Kyiv4

Kyiv and Ukraine: 1764-1918

As mentioned in my earlier post, the 'heart' of Ukraine existed from 1654 to 1764 as an independent 'Hetmanate' in the Russian State.  (Polish 'Hetman', or 'Warlord', from the German 'Hauptmann'). That status ended in 1764 when Catherine II (the Great) abolished the post and rôle of Hetman.

Catherine, born Sophie in 1729, the German wife of tsar Peter III,  deposed and murdered her husband and assumed the throne as  Catherine II (1762 - 1796). Her first preoccupation was to refill the State treasury.  That  she did by expropriating the vast estates of the church. Her next ambition was to introduce political reform and intellectual enlightenment, following the best examples of Western Europe: education, consulting the nation, freeing the serfs, fostering science and the arts. But she soon realised that Russia was not ready for liberal democracy. Her power rested on the support of the nobles. Free serfs would have no livelihood. 

Catherine's next expedient was territorial expansion. Her predecessors, Empress Anna (1730-1741) and Catherine's virtual 'mother-in-law', the childless Empress Elizabeth (1741-1762), had shown the way, for the power of the Ottoman Empire to the south was diminishing. (See the map below.) 

[https://cdn.britannica.com/48/3848-050-2473BB98/russia-expansion-1300-1796.jpg ]

The land of the lower Dnipro can be called the 'right bank' (to the west) and the 'left bank' (to the east). By the Treaty of Eternal Peace (1686), right bank had been left to Poland, while the left bank + Kyiv + the land of the Zaporidsia Cossacks + people of Orthodox faith came under the suzerainty and protection of Moscow. Anna's German commander, Münnich, had reformed the army and established, in the field, that one Russian was equal to two Ottomans. He forced Moldavia to accept Russian suzerainty. Elizabeth devoted (perhaps wasted) resources combatting the Swedes and Prussian in the north west to scant effect, but in the south she gained more control over the Hetmanate on the left bank. 

On becoming Empress in 1762, Catherine II dissolved the Hetmanate. The last Hetman, (Krill Razumovsky, younger brother of Empress Elizabeth's 'partner') was retired as a Field Marshal of the Russian army. 

Catherine's own lover (Orlov, who had master-minded the coup whereby Peter III was captured and killed) was made a General, and in 1769 was put in charge of the fleet that destroyed the Turkish fleet off the coast of Anatolia.

Catherine's Russia continued to push south against the weakening Islamic powers. The Crimea was annexed in 1783, which provoked the Turks into another war, the Russo-Turkish war of 1787–1792. The Turks were again thoroughly beaten, losing control of the north coast of the Black Sea from Azov westward to the mouth of the Dniester, where Catherine II founded the city of Odessa to mark the occasion.

Three times Catherine and her allies forced the partition of Poland-Lithuania, in1772, 1793, 1795. On each occasion Poland-Lithuania lost territory to Russia and Prussia, and on two occasions to Austria as well; till in 1795 there was nothing left. 

        Catherine the Great died in 1796, and was succeeded by Tsar Paul, summarised succinctly by W.L. Langer as "a tyranical and mentally unbalanced ruler." He was assasinated (1801) in a palace coup, and replaced by his son Alexander I whose relatively liberal reign lasted till 1825.

Of course, there were plenty Poles left, and Polish- speaking Lithuanians, Belarussians and Ukranians. In the 19th century, though the population of right-bank Ukraine was mostly Ukrainian, the land was mostly owned by Poles or the Polish-speaking Ukrainian upper class. In fact, until 1825 Russian influence in the territory of modern Ukraine was largely military and bureaucratic; the culture and language was predominantly Polish or indigenous, what was called "Little Russian", or "Ruthenian" (the Latinized form of the name 'Rus'); that which we would now call Ukrainian. Education, such as it was, was given in Polish. The Ukranians were uneducated, and poor.

After the widespread uprisings in November 1830 which spread from Poland into other vassal states including West-Bank Ukraine, the Russians began a process of deliberate Russification [2].

