the centers of military, political, and economic power associated with Kyiv. Chronicle references to the lands surrounding princely towns replaced references to indigenous tribes. Thus, the chronicler refers to the army that sacked Kyiv in 1169 as consisting of people from Smolensk instead of Radimichians, residents of Suzdal instead of Viatichians or Meria, and natives of Chernihiv instead of Siverians. There was a sense of the unity of all the lands under the rule of the Kyivan rulers, and despite conflicts and wars between Rurikid princes, the inhabitants of those lands were considered “ours,” as opposed to foreigners and pagans. The key issue was recognition of the authority of the Rus’ princes, and when some of the Turkic steppe nomads accepted that authority, they became referred to as “our pagans.”

  The political and administrative unification of the diverse tribal territories entailed the standardization of their social structure. At its very top were the princes of the Rurikid dynasty, more specifically the descendants of Yaroslav the Wise. Under them were members of the princely retinue—originally Vikings but also increasing numbers of Slavs who merged with local tribal elites to form the aristocratic stratum called the boyars. They were warriors, but in times of peace they administered the realm. The boyars were the main landholding class, and depending on the principality, they had greater or lesser influence on the actions of the prince. Church hierarchs and their servants were also among the privileged.

  The rest of the population paid taxes to the princes. The townspeople, who included merchants and artisans, had some political power that they exercised at town meetings, where they decided matters of local governance. Occasionally, as in Kyiv, or quite regularly, as in Novgorod, such meetings influenced the succession of local princes. The peasants, who accounted for most of the population, had no political power. They were divided into free peasants and semifree serfs. The latter could lose their freedom, usually because of debts, and reclaim it once they had paid their debts off or after a certain period. Then there were the slaves—warriors or peasants captured in the course of military campaigns. The enslavement of warriors could be temporary, but that of peasants was permanent.

  The penalties for different crimes set forth in the Rus’ Justice, the legal code, best demonstrate the hierarchical structure of Kyivan Rus’ society. As the lawgivers sought to abolish or limit blood feuds and fill princely coffers, they introduced monetary penalties to be paid to the princely treasury for killing different categories of people. The penalty for killing a member of the princely retinue or household (boyars) was eighty hryvnias; a freeman in the princely service, forty hryvnias; a tradesman, twelve hryvnias; a serf or a slave, five hryvnias; but it was quite legal to kill a slave if he had hit a free man. While different regions of Kyivan Rus’ had diverse customary laws, the introduction of a common legal code helped make the realm more homogeneous, as did the spread of Christianity and Church Slavonic culture emanating from Kyiv. It would appear that this process was gaining ground just as the political fragmentation of the Kyivan realm was becoming all but inevitable: the explosion in the number of Rurikid princes who wanted their own principalities, the vastness of Kyivan realm, and the diverse geostrategic and economic interests of its regions all undermined a polity that managed, for a period, to unite the lands between the Baltic and Black Seas.

  The change in the geopolitical aims of the Kyivan princes, from Yaroslav the Wise to Andrei Bogoliubsky, reflects the reduction of their political loyalties from the entire realm of Kyivan Rus’ to a number of principalities defined by the term “Rus’ Land” and eventually to peripheral principalities that grew strong enough to rival Kyiv in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Historians look to those principality-based identities for the origins of the modern East Slavic nations. The Vladimir-Suzdal principality served as a forerunner of early modern Muscovy and, eventually, of modern Russia. Belarusian historians look to the Polatsk principality for their roots. And Ukrainian historians study the principality of Galicia-Volhynia to uncover the foundations of Ukrainian nation-building projects. But all those identities ultimately lead back to Kyiv, which gives Ukrainians a singular advantage: they can search for their origins without ever leaving their capital.

  Chapter 6

  Pax Mongolic
a

  Kyivan Rus’, a polity with no generally recognized date of birth, has a definite date of death. It occurred on December 7, 1240, when yet another wave of invaders from the Eurasian steppes, the Mongols, conquered the city of Kyiv.

