Brother against brother

July 13, 1015, saw the end of the earthly path of Prince Volodymyr the Great, one of the best-known and, at the same time, most complicated and controversial figures in our national history. Volodymyr departed this life and his state, Kyivan Rus’, at quite a difficult time. No sooner had the prince’s body turned cold than his sons and those who stood behind them launched a bitter and bloody struggle for the Kyiv throne.

The question this article deals with by no means belongs to the “blank spots” in Ukrainian history. Almost all the historians who did or do write about the history of Kyivan Rus’ have been turning, one way or another, to the uncertain times of trouble in the life of our distant ancestors, when a brother would literally rise up against a brother. At the same time, debates are still going on among both Ukrainian and foreign historians about an issue which is no way a difficult conceptual problem. It boils down to quite a simple question: Which of Prince Volodymyr’s sons were engaged in a struggle for power in the Ancient Rus’ state? There are two different and in many ways opposite versions of this in the world historical science. With due account of the longtime traditions that have been established in the national historical science and political writing in general, we will call them for the purposes of our study the traditional and the nontraditional version.

THE TRADITIONAL VERSION

Fate decreed that Grand Prince Volodymyr the Great was the father of many children. He had 12 sons (Borys, Hlib, Sviatopolk, Yaroslav, Vysheslav, Iziaslav, Sudyslav, and others) by several of his wives, including Anna, Princess of Byzantium, and Rohnida, the daughter of a Cuman prince. It should be admitted, however, that far from all Volodymyr’s sons vied for the exalted seat that became vacant after the defeater of the pagan god Perun had died. Some of them (for example, Vysheslav and Iziaslav) departed this life well before the death of their father, while others, who lived to see the inglorious times of trouble, were outside the “brotherly” face-off for some reasons. Followers of the traditional version name six of them who were directly involved in this conflict: Sviatopolk (the eldest brother who was later given the nickname “Accursed”), Borys, Hlib, Yaroslav, Sviatoslav, and Mstyslav.

In the opinion of the adherents to this version, which soon gained considerable popularity (it is in the highlight of such well-known ancient monuments as The Tale of Bygone Years and The Life of Borys and Hlib), this struggle unfurled as follows. Immediately after the death of Prince Volodymyr, Kyivan Rus’ began to be ruled by Prince Sviatopolk, a man of rather low moral standards, whose only motive was the desire to gain supreme power at all costs. Quite naturally, Sviatopolk, an extremely cruel and suspicious person, could not consider that he had won the final victory as long as his other brothers were still living. Without too many scruples, Prince Volodymyr’s eldest son decided to physically liquidate his three rivals – the brothers Borys, Hlib, and Sviatoslav.

The first victim of the perfidious Sviatopolk was his brother Borys, the father’s favorite, a good-looking man with a rich inner world, whom ordinary people sincerely loved. At one point the tent in which Borys rested was surrounded by a group of armed boyars who decided to prove their allegiance to Sviatopolk the Accursed with this murder. Although Borys had managed to see through his elder brother’s treacherous plans in good time, he almost immediately refused to resist Sviatopolk, saying he would never lay a hand on the man whom he venerated as if he were his true father. When the assassins sent by Sviatopolk broke into the tent, they pierced Borys with their spears and killed, after a brief clash, his loyal servant George, a Hungarian, who was soon beheaded. (Sviatopolk’s people thus got hold of the golden hryvnia, a gift from Borys, which hung on George’s neck.) It soon turned out, however, that the assassins had only wounded Borys. The killers took their heavily-wounded victim to their master on a cart. Sviatopolk chose not to change his decision and ordered his brother to be put to death.

Then it was the turn of Hlib, another brother of Sviatopolk’s. Sviatopolk managed to summon him by deception, saying to Hlib in a letter that their father, Prince Volodymyr, was dying and wishing to see him (when Sviatopolk was writing the letter, Volodymyr was already dead). Trusting his brother’s letter, Hlib went to Kyiv on a ship with a small security unit, only to be soon intercepted by Sviatopolk’s pursuers with a certain Horiaser, a man of the “accursed prince,” at the head. Aware that the assassins had a numerical superiority and any fighting was futile, Hlib refused, as did Borys before him, to offer resistance. He ordered his small detachment to leave him and stayed behind on the ship together with his cook Torchyn. After seizing the ship, Horiaser and his men ordered Torchyn to immediately kill Hlib and warned that he would also die if he refused to do this. Preferring a shameful life to an honest and courageous death, Torchyn cut Hlib’s throat with his knife.