Nevertheless, a Russian survey of the languages spoken in Kyiv in 1874 found:

Ukranian 39%

Yiddish 11%

Russian 10%

Polish 6%

German 2%

Remainder 32%

(According to the website https://translatorswithoutborders.org/languages-of-ukraine-interactive-en, the first languages in Ukraine in 2001 were:

Ukrainian 68%

Russian 30%

Romanian 0.7%

Crimean 0.5%

Hungarian 0.3%

Remainder 0.3%

The major 'second' languages spoken were Russian 36%, Ukrainian 20%, English 1.5%.)

The Pale of Settlement 

The surprisingly high number of  Yiddish speakers is worth a comment. Jews were not welcome in Moscow or the major cities like Kyiv, but were allowed to inhabit certain clearly designated areas which came to be called the "Pale of Settlement" [1] (originally west of a line or 'pale' down the western border of the Duchy of Moscow.) At the end of her reign, Catherine found the Ukrainian territory underpopulated and made several efforts to plant communities there. Specifically, Catherine sought to encourage Jews into Kyiv to trade, and Jewish farmers to farm in the underpopulated steppe lands of the conquered areas of Ukraine. 

Ukranian Nationalism

The year 1848 saw popular uprisings in 50 European countries, with varied results: in Italy, failure; in France, initial republican success followed by reactionary restoration; in Germany, exile of hot-heads; in Swden 18 casualties; in Denmark, gracious accommodation by the king; in Switzerland a new federalist constitution; in Poland, accommodation; in Romania, successful regime change.

The causes were as varied as the outcomes: discontent with absolutist monarchs, famine (potato and rye crop-failures), urbanisation and mechanisation, increasing populations, intellectual middle-class frustration and demand for more democracy. The chief link that brought all this to a head in 1848 seems to have been ideas; the idea of change, of self-determination, of nationalism. Clear examples of the rise of nationalist ideas are:- Finland, and Czechia, where the 'common' language was vastly different from the 'official' language.

The idea of Ukrainian Nationalism started in Galicia, the part of old Kyivan-Rus (or old Ukrainian Right Bank) that was granted to Austria after the Congress of Vienna (1815); perhaps because the 'common' language ('little-Russian', written in Cyrillic) was so different from Austrian German. 

A nation needs more than a distinct language; it needs a 'founding myth', its own distinctive set of  heroes, and cultural 'icons'. The Rus hero Rurik is a founder for both Ukrania and Russia, and Kyiv is an 'icon' venerated by both nations. 

It is a pity that Moscow tends so often to behaves in such a way as to alienate its neighbours . 

(The story continues; see Putin's Point of View)

REFERENCES:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement 

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification_of_Ukraine

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_nationalism

Please address comment to cawstein@gmail.com

Alexei Razumovsky

 Alexei Razumovsky

(I think this story will interest lovers of chamber music)

    In November 1741, Elizaveta Petrovna Romanova was 32 years old, active, vivacious, beautiful and intelligent, but she was poorly educated and still unmarried. She (Elizaveta, commonly known as Elizabeth in Britain) strongly resembled her father Peter I (Peter the Great) of Russia, and felt herself to be her father's natural successor. Somehow, in the 16 years since her father's death, the succession had wandered off to another branch of the family. When Peter died in 1725 title went to his widow, Elizabeth's mother, the Tsar's second wife Catherine I, till she died (in 1727); then to the 12-year-old Peter II who died 3 years later; then to Anna a daughter of Ivan V, the  older (but mentally challenged) brother of Peter I. Anna ruled for 10 years, keeping Elizabeth as far from court as possible, not least on account of her superior beauty. But in October 1740 she died, and the throne was deemed to fall to the 2 month old infant Ivan VI, with his mother and von Biron as regents. 

