4 - Kievan Rus’ (1015–1125)

Summary

The period from 1015 to 1125, from the death of Vladimir Sviatoslavich to the death of his great-grandson Vladimir Vsevolodovich (known as Vladimir Monomakh), has long been regarded as the Golden Age of early Rus’: as an age of relatively coherent political authority exercised by the prince of Kiev over a relatively coherent and unified land enjoying relatively unbroken economic prosperity and military security along with the first and best flowerings of a new native Christian culture.

One reason for the power of the impression lies in the nature of the native sources. This is the age in which early Rus’, so to speak, comes out from under ground, when archaeological sources are supplemented by native writings and buildings and pictures which survive to the present. From the mid-eleventh century onwards, in particular, the droplets of sources begin to turn into a steady trickle and then into a flow. Before c.1045 we possess no clearly native narrative, exegetic or administrative documents. By 1125 we have the first sermons, saints’ lives, law codes, epistles and pilgrim accounts, as well as a rapidly increasing quantity of brief letters on birch bark and of scratched graffiti on church walls and miscellaneous objects. Before the death of Vladimir Sviatoslavich no component of our main narrative source, the Primary Chronicle (Povest’ vremennykh let) is clearly derived from contemporary Rus’ witness; by the early twelfth century, when the chronicle was compiled, its authors could incorporate several decades of contemporary native narratives and interpretations. No building from the age of Vladimir Sviatoslavich or earlier survived above ground into the modern age.