Some time later Sviatopolk the Accursed managed to carry out a similar plan against his third brother, Sviatoslav, who ruled the land of the Derevlianians. Like Borys before him, Prince Sviatoslav came to know in good time about Sviatopolk’s intention to kill him and, not wishing to tempt fate, decided to flee to Hungary. But, notwithstanding this, Sviatoslav did not manage to save himself. Sviatopolk’s pursuers caught up with him in the Carpathian Mountains.

The nefarious deeds of Sviatopolk the Accursed soon became known to the Novgorod ruler Yaroslav (the future Kyivan Rus’ ruler Yaroslav the Wise). Having a serious military force consisting of the Novgorod and Varangian units, he decided to do away with the social evil personified by Prince Volodymyr’s eldest son. In 1016 Yaroslav’s troops routed Sviatopolk’s army and entered Kyiv, where Yaroslav, supported by a part of Kyivites, was proclaimed grand prince. But in 1018, having enlisted the support of his father-in-law, Polish King Boleslaw I the Brave, Sviatopolk defeated Yaroslav’s units and regained his father’s throne.

According to some sources, the allied relatives maintained rather strained relations. Having ample grounds to suspect the king, his father-in-law, of intending to seize power in Kyivan Rus’, the fratricide issued a secret order to “beat” the Poles everywhere and whenever possible. Met by the open hostility of the local populace, the Poles and their king soon went back home, thus drastically weakening the king’s “ungrateful” son-in-law. After some time, Yaroslav took advantage of a favorable situation and routed Sviatopolk’s units in 1019. Sviatopolk the Accursed, who had suffered a final defeat, fled to Poland, where he soon died under mysterious circumstances. Thus, in the course of a bloody war, Yaroslav managed to get rid of a strong and dangerous enemy forever.

THE NONTRADITIONAL VERSION

Somewhat generalizing the outlines of the above-mentioned traditional version, let us stress that its followers see the following lineup in the “brotherly” struggle: Prince Sviatopolk the Accursed “on one side of the barricades” and Hlib, Borys, Sviatoslav, and, naturally, Yaroslav, who managed to deliver Kyivan Rus’ from the cruel fratricide forever, on the other. Apart from other things, the traditional version is based on an illustrative opposition of Sviatopolk to Yaroslav. The former personified perfidy and evil, while the latter, magnanimity and justice. It will be emphasized that adherents of the nontraditional version, first mentioned in some old Scandinavian sagas and in some other sources, view the events discussed here in quite a different light. Above all, “nontraditionalists” regard Sviatopolk and Borys not as mortal enemies but as … allies who resisted the “power-seeking ambitions” of Yaroslav.

According to the nontraditional version, shortly after Volodymyr the Great died and Sviatopolk began to rule in Kyiv, the armed retinue (druzhyna) of Borys tried to prompt him to actively struggle against the prince. But Borys firmly told his warriors that he would never take up arms against his brother whom he venerated not less than his father.

The reader must have noticed that this phrase of Borys occurs more than once in this article. Yet adherents to the traditional and nontraditional versions attach an absolutely different meaning to it: while the former want to underline Borys’ readiness to meet his death at the hands of Sviatopolk’s people without any resistance, the latter interpret it as his determination to never take a hostile attitude to Sviatopolk.

Moreover, “non-traditionalists” believe that Borys and his armed retinue actively defended Sviatopolk’s authority from the “encroachments” of Yaroslav. In their view, it is Borys, not Sviatopolk, who marched against Yaroslav’s army in 1016. The bloody battle between the brothers did not fetch Borys a victory: his warriors suffered a defeat; Borys himself had to flee to Hungary and Sviatopolk, to Poland.

Quite naturally, the two (traditional and nontraditional) versions strikingly differ from each other at this point. While the former presents Borys as a person whom Sviatopolk viewed as a potentially dangerous enemy, the latter shows Borys in entirely different light — as a strong and important ally of Sviatopolk.

Some time later, Borys’s units, which could not resign themselves to the defeat, marched on Kyiv and lay siege to the city. Yet Borys never succeeded in seizing the capital of Kyivan Rus’, for Yaroslav had fortified it very well.