This nonsense clearly exasperated the 32 year old Elizabeth who decided, or was persuaded, to stage a coup. She was well known to various elite guards regiments. She is said to have presented herself, after dark, at regimental headquarters wearing an iron breast-plate over her dress. She asked if the regiment wanted to follow her, their 'natural sovereign' and Peter's daughter, or to follow her dead cousin's 2 month old son Ivan VI,  a grandson of Peter the Great's defective older brother. They chose to follow her, and marched forthwith to the Winter Palace where they imprisoned the infant Tsar, and his guardians. (The infant Ivan was not killed in Elizabeth's lifetime; but was kept in prison, as was his mother, till 1764.)

Back in May 1727, the orphaned Elizabeth, 18 year old daughter of a popular Tsar and a Lithuanian maid servant, had no prospect of inheriting the throne. Her father had betrothed her to a German princeling, but the fiancée had died in that same month of May. No one else came forward to marry her, neither Russian nor foreign. She could not marry a commoner without loosing her status and any prospect of inheriting the crown.  So she chose herself a handsome sergeant of Life Guards as a lover. Her cousin Anna promptly banished him to Siberia. Whereupon Elizabeth consoled herself with a succession of handsome footmen and coachmen. 

However, Elizabeth eventually fell in love with a Ukranian peasant serf called Aleksey Razumovsky (1709-1771) who had a lovely singing voice, and who had been brought to St. Petersburg to sing in a choir. It is said that Grand Duchess Elizabeth purchased him. Later, when she had become Empress, she also helped his much younger brother Kirill (1728-1803), first to attend Göttingen University when he was 15 yrs old and. Then, in 1746, the 18 year old Kirill was married to a second cousin of the Empress called Ekaterina Naryshkina who bore him 11 children. In 1750 Kirill was made Hetman of the Zaporizhian Host till Catherine II abolished that office in 1764, whereupon Kirill was made a Field Marshal. 

When Grand Duchess Elizabeth was crowned Empress in 1742, her handsome musical friend was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1756 Elizabeth made him a Russian Prince. The friendship between Aleksey Razumovsky and Elizaveta Petrovna Romanova lasted till the empress died (1762). 

        One of Aleksey's nephews, Andrey Kirillovich Razumovsky became Russian ambassador to Austria, was a gifted amateur musician, and commissioned 3 string quartets from Beethoven. 

Kyiv3

Kyiv's Lithuanian Period (1266-1764)

(To summarise my first Kyiv1 post [1]: in A.D. 1054, the polity called Kyivan-Rus stretched from the White Sea and the borders of  Finland to the Black Sea and the borders of Byzantium [2], while neither the town nor the duchy of Moscow existed.  In my second blog-post (Kyiv2) on the history of Ukraine [3], I followed the fate of Novgorod in the northern part of Kyivan-Rus as it became vassal first to the Mongolian Golden Horde, then fell progressively under the growing power of Moscow, up to the chaotic reign of Ivan the Terrible who died in 1588.)

Meanwhile, the western and southern parts of Kyivan-Rus were exposed to the growing power of Lithuania, which felt that it should, ethnically and logically, inherit the old territory of Scandinavian Rus. Whether that  belief was justified or not, it seems that Lithuania's approach to empire was distinctly more consensual than that of the other contemporary players on the checkers-board of Europe: the crusading Livonian and Teutonic Knights (to their west and north), the Mongols (to their south) and the Muscovites to their east. 

Thus, the independent and staunchly democratic city-state of Pskov, in the north-west corner of modern Russia, under attack from the Teutonic and Livonian Knights, in 1266 elected a Lithuanian prince (Daumantas) as their military leader, subject to the Veche or parliament. He fortified Pskov so successfully that the town withstood all attacks till 1510, when it was forcefully merged into the duchy of Moscow by the moving of hundreds of families. (As mentioned in Kyiv 2, also in Novgorod there was a significant minority that would have preferred Lithuanian rule to that of Moscow.)

In 1321, the Lithuanian duke Gediminas captured Kiev, sending Kyiv's last Rurikid ruler into exile. Forty years later (in 1362) the Lithuanians routed the the Golden Horde at the battle of Blue Waters on the Southern Bug. The Duke at that time was Algirdas, who was ably supported by his co-operative and loyal brother Kęstutis, who busily defended the western and northern borders of Lithuania against Poland and the Teutonic Knights respectively. 