  In many ways, the Mongol invasion of Rus’ marked the return of the steppe as the dominant force in the region’s politics, economy, and, to some extent, culture. It put an end to the independence of the forest-based polities and societies united for a time within the boundaries of Kyivan Rus’ and their ability to maintain ties with the Black Sea littoral (primarily the Crimea) and the larger Mediterranean world. The Mongols turned back the clock to the times of the Khazars, Huns, Sarmatians, and Scythians, when steppe polities controlled the hinterland and benefited from trade routes to the Black Sea ports. But the Mongols were a much more formidable military force than any of their predecessors, who had managed at best to dominate the western part of the Eurasian steppe, usually from the Volga basin in the east to the Danube estuary in the west. The Mongols, at least initially, controlled all of it, from the Amur River and the steppes of Mongolia in the east to the Danube and the Hungarian plain in the west. They established the Pax Mongolica, a Mongol-controlled conglomerate of dependencies and semidependencies of which the Rus’ lands became a peripheral but important part.

  The arrival of the Mongols ended the illusion of the political unity of the Kyivan realm and put an end to the very real ecclesiastical unity of the Rus’ lands. The Mongols recognized two main centers of princely rule in Rus’: the principalities of Vladimir-Suzdal in today’s Russia and Galicia-Volhynia in central and western Ukraine. Constantinople followed suit, dividing the Rus’ metropolitanate into two parts. The political and ecclesiastical unity of the Kyiv-centered Rus’ Land had disintegrated. The Galician and Vladimirian princes were now busy building Rus’ lands of their own in their home territories. Although they claimed the same name, “Rus’,” the two principalities followed very different geopolitical trajectories. Both had inherited their dynasties from Kyiv, which was also their source of Rus’ law, literary language, and religious and cultural traditions. Both found themselves under alien Mongol rule. But the nature of their dependence on the Mongols differed.

  In the lands of what is now Russia, ruled from Vladimir, the Mongol presence lasted until the end of the fifteenth century and eventually became known as the “Tatar yoke,” named after Turkic-speaking tribes that had been part of the Mongol armies and stayed in the region after the not very numerous Mongols left. The view of Mongol rule as extremely long and severely oppressive has been a hallmark of traditional Russian historiography and continues to influence the interpretation of that period of eastern European history as a whole. In the twentieth century, however, proponents of the Eurasian school of Russian historical writing challenged this negative attitude toward Mongol rule. The history of the Mongol presence in Ukrainian territory provides additional correctives to the traditional condemnation of the “Tatar yoke.” In Ukraine, ruled by the Galician and Volhynian princes, the Mongols were less intrusive and oppressive than they were in Russia. Their rule was also of shorter duration, effectively over by the mid-fourteenth century. This difference would have a profound impact on the fates of the two lands and the people who settled them.

  The sudden Mongol rise to world prominence began in the steppes of present-day Mongolia in 1206, when Temujin, a local tribal leader and commander, united a number of tribal confederations and assumed the title of khan of the Mongol hordes. Genghis Khan, as Temujin became known after his death, spent most of his first decade as supreme ruler of the Mongols fighting the Chinese, whose lands were the first he incorporated into his rapidly expanding empire. The next big prize was Central Asia, west of China on the Silk Road. Bukhara, Samarkand, and Kabul were all in Mongol hands by 1220. The Polovtsians and the Volga Bulgars were next, defeated (along with some Rus’ princes) by 1223. At this time, the Mongols also invaded the Crimea and took the fortress of Sudak, one of the key commercial centers on the Silk Road that was then part of the Polovtsian realm.

  Before his death in 1227, Genghis Khan divided his realm among his sons and grandsons. The western lands, which then included Central Asia and the steppes east of the Volga, went to two of his grandsons. One of them, Batu Khan, was dissatisfied with his inheritance and pushed the borders of his realm farther west. That push became known as the Mongol invasion of Europe. In 1237 the Mongols besieged and took Riazan on the eastern frontier of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality. Vladimir, the principality’s capital, fell in early February 1238. When its defenders took their last stand at the Dormition Cathedral built by Andrei Bogoliubsky, the Mongols set it on fire. Towns that defended themselves with particular determination were massacred wholesale. That was the case in Kozelsk, which fell after a siege of seven weeks. The Rus’ princes resisted the Mongol onslaught as best they could, but, divided and disorganized, they were no match for the highly mobile and well-coordinated Mongol cavalry.

