by Gudrun Hutchins

Our first discussion in the Great Decisions series will be Russia and the United States on February 20 at 2:00 pm on Zoom.  The relevant chapter in the Briefing Book is “Putin’s Russia.”  At the present time the United States and its allies are engaged in disputes with Vladimir Putin over the future of Ukraine and its capitol city, Kyiv. Why is Kyiv so important to Putin and the Russian people? And why do some of the inhabitants of Kyiv feel differently?

Kyiv predates the cities of Russia by several centuries. It was settled in the 6^th and 7^th centuries by Slavic tribes and became a trading and re-supply center of the Norse tribes as they travelled from the Baltic Sea to Constantinople. At the same time Kyiv was located on the overland caravan route that connected Europe to the Silk Road.

The advanced civilization of the Kyivan Rus began with the reign of Viking princes over Kyiv and the surrounding regions during the 9^th century. Most of these rulers came from Sweden originally and were called “Rus” or “men who row.” In some cases they married women of the local Slavic tribes. The system of government required that there was one prince of Kyiv who had the highest authority. Lesser princes ruled other regions or cities and paid tribute to the prince of Kyiv. Because every ruler wished to be the prince of Kyiv, there were a number of battles between rulers, mostly among brothers.

Kyivan Rus was the largest European state of its time. The current countries of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia trace their cultural origins back to the Kyivan Rus and their capital of Kyiv. Vladimir Putin states that the residents of Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus are one people. They are all descendants of the Kyivan Rus.

The zenith of the state’s power came during the reigns of Prince Vladimir the Great (reigned 980 to 1015) and Prince Yaroslav the Wise (reigned 1019 -1054). Both rulers continued the steady expansion of Kyivan Rus.

As Prince of Kyiv, Vladimir’s most notable achievement was the Christianization of the Kyivan Rus; a process that began in 988. The Annals of Rus, the first written record of the Rus, state that when Prince Vladimir had decided to accept a new faith instead of the traditional Slavic religion (paganism), he sent out some of his most valued advisors and warriors as emissaries to different parts of Europe. After visiting the Roman Catholics, the Jews, and the Muslims, the advisors finally arrived in Constantinople. There, they were so impressed by the beauty of the cathedral of Hagia Sophia and the liturgical service held there, that they made up their minds there and then about the faith they would like to follow. Upon their arrival home, they told Vladimir that the faith of the Greeks was the best choice of all. Hearing this, Vladimir journeyed to Constantinople and arranged a marriage between himself and the Princess Anna, the sister of the Byzantine emperor Basil II.

Vladimir’s choice of Eastern Christianity may also have reflected his close personal ties with Constantinople, which dominated the Black Sea and hence trade on Kiev’s most vital commercial route, the Dnieper River. Adherence to the Eastern Orthodox Church had long-range political, cultural, and religious consequences. The church had a liturgy written in Cyrillic and many translations from the Greek had been produced for the Slavic people. The existence of this literature facilitated the conversion to Christianity of the Eastern Slavs and introduced them to rudimentary Greek philosophy and science without the necessity of learning Greek. In contrast, educated people in medieval Western and Central Europe learned Latin. With independence from Roman authority and free from the necessity of Latin learning, the Eastern Slavs developed their own literature and religious art, which is quite different from other Orthodox countries.

Yaroslav was also eager to improve relations with the rest of Europe. His granddaughter was married to Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor. He also arranged marriages for his sister and three daughters to the kings of Poland, France, Hungary, and Norway. Yaroslav established the first East Slavic law code Russkaya Pravda (Justice of Rus), built Santa Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, and Santa Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod, an important city on the Volga River trade route.

Most important of all, both Vladimir and Yaroslav built schools. Their compulsory baptism was followed by compulsory education. At a time when only a few European monarchs could spell their name, most children in Kiev, Novgorod and other large cities were literate. Existing documents show that in 1030 Yaroslav founded a divinity school in Novgorod for 300 children of both laymen and clergy to be instructed in “Book-learning.” As a general instruction he asked the parish priests to “teach the people.”