Sandwiched between Catholic Poland to the west and Orthodox Russia to the east, the Dukes of Lithuania used their paganism as a diplomatic tool, alternately flirting with one, in order to alarm the other. Algirdas married twice, both times to Muscovite princesses, having 8 children by the first and 13 by the second. Again illustrating a diplomatic approach to politics, one of his sons (Prince Andrew) was elected as Prince of Pskov. 

Smolensk was attacked in 1395, and in 1403, but in 1404 it opened its gates voluntarily to the Lithuanians. 

In the generation after Algirdas, the flirting, this time with Catholic Poland, went a lot further than those two Muscovite marriages.  The empire of Poland-Hungary had found itself without a king when Louis of Anjou died in 1382 leaving only two daughters, Mary and Hedwig (Jadwiga). Mary was betrothed to Sigismund of Luxembourg, with Hungary as her dowery, while Hedwig was betrothed to an Austrian Habsburg. But a majority of the Polish lords thought they would do better if Poland were allied to Lithuania rather than Austria, and suggested Grand Duke Jogaila of Lithuania as Queen Hedwig's husband; provided he espouse also Catholicism. They were married in 1386, and Jogaila became King Władysław II of Poland (by marriage) while remaining Grand Duke of Lithuania.. This union of the two states was formalised, in 1569, by the Union of Lublin which created the enormous Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. 

The term Ukraine appears in the fifteenth century. It apparently means borderland, and describes the south east corner of Lithuania where it bordered the Islamic Ottoman territory of Crimea and south the Black Sea, and the Duchy of Moscow to the east. The political and geographic situation favoured the development of a semi-independent, semi-nomadic, multiracial, somewhat militaristic, Orthodox and Slavic-speaking culture, identified as Cossack.

The hundred years from 1555 to 1655 saw the apogee of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. In 1610 Polish cavalry defeated Russian forces, captured Moscow and took the Tsar (Vasili IV) back to Warsaw in a cage; where he was humiliated and murdered. In 1620 war with the Ottomans lost some territory to the south, and in 1626-1629 war with Sweden lost more territory to the north. Various factions arose, pro-French, pro-Habsburg. The crown seldom passed from father to son, and was often chosen by a process of election (by the nobles). Nevertheless the monarch hankered after absolutism (as was the fashion of the times).  In 1648, attempts to impose Catholicism angered Ukrainian Cossacks and led them to revolt. (It also angered protestant Sweden, and in 1655 lost Poland its control over Prussia, heralding Poland's decline as a European power.)

        When the Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky marched into Kyiv in 1648, he was greeted with joy as a liberator from the Polish yoke. But after 6 years of war with Poland, during which he was repeatedly let down by the Crimean Tartars, Khmelnytsky started negotiations with Moscow. A treaty was concluded in April 1654 in Moscow by which Cossack Zaporozhia became an autonomous Hetmanate within the Russian state (Zaporozhia means 'beyond the rapids', presumably the area down-stream, as Dnipro is north of Zaporozhia). Ukraine retained that status until Catherine II (the 'Great') of Russia abolished the Hetmanate in 1764. 

(See my continuation post Kyiv4)

References 

(General reference:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:History_of_Ukraine)

[1] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/03/kyiv-1.html   

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27#/media/

File:Location_of_Kyivan_Rus.png

[3] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/03/kiev-2.html 

Kiev2

 'The Chronicle of Novgorod'

From 862 - 1470 the history of European Russia is essentially the same as the history of Ukraine. Prestige and power moved north to Novgorod when the Golden Horde stormed in from Mongolia. Then moved eastwards to Vladimir-Suzdal (and eventually to the nearby Moscow).