  As the Mongols approached Kyiv in November 1240, their huge army made a dreadful impression on the defenders. “And nothing could be heard above the squeaking of his carts, the bawling of his [Batu’s] innumerable camels, and the neighing of his herds of horses, and the Land of Rus’ was full of enemies,” wrote the chronicler. When the Kyivans refused to surrender, Batu brought in catapults to destroy the city walls, built of stones and logs in the times of Yaroslav the Wise. The citizens rushed to the Dormition Cathedral, the first stone church built by Volodymyr to celebrate his baptism. But the weight of the people and their belongings proved too heavy for the walls, which collapsed, burying the refugees. St. Sophia Cathedral survived but, like other city churches, was robbed of its precious icons and vessels. The victors pillaged the city; the few survivors remained in terror in the ruins of the once magnificent capital whose rulers had aspired to rival Constantinople. Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, an ambassador of Pope Innocent IV who passed through Kyiv in February 1246 on his way to the Mongol khan, left the following description of the consequences of the Mongol attack on the Kyiv Land: “When we were journeying through that land, we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground.”

  Kyiv suffered a deadly blow from the Mongol assault and would not recover its former importance and prosperity for centuries. But the population of the Kyiv and Pereiaslav lands did not abandon the region altogether and did not move to the Volga and Oka basins, as some Russian scholars suggested in the nineteenth century. If the dwellers of the Kyiv Land had to flee the steppe borderlands, they had plenty of opportunity to find safe haven closer to home, in the forests of northern Ukraine along the Prypiat and Desna Rivers. Not incidentally, the oldest Ukrainian dialects were spoken in the Prypiat forests and the foothills of the Carpathians—areas shielded from nomadic attacks by woodlands, marshes, and mountainous terrain.

  By the time Kyiv fell to the Mongols, it no longer reigned over others but was itself ruled by outsiders. The head of the city’s defenses, a military commander named Dmytro, owed allegiance to Prince Danylo (Daniel), ruler of Galicia and Volhynia in present-day western Ukraine. Prince Danylo had taken the Rus’ capital under his protection the previous year by arrangement with Prince Mykhailo of Kyiv, who fled after originally resisting the Mongols, then losing to them his main stronghold, the city of Chernihiv, and eventually the will to resist.

  Danylo of Halych was a rising star of Rus’ politics. Like Genghis Khan, he had been orphaned in childhood. He was four years old in 1205 when his father, Roman, whom the chronicler calls “the autocrat of Rus’,” fell in battle with the Poles. In the previous few years, Roman, whose patrimony had originally included the principality of Volhynia, had managed to take control of the neighboring principality of Galicia, becoming the ruler of all Rus’ lands west of Kyiv. Danylo and his younger brother, Vasylko, inherited the title but not the possessions of their father. Those were contested by rival Rus’ princes, as well as by rebell
ious Galician boyars, and then by the Poles and Hungarians. Not until 1238, the year of the Mongol attack on northeastern Rus’, did Danylo finally reestablish control over both Volhynia and Galicia and install his own voevoda, or military commander, in Kyiv.

  The Mongol invasion put Danylo’s skills as a ruler and military commander to the test. More importantly, it revealed his talent as a diplomat. When the Mongol military commander demanded that Danylo turn over his capital city of Halych to the Mongols, he went to see Batu Khan in his capital, Sarai, on the Volga. It was the kind of visit other Rus’ princes had paid the khan earlier, the purpose being to pledge allegiance to the Mongols and receive the khan’s yarlyk, or conditional right to rule their principalities. “Do you drink black milk, our drink, mare’s kumis?” the khan asked Danylo, according to the Rus’ chronicler. “I have not drunk it so far. But if you so ordain, I shall drink it,” answered Danylo, showing the khan respect and obedience. In this way the chronicler metaphorically described Danylo’s submission and his initiation into the Mongol elite.

  The chronicler, critical of the very idea of Christian Rus’ princes swearing allegiance to pagan Mongol khans, described three models of their behavior vis-à-vis the Mongols. Prince Mykhailo of Chernihiv exemplified the first, which met with the chronicler’s utmost approval. Since he allegedly refused Batu’s demand to kowtow before a bush and compromise his Christian religion, he was killed on orders of the khan. Prince Yaroslav of Vladimir-Suzdal represented the second model: apostasy. He allegedly agreed to bow to the bush and thereby earned the chronicler’s condemnation. Danylo followed a third model, which involved neither complete rejection of, nor full submission to, Mongol rule. According to the chronicler, who was sympathetic to Danylo, the prince did not kneel before the bush and besmirch his Christian faith, but he drank kumis, indicating acceptance of the khan’s secular authority.