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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

The Greatness and Shame of Prince Yaroslav

23 February, 1999 - 00:00

By Ihor SIUNDIUKOV, specially for The Day
This ancient Ukrainian ruler died in 1187 a natural death in his capital
of Halych. This fact is significant, for far from all princes thus ended
their lives in those troubled times of continuous strife and fratricidal
wars. Yaroslav of Halych was then about 57 years, 34 of them on the Galician
throne.

His extraordinary nature was testified to by, among other things, the
fact that The Lay of the Host of Ihor spoke about with by far the
greatest respect of all princes of Rus'. Recall some of those lines: "Yaroslav
Osmomysl of Halych! You are sit high on your beaten gold throne, buttressing
up the Hungarian Mountains (i.e., the Carpathians) with your iron-clad
troops, having blocked the road to the (Hungarian) king and closed the
Danube gate, and administering justice as far as the Danube! Your mighty
force spreads across the lands! From your ancestral golden throne you open
the gates of Kyiv and shoot at sultans in faraway lands!"

This might seem to be a brilliant poetic comparison devoid of any concrete
historical content, but we shall try to show that this is not so. The eye
first of all catches Yaroslav's strange and simultaneously respectful epithet:
Osmomysl ("of eight thoughts"). Modern historians interpret the number
eight as symbolic, indicating that the prince had many political and military
concerns; his huge wisdom was worth that of eight ordinary non-wise people,
etc. The Hypatian Chronicle writes of him, " For the prince has
a brilliant tongue; he is known in his land as God-fearing and honest,
and he has won laurels for his feats of arms."

The Kremlin, residence of the prince in Halych, was actually situated
on the high cliffs over the river Dnister. Here the author of The Lay
of the Host of Ihor speaks out exactly as a geographer, not a symbolic
poet, while the epithet "beaten-gold" vividly and as exactly characterizes
the wealth of Yaroslav's Halych Principality.

The source of this wealth was not so much economic (with all due account
of Carpathian salt mines) as political. The Halych Principality practically
did not suffer from the forays of the Polovtsy (on the contrary, Yaroslav's
father, Prince Volodymyrko, adroitly used the steppe tribes in his struggle
against Volhynian, Chernihiv, and Kyiv princes who encroached on his throne;
later on that talented but shameless prince partially routed the Polovtsy
and partially settled them in certain paled territories), and this promoted
an inflow of hard-working and educated young people from all over Rus'.
A more serious threat was approaching this land from the West, from the
Polish and Hungarian kings, but it is here that we may recall The Lay's
comment that Yaroslav buttressed the Hungarian Mountains with his troops
and blocked the king's way. Moreover, as his contemporaries testify, a
cautious and wise Yaroslav, having inherited from his father a strong military,
would send the latter to virtually every corner of the world; he even planned
to detail his troops for the future third Crusade against Saladin (here
is the meaning of the words in The Lay about his taking shots at
faraway sultans), but he personally never led those units into battle.
Instead, he spent years mastering and perfecting his brilliant diplomatic
skills: he sought aid of the Byzantine Empire against Poland (his aunt
was married to the Byzantine emperor Andronicus I Comnenius), established
strong ties with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and recognized
in 1165 a fief dependency on him (nominal, in a way), and relied on the
support of the famous founder of Moscow Yuri Dolgoruki whose daughter Olga
he was married to (remember this).

In a word, Galicia got a nice opportunity to live affluently and quietly
under the protection of Prince Yaroslav Osmomysl's refined diplomacy. But
that process brought about an unexpectedly rapid growth of powerful and
closely-knit boyars (feudal magnates - Ed.) whose political ambitions
grew with each passing year. The boyars, practically each having his own
castle and well-armed force, were interested in the maximum possible decline
of the prince's power and, hence, the state as a whole (sound familiar
in Ukrainian history?) And no political, diplomatic, and economic achievements
of Osmomysl (his state spread as far as the Black Sea, Halych teemed with
merchants from many countries of Western Europe and the East, got its own
bishop in 1172, while Yaroslav wielded the greatest clout among the Ukrainian
princes and in fact shaped the political destiny of Kyiv itself) could
not save him from the schemes of a power-hungry boyar opposition.

Yaroslav was not a naive child, he followed in the footsteps of his
father, the first powerful prince of Halych, Volodymyrko, who quipped wittily
when accused of violating his oath on the Holy Cross, "What can this little
cross do?" Osmomysl was aware of the boyar danger he faced at every step.
But even this did not save him from a terrible tragedy worthy of Shakespeare's
pen.

We have already mentioned that (for a purely political reason, to strengthen
the alliance of principalities) Yaroslav married Olga, the daughter of
Yuri Dolgoruki. The couple never experienced true feelings. Volodymyr Yaroslavych,
the heir apparent, was born. But at this moment the prince met a certain
Nastasiya from a lowborn family of Chahrovyts (perhaps even a Polovtsian),
fell in love with her and walked out on his wife who had to flee with her
son to Poland. Nastasiya gave birth to another heir, Oleh. But the boyars,
furious with Nastasiya and her family having gained tremendous power at
the princely court, staged a coup. A large group of armed boyars captured
Nastasiya, surrounded the prince, who could not expect any help, and, pronouncing
the girl a witch, began to pressure the prince into agreeing that she be
burnt at the stake. A great diplomat and sage, the brave Osmomysl surrendered.
His beloved was burnt to death. This happened in 1170. The whole Chahrovyts
family was also wiped out.

The demand was made that Yaroslav live with his unloved wife. He had
to give way but now felt violent hatred for Olha, and in a few years she
abandoned him and returned to her native land of Suzdal, where she then
took the veil. Her son, Volodymyr, was again proclaimed heir apparent,
but Yaroslav could not stand him so much that he had the boyars promise
him on the eve of his death in 1187 that they would accept his other son,
Oleh. As to Volodymyr, he had to hide for some time in Putiyvl, at her
sister Yaroslavna's home (yes, this is the wife of Ihor from The Lay).
Of course, the boyars broke their promise and helped Volodymyr ascend the
throne, but he was rather a weak ruler who drew the state into numerous
military conflicts with Poland and Hungary. However, this will be studied
elsewhere. The state was shaken, while the Mongol invasion was only fifty
years away.

 

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