Birch bark documents attest that they wrote love letters and prepared “cheat sheets” for school as well as their assigned school work.

At the time when Paris was full of sewage and refuse, Novgorod had a sewage system and wood paving. Around 1200, Kiev had a population of 50,000 people and Novgorod and Chernigov had 30,000 each. At the same time London had about 12,000 inhabitants and England’s second city, Winchester, had about 5,000. When most legal codes of Europe regarded torture as a preferred way of eliciting truth and often abused the death penalty, the Russkaya Pravda legal code confined punishments to fines and did not provide for capital punishment at all. Certain inalienable rights were accorded to women, such as property and inheritance rights

The city’s wealth was a constant target for raids. In 1240 Batu Khan (the grandson of Ghenghis Khan) brought the last of the Rus into the Mongol’s military confederation. In later centuries Kyiv and all of Ukraine was annexed in sequence to Lithuania, Poland and Russia (by Peter the Great in 1709).

In the 19th century, Ukraine was firmly under Russian control. However, from the mid-19th-century nationalism spread. In 1918, while Russia was engaged in a civil war, Ukraine became independent for a short time. However, in 1921 Russia forced Ukraine to become part of the Soviet Union again.

The blackest period of Kyiv and Ukraine was under Joseph Stalin. During the winter of 1932-33 approximately six million Ukrainians starved to death after most of the locally raised food supply had been confiscated and sent to Moscow. Stalin’s henchmen also systematically blew up historic churches, and executed or kidnapped religious and secular leaders, writers, musicians, and intellectuals, creating a deep fear and hatred of anything Russian.

Another grim reminder of Kyiv’s Russian past is the 1986 failure of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor that was built to supply power to the city of Kyiv. The reactor, located approximately 60 miles north of Kyiv failed during a scheduled test due to the combination of reactor design flaws and human error by the Russian operators. The failure was announced only after instruments in Norway had detected the radiation and more than 100 people had died. Several hundred residents of the closest town died soon after from radiation and years later from radiation-induced cancer. The large exclusion zone will not be inhabitable for an estimated 20,000 years.

Ukraine officially declared itself an independent country on August 24, 1991, when the communist Supreme Soviet Parliament of Ukraine proclaimed that Ukraine would no longer follow the laws of the USSR and only the laws of the Ukrainian SSR, de facto declaring Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union.

The transition from dictatorship to democracy has not gone smoothly. Elected pro-Russia presidents have refused to sign changes in government passed by the unicameral legislature, the Verkhovna Rada. This has caused massive demonstrations of the citizens. The demonstrations in 2013 – 2014 were caused by the refusal of the elected pro-Russia president to sign an Association agreement with the European Union that had been passed by the Legislature. The demonstrations provided an opportunity for the Russian military to patrol the streets to restore order and led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was a popular actor before being elected president with 73% of the vote. (The last letter of his name is transliterated from Ukrainian as a second y, an i, or is left off totally.)

On May 17, 2021, the Association Trio was formed by a joint memorandum between the Foreign Ministers of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine – all former Soviet countries who have been attacked by Russia. The three countries are in the process of enhanced cooperation and are on track to formally apply for EU Associate membership in 2024. The complete EU membership would probably take as long as 2030 because it requires market and currency changes. The three countries have already been granted inclusion in the Schengen Protocol which allows citizens of the EU to travel from one EU country to another without visas or extensive border formalities. All three countries share boundaries with Russia and if admitted, Ukraine would be the largest country in the European Union.

A personal note on the historic churches:

When my husband and I visited Kyiv in 2007, most of the beautiful historic churches that had been destroyed on the order of Stalin had been rebuilt in their original style. Some of the frescoes on both the inside and the outside still needed to be painted. A few of the original stones (which are a lot darker from aging) have been incorporated into the new structures. When I asked the local guide about the old stones, she said very softly: “We want the adults to remember and the children to ask questions.”

–Gudrun Hutchins

 

 

 

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