As discussed in Kyiv 1 [1], the origin of Novgorod and Kyiv are closely intertwined. Novgorod was founded 862 by Swedish Varangians under the leadership of Rurik. Kyiv was taken over by Rurik's kinsmen in 880, and the two cities forming the binary foci of a successful polity that grew till it reached from the Black Sea to the White Sea. During the rule of the great princes (Sviatoslav, 943–972; Vladimir the Great, 980–1015; Yaroslav the Wise; 1019–1054) the cities co-operated, and shared in the benefits; thus they both adopted Byzantine Christianity and the Glagolitic script under Vladimir the Great, and the Book of Laws under Yaroslav the Wise. But under lesser leadership there was a rivalry, for example between princely descendants of Yaroslav, because the one who held Kyiv was traditionally awarded the title 'Great Prince' of the Kyiv-Rus federation.  Much destructive internecine warfare ensued, (though there was a brief respite under Rostyslav Mstyslavych of Smolensk who achieved unity without warfare). 

However, in 1169 a different type of coalition mustered to attack Kiev under the leadership of Andrey Bogolyubsky, for it was led by princes from further east than present-day Moscow, in fact from Vladimir-Suzdal, and contained non-Rus elements such as the Polovtsians. The collapse of Kyiv did not lead to the installation of a new Great Prince of Kyiv as was usual when the city was defeated, but instead to a three-day massacre and the pillaging of its most sacred relics. It was as though Kyiv fell to 'foreigners'.  In 1169 Novgorod withstood attack by Andrey Bogolyubsky, and 4 years later Novgorod helped the Ukrainians to defeat a second attack by Andrey Bogolyubsky.  However Kyiv was fated to fall again, even more drastically, to the Golden Horde in 1240.

Novgorod, (that is to say Novgorod the Great, 147 miles south of St. Petersburg, not Nizhney Novgorod, 260 miles east of Moscow), Novgorod  managed to avoid a similar fate, realising when to humble itself and pay tribute. The story of Novgorod is told in a fascinating document called the "Chronicle of Novgorod" (available online in Robert Mitchell's 1914 translation into English [2]). 

Novgorod in the 9th - 15th centuries developed as a very republican town. The Boyars and burgers were frequently asking their elected officers (Prince, burgomaster, bishop) to leave, often after less than a year in office, occasionally after 'a few weeks'.  

In 1238 the 17 year old Alexander Nevsky, of royal descent, but younger son of a younger son, was asked to go to Novgorod to lead the army against Scandinavian attacks from the north. It happened thus. Yuri Vsevolodovich was Grand Prince of Vladimir-Suzdal, 600 miles to the east, which had replaced the defeated Kyiv as the 'high seat' of Kyivan-Rus. But in that same year Yuri was killed in battle with the Mongols, whereupon his younger brother (Yaroslav Vsevolodovich), paying due homage to the victorious Golden Horde, requested of their leader that he (Yaroslav) take his dead brother's place, and was granted it.  As Grand Prince he assigned his younger son (Alexander) as prince of Novgorod.   

In 1240 Alexander, tall and charismatic, scored a significant victory on the banks of the river Neva (hence the epithet 'Nevsky'). Whereupon, the Boyar aristocrats asked him to leave the city. The city requested the older brother Andrey as a replacement, but the citizens did not take to him and pressed (in 1241) for the return of Alexander to meet another challenge, this time from the west in the form of the Teutonic and Livonian Knights. The joint forces of the two brothers defeated  the knights in April 1242 in the celebrated 'Battle on the ice'. (Filmed, in black and white, by Eisenstein in 1938.). 

The Gran Kahn, in Karakorum (Mongolia), was quite happy to employ local leaders as long as they paid him homage, and tax. The ageing Yaroslav Vsevolodovich was asked in 1245 to make the 3,000 mile trip from Vladimir to Karakorum, but died en route. So, in 1248 the two brothers were summoned to Karakorum, to meet the Grand Kahn, and were assigned, Andrey to the high seat of Vladimir and Alexander to the erstwhile high seat of Kiev. 

