General characteristics of Kyivan Rus’ culture

The first state to arise among the Eastern Slavs. It took its name from the city of Kyiv, the seat of the grand prince from about 880 until the beginning of the 13th century. At its zenith, it covered a territory stretching from the Carpathian Mountains to the Volga River, and from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. The state's rapid rise and development was based on its advantageous location at the intersection of major north-south and east-west land and water trade routes with access to two major seas, and favorable local conditions for the development of agriculture. In the end, however, the state's great size led to the development of centrifugal tendencies and local interests that limited its political and social cohesion. This, and its proximity to the Asian steppes, which left it vulnerable to invasions of nomadic hordes, eventually contributed to the decline of Kyivan Rus’.

In the 8th century, the territory of Kyivan Rus’ was inhabited by a number of tribes who shared a common proto-Slavic language, pagan beliefs, and life-style. The ancestors of the Ukrainians included the Polianians, Siverianians, Derevlianians, Dulibians, White Croatians, Ulychians, and Tivertsians. The proto-Russian Krivichians, Viatichians, and Radimichians and the proto-Belorussian Drehovichians also lived on the lands that eventually constituted Kyivan Rus’. The Polianians were the largest and most developed of the tribes; according to the Rus’ Primary Chronicle, their prince Kyi founded the city of Kyiv in the 6th century. None of the tribes, however, was able to create a viable state, and in the 9th century the Varangians from Scandinavia conquered the tribes and laid the groundwork for the Kyivan Rus’ state.

ORIGINS OF KYIVAN RUS’

The question of the origins of Kyivan Rus’ still produces controversy among historians. The oldest, or Normanist theory rests mainly on a literal interpretation of the Primary Chronicle and stresses the role of the Varangians as the first leaders and organizers of the state. Ukrainian historians, beginning with Mykhailo Maksymovych and followed by Mykola Kostomarov, Volodymyr Antonovych, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, Dmytro Bahalii, Dmytro Doroshenko, Mykola Chubaty, and others, have generally downplayed the Varangian influence on the formation of Rus’. The Soviet historiography categorically rejected the Normanist theory, considering it bourgeois.

The issue of the nationality of the inhabitants of the Kyivan state is also a matter of continuing controversy. The discussion was initiated by the Russian historian Mikhail Pogodin, who claimed that the original inhabitants of contemporary Ukraine fled north under pressure from the Mongols, and that they later became the modern Russian nation. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, arrived much later from somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains. Pogodin's views were expanded on by the philologist Aleksei Sobolevsky. This theory was disputed by Ukrainian historians such as Mykhailo Maksymovych, Mykola Dashkevych, Pavlo Zhytetsky, and Ahatanhel Krymsky. Mykhailo Hrushevsky sought to demonstrate that Ukrainians were autochthonous in their territories, and that the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia was the successor to the Kyivan state. Hrushevsky's theories were for the most part adopted by Ukrainian historians and by some others. Because these theories did not correspond to the political objectives of the Soviet leadership, a panel of historians was commissioned in the 1930s by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to draw up a new historical schema of Eastern Europe; its basic premise was that Kyivan Rus’ had been founded by a single old-Rus’ nationality, out of which Ukrainians, Russians, and Belarusians developed in the 14th and 15th centuries. This theory was given official approbation with the publication of Tezy pro 300-richchia vozz'iednannia Ukraïny z Rosiieiu, 1654–1954 (Theses about the 300th Anniversary of the Reunification of Ukraine with Russia, 1954.