PRINCE ROMAN, STATESMAN DESPITE HIMSELF

Prince Roman's destiny might seem a textbook example for every statesman-politician. He devoted his life to asserting himself as supreme leader and master, but it turned out he actually asserted the state through himself. Thus, his efforts brought about the Principality of Galicia and Volyn 800 years ago, which Mykhailo Hrushevsky treated as the prototype of the first Ukrainian state.

The name of Prince Roman is known not only from medieval Rus's but also from Polish, German, and French chronicles. Old Ukrainian folklore also is imprinted with his personality. The prince was born about 1153. His father, Mstyslav, son of Iziaslav, the great grandson of Volodymyr Monomach, ruled in Volyn and Pereyaslav, but, as the eldest among Volodymyr's posterity, he also exerted control over Kyiv. In 1168, Novgorod lost its prince. So Mstyslav sent there the young Roman.

The next year the Prince of Suzdal attacked Kyiv. When Mstyslav learned this, he sent a messenger to Novgorod to suggest his son and he together defend the mother of the cities of Rus, but the messenger was intercepted and Roman failed to help his father. Having sacked Kyiv, the Vladimir-Suzdal monarch raised his sword against Novgorod, that is, at Roman. This ambitious and energetic prince intended to create a unifying center in Northeastern Rus. To do so, he had to destroy the old Rus capital as well as break the Volyn branch of the house of Monomach, the most powerful at the time.

Thus in early 1170 troops from Suzdal, Rostov, Riazan, Murom, and other centers marched on Novgorod. But the allies suffered a crushing defeat. The way to power and glory was thus open to Roman. Unfortunately, fate intervened: the father died. According to a chronicler, the troops allegedly told Roman, “Prince, you cannot be here due to disloyalty of these people, but you should go to your brothers in Volodymyr, and if you do not go, you will be driven away ignominiously.” Supreme power in Novgorod was wielded by rich boyars , rather than the prince. Moreover, in order to stay behind meant to enter into a deadly struggle with the Vladimir-Suzdal prince. Roman returned back to his fief, Volodymyr of Volyn, and dropped out of big-time politics for seventeen years.

He took this naturally. Volyn was then fragmented into small appanage principalities with centers in Volodymyr, Lutsk, Berest (now Brest, Belarus), and Belz. Until then they had been united by the strong hand of Mstyslav. After his death the authority of separate descendants of Iziaslav dropped to naught. Kyiv was seized by Vladimir-Suzdal and then by Smolensk. In the south, Volyn bordered on the mighty Galician Principality of Yaroslav Osmomysl, and in the West, on the Polish lands with the rulers of which Prince Roman had family relationships, and in the North, in the woods and swamps, lived the pagan Lithuanians. At what expense could he expand his possessions?

The first thing the young prince did was to marry Peredslava, daughter of Kyiv Prince Riurik, son of Rostyslav, and thus get a powerful patron. In 1182 the princes of Dorohochynsk and Minsk began internecine fighting for Berestia, then without a ruler. Roman took advantage of the conflict and, aided by his uncle, Duke of Krakow Kazimierz the Just, annexed Berestia to the Principality of Volodymyr. However, that was not what he was after. Prince Roman set his eyes on Galicia, Rus's richest principality in the twelfth century. Soon, making far-reaching plans, he married off his daughter Fedora to Yaroslav Osmomysl's grandson Vasylko, and in 1187 he directly intervened in Galician affairs.

At that moment, Prince Yaroslav died. Power in Galicia was taken over by his son Volodymyr, a drunkard and debaucher. Roman, probably having hirelings of his own in Halych, persuaded the boyars to oust Volodymyr and install him (Roman) as ruler. And so they did. The self-confident Roman handed his capital with all his Volyn lands over to his brother, Prince of Belz Vsevolod, for good (sealing the transfer by kissing the cross) and moved to Halych. Galician Prince Volodymyr fled to Hungarian King Bela, to return with a powerful army. The boyars , trying to avoid bloodshed, turned their backs on Roman. They immediately felt his strong hand. Roman returned to Volyn empty- handed and found the gate of his recent capital shut. His brother Vsevolod reminded him that he handed the city over voluntarily and for good. Roman turned for help to Kazimierz the Just, received troops, and led them to Halych. However, the “Hungarians and Galicians,” as one chronicle says, routed him near the town of Plisnesk. Then Roman turned for military assistance to his other uncle, Polish Grand Duke Mieszko the Old in order to regain at least Volodymyr. This, too, failed. The only prince to help Roman was his father- in-law Prince Riurik of Kyiv. The latter gave him the town of Torchesk and threatened Vsevolod with attack, so Vsevolod ceded Volodymyr to Roman and returned to Belz.

In the 1188-1189 struggle for the Halych principality Roman did not yet show himself as a great politician or statesman. He did not have a noble intention to gather the lands. But he did come to some conclusions. From then on, Roman knew that land is always an asset, which means wealth, power, and even the prince's personal security. Thus, starting from 1194, when Duke Kazimierz died in Krakow and Great Prince Sviatoslav, son of Vsevolod, extolled in The Lay of Ihor's Host , died in Kyiv, Roman began fighting for every inch of land and every tiniest personal interest. Against whom? Against the same Prince Riurik of Kyiv, his father-in-law, the Polish Grand Duke Mieszko, his uncle, and Prince Volodymyr of Galicia, his daughter-in-law's father. He still cast his gaze at Halych.

In all probability, he would not only cast glances, for in 1199 his daughter-in-law's father, in good health, suddenly died. It is still unknown if he died of poison or an overdose of alcohol. A part of the boyars wanted to summon Riurik's son Rostyslav from Kyiv, another part opted for any of Ihor's sons from Putivl (their mother Yefrosynia, Yaroslavna in The Lay of Ihor's Host , was Yaroslav Osmomysl's daughter). The final say belonged to Vsevolod Big Nest, the eldest in Volodymyr's genus. But Suzdal was far away, while Halych lay nearby. Roman and his forces broke into Halych. Everybody who disliked it had his head roll. “You will not eat honey unless you crush the bees,” a chronicler quoted the words of Prince Roman, the victor over the Galician boyars .

Having united Volyn and the Carpathian region, Roman went on to exceed all the powerful rulers in Rus. In 1200 he sent a delegation to Constantinople. In the same year he married Anna, daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelus by his second wife Margaret Maria, daughter of the Hungarian King Bela III. Prince Roman had sent his first wife Peredslava to her father in Kyiv as early as at the beginning of the conflict with Riurik. This is why it was the prince of Kyiv who was hurt most by Roman's actions. The former decided to attack Halych in alliance with the Chernihiv princes of Olhovych. Roman learned of this and seized Kyiv quickly and without any resistance. He sent Riurik to Ovruch and the Olhovyches back to their Chernihiv. He also forced them to swear on the cross that they would never conspire against him. They kissed the cross but again conspired in the next year 1203, only to suffer a new defeat. However, Roman did not punish them this time, either, he even left Riurik to rule in Kyiv. The point is he already was a mature politician. By that time, it was more important for him to fulfill the assignment of Byzantium: to deal with the Polovetsians. This could only be done by the concerted efforts of the whole Rus and that is why the usually hot-tempered Roman treated the mutineers so tolerantly.

When the Polovetsians had been finally routed, Roman met Riurik in early 1204 at Trepole. They discussed how “to make peace with districts according to their merits with respect to the Rus land.” But he came to a conclusion during the talks that he was dealing with a sworn enemy, not an ally. So he seized him and locked up in a monastery, taking his sons Rostyslav and Volodymyr away with him to Galicia. After that, Roman addressed all the Rus princes with a project of Rus statehood. It was essentially the project of setting up a single confederation. Roman suggested that the Grand Prince of Kyiv be elected by a board of the most powerful princes. The Grand Prince would have no right to endow his sons with regional principalities, he could only allow them to rule in a city or a village, while they were to obey their father. If attacked by the enemy, the lands were to be defended by all princes under the grand prince's command. He was to relinquish his throne to his eldest son, brother, or the genus senior, with the whole district. Roman saw that all Rus's woes stemmed from its feudal fragmentation, such that each fief-holding prince considered his appanage a separate state. An ancient chronicler quotes Roman as saying, “It is good to be together: when there were few princes in Rus, who heeded the most senior one, all the others felt fear and veneration, and they did not dare fight the way they do now.”

Unfortunately, Prince Roman's project was a complete fiasco. Not a single Rus prince arrived in Kyiv for the assembly. And Vsevolod Big Nest answered for all, “Brother and son, this has not existed from time immemorial. And I cannot transgress this, but I want things to be the way they were under our parents and grandparents.” Roman understood he would not succeed in uniting Rus. He was so angered by his fellow countrymen that he went from Kyiv to Halych to rebuild his own state.

He died accidentally and senselessly in 1205. Stationed with his troops on the Vistula and waiting for the consent of his cousins, dukes Lelek and Conrad of Krakow, to hold talks, he went hunting with a small detachment. They were suddenly caught and maimed by the Poles. Prince Roman, pierced with a lance, died on his way to Halych.

No one knows which turn history would have taken but for that fatal accident. It is quite possible that we would be celebrating today not the 800th anniversary of the foundation of Principality of Halych and Volyn but the 800th anniversary of our Ukrainian state.