In 1251, on the death of Batu Kahn and the elevation of a new Kahn, all the Russian vassal princes were required to pay homage in person. Alexander complied but Andrey did not. However, that was a serious miscalculation; the Golden Horde was too powerful to flout in this way. Andrey had to flee to Sweden, whereupon Alexander was given the Grand Duchy of Vladimir, becoming head of all 'Russia'. He was constant in his loyalty to the Mongol overlords, and once had to lead an army against his own Novgorod to teach them to pay their taxes. Nevertheless, the Russian-Ukrainian people loved him and, after his death, his memory lived on and worked miracles; he was canonised in 1547.  

Alexander Nevsky, as Grand Duke of Vladimir-Suzdal, founded the Dukedom of Moscow in 1263 for his son Daniel. Daniel's son Yuri married the sister of the Golden Horde's new Kahn, which greatly enhanced the status of the little town of Moscow. By 1320 it had outgrown its parent. Growth continued under the rule of 3 successive generations of Rurik princes : 

● Ivan III ('the great', 1462 - 1505) who conquered Novgorod, and faced down the Golden Horde at the Great Stand in 1479. 

● Vasili III (1505-1533) who re-took Smolensk off the Lithuanians, and expanded down to the Dnieper , 

● Ivan IV ('the terrible', 1533–1547, 1547-1588 as Tsar) who expanded Moscow's power into Siberia, but wrecked havoc in European Russia with his uncontrolled psychopathology. 

The conquest of Novgorod

In 1471 Novgorod faced a dilemma resembling to some degree that of present day Ukraine [3]. Citizens recognised that survival required them to ally themselves either with the Grand Duchy of Moscow, their large neighbour to the east, or with the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania-Poland to their west. The ordinary citizens preferred the Orthodox and more familiar Moscow; the aristocratic Boyars preferred Catholic Lithuania. When Ivan III heard that the widow of a Novgorod Boyar (Marpha Boretskaya) had negotiated an agreement of protection with Kasimir IV of Lithuania-Poland he decided to attack. Kasimir IV faltered and the Novgorod home guard were totally destroyed just outside their city. The helpless citizens opened their gates to Ivan III. At first he merely fined the pro-Lithuanian Boyars, but over the next 8 years he dismantled the 'independence' of Novgorod, symbolically removing their 'parliamentary bell' and with it their ability to hold a parliament (or veche) and their cherished democracy [3].

Conclusions

The Swedish element, most strongly represented in democratic and republican Novgorod, lasted 750 years, but was defeated by the unitary and progressively autocratic power of Moscow. 

The Mongol element in the form of the Golden Horde, came and went, surviving as the supreme military power only for 200 years (1260-1458). Originally a limb of the Grand Kahn, it became autonomous in 1260, adopted Islam in 1313, and was demoted to 'Great Horde' in 1458. Genetically their contribution may have lasted longer.

There are doubtless some lessons to learn concerning when to submit and when to resist, and about relying on dilatory allies.  Also lessons about the efficacy (or otherwise) of icons and crosses. But these are subtle and complex matters, and each of us has to make their own assessment..

(But the story continues in Kyiv3 )

References:

[1] https://occidentis.blogspot.com/2023/03/kyiv-1.html 

[2] http://faculty.washington.edu/dwaugh/rus/texts/MF1914.pdf 

[3] https://russia.rin.ru/guides_e/6875.html 

Handshakes

How many Handshakes?

    As I sat in meeting this morning I looked around. We were ten people. I reflected that last week we were only three people, though it was an excellent meeting in all respects.  At the end, lacking an elder, we had all shaken hands with each other. 

    Today there were ten of us. The age-old problem came to mind, of how many handshakes would be involved this time if we all shook hands with each other. (I remembered the question from schooldays some 65 years ago). 

    But, with a gratifying flash of insight, the answer came to me; there would have to be 45 handshakes to be complete. The clue came from our unusually small meeting of the previous week. Three people each shook two hands making six greetings. But each shake met two of those six greetings. Answer = three. 

    I could put it this way. For n people, there would be:
                 n x (n-1)/2 
shakes. So for 10 people each greeting 9 others (as you do not greet yourself), so 90 greeting; but only 45 shakes.