Later Yaroslav received a message that Borys had been killed during the siege of Kyiv. But this information was never confirmed. Moreover, the would-be “father-in-law of Europe” and his retinue came to know that in reality Borys had survived and was going to replenish his resources and fight with Yaroslav again. It is quite possible that the rivaling brothers had more than one battle to fight and their soldiers would repeatedly cross swords. But at the same time, Eymund, commander of Yaroslav’s Varangian retinue, suggested that he do away with the rivaling brother in a “nontraditional” way rather than on the battlefield. To this Yaroslav agreed, albeit with some hesitations. Once on a dark night, when Borys and his warriors rested after fighting, Eymund and a few more Varangians penetrated into his tent, killed the sleeping prince, cut off his head, and brought it to Yaroslav as irrefutable evidence of his enemy’s death.

So, in the opinion of those who stick to the nontraditional version, it is Yaroslav, not Sviatopolk, who committed the perfidious murder. Incidentally, the very details of this murder very much resemble those of the “terrorist act” committed by Sviatopolk’s boyars against Borys – the same princely tent, the same group of killers who surrounded him, the same sudden and treacherous killing of the prince… It naturally follows from such an nontraditional presentation of events that the evil role that Yaroslav played should allow him to “deservedly” take the place of Sviatopolk as a cruel fratricide.

A DUEL OF OPINIONS

It follows from the aforesaid that adherents of the two versions have a different vision of the disposition of forces in the succession struggle among Volodymyr the Great’s sons. While in the former case the four brothers (Borys, Hlib, Sviatoslav, and Yaroslav) are opposed to an evildoing and merciless Sviatopolk the Accursed, in the latter case one can clearly discern two different alliances – Sviatopolk and Borys, on the one side, and Yaroslav and (even if potentially) Hlib, on the other. Obviously, the traditional and the nontraditional versions are so different that neither of them can reflect the historical truth with the same degree of credibility. The historical truth can only be found in one of the versions, but, in our view, it cannot be ruled out that both versions wide off the mark. But still, if we suppose that one of the two versions may be historically true, which one?

In my opinion, the question asked is too difficult to be answered in no uncertain and convincing terms much less in a relatively small article. At the same time, with this reservation in view, I want to tell the readers frankly that the version that has been considered traditional for a very long time raises numerous doubts in my mind.

Firstly, is there any really serious evidence that Borys, Hlib, and Sviatoslav were killed on Sviatopolk’s orders? Those who prefer the classical version often say in response that Sviatopolk really murdered his three brothers because he, a ruler who was keenly interested in the preservation and reinforcement of his power, could benefit very much from these killings. It is, naturally, difficult to dispute the fact that physical liquidation of brothers – real or at least potential rivals – could very well serve the goals of Sviatopolk, but I think the readers will agree with me in the following. Even if Sviatopolk sought to derive benefit from such cruel actions, this in itself does not mean that he really committed these actions. Moreover, even if the one who was later called the Accursed had really expressed an intention to kill his brothers (incidentally, such words of Sviatopolk were really recorded in some historical sources), even this fact cannot, strictly speaking, be sufficient proof of the bloody misdeeds of Prince Volodymyr’s eldest son. An intention is not yet an action, and the desire to do something does not yet mean the implementation of what is intended. People too often tend to refrain from fulfilling their own plans…

Secondly, can the description of the murders of Borys, Hlib, and Sviatoslav on Sviatopolk’s orders be considered trustworthy or at least verisimilar? I do not think so. Take, for example, the claim of the traditional version followers that Borys knew Sviatopolk’s plans about him in good time. However, if Borys really knew it, this could only occur due to a leak of secret information – either because Borys had a well-disguised agent (or agents) in Sviatopolk’s camp or because somebody in Sviatopolk’s entourage switched sides and revealed all the plans. But the former and the latter instances of leaking information, so valuable for Borys, were very unlikely. For the traditional version itself says that the plot against Borys involved a very narrow circle of persons all of whom took part in this murder.

Nor does the episode of Borys’ murder seem to be true to life. First of all, I do not think that Borys could really refuse to offer resistance to his brother and his men. This kind of humility to fate could be natural for a highly-spiritual and highly-