Number of people (n)        Greetings            Shakes

        1                                    0                           0
        2                                    2                           1
        3                                    6                           3
        4                                   12                          6
        5                                   20                        10

    I am pretty sure I am right. But concede that it does not amount to 'Ministry'. Nor 'Afterwords', really. Perhaps I should keep it for the monthly newsletter.

       

 

Kyiv1

 Kyiv 1

Kyiv lies in a gentle bend of the river Dnipro (or Dnieper), on the hilly west bank, roughly half way between the Baltic and the Black sea. It has a long and important history, allegedly going back to a Slavic or Turkic foundation in A.D. 482, though various people undoubtedly lived there for 25 centuries before that. However, in A.D. 880 Kyiv fell to the Swedish Varangians (Vikings) and formed, for the next 360 years, a flourishing economic, military and cultural centre on that important trade route between Scandinavia and Byzantium.  

Around the time that the Danish Vikings started raiding the coasts of England, and pressing up the navigable rivers (overwintering in London in A.D. 871), and the Norwegian Vikings sailed out across the Atlantic to harry the west coast of Scotland, Ireland, France and Italy, and eventually to colonise Iceland (A.D. 874), the Swedish Varangians pushed eastwards across the Baltic and southwards up the Neva and Volkov rivers to the position of present day Novgorod. From there, some travelled east to the headwaters of the Volga, whence to the Islamic countries of the middle east, while others portaged to the headwaters of the Dnipro near Smolensk (founded A.D. 863) and, via the Black sea, to Constantinople.  It is said that a Varangian nobleman called Rurik founded Novgorod in A.D. 862, and started a royal dynasty that lasted till the Romanovs (A.D. 1598).

In A.D. 882 Oleg of Novgorod captured Kyiv, probably off fellow Vikings. Thus began the Golden age of Kyiv, the wealthy and favoured capital of a polity known as  Kyivan Rus. Under the reigns of 3 great Rurik Princes the state prospered,  expanded, converted to Christianity, acquired an alphabet, and a book of laws. And undoubtedly assimilated wholesale with the pre-existing Slavic population. Thus: under Sviatoslav (943–972) the state expanded south against the Khazars, then Vladimir the Great (980–1015) introduced Christianity, by example (988) and with it the Glagolitic (c.f. Cyrillic [1]) alphabet. Under Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054) the state reached from the White sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south. 

Then decline began, with fratricidal successions, and internecine warfare between neighbouring cities, and states. As Byzantium declined, so did the economic value of the trade passing up and down the Dnipro. Power shifted from Kyiv to Novgorod. In 1169 Kyiv was sacked by fellow Rus; and in 1240 it fell to the Mongols in the form of The Golden Horde under the leadership of Batu Kahn.[2]

However, that was not the end of history as far as Kyiv and the Rus were concerned. (Look out for the proposed Kyiv2.)

Footnotes:

[1] Cyril and his older brother Methodius translated (c. A.D. 850) parts of the Bible into Slavonic to help them bring Christianity to the Byzantine Bulgars. For this, they modified the Greek alphabet to accommodate the phonemes important to the Slav languages. The Volga Bulgars adopted Islam and offered it to Vladimir of Kyiv, but he said the Varangians could not give up alcohol and so chose Christianity. 

[2] It is said that the Mongol commander offered terms, but his envoys were murdered and thrown over the walls, whereupon the Mongols attacked, the walls were breached, and 95% of the population executed. Novgorod paid tribute and was spared.

Memory and Attention

 Strange things do happen to me these days. Is it my memory?

A couple of days ago I found a dirty wineglass in the refrigerator. And, just now, I turned to pick up the little tray that lies on top of the microwave and was surprised when the microwave door popped open. The mystery was very soon solved. Clearly, my right hand had taken the initiative when it failed to get timely instructions from the brain. 

But is it memory that is failing in these cases? I think not. I suggest it is a failure of attention, a failure properly to cogitate about the activity one is engaged in. 

"One can neither remember, nor forget, what one was unconscious of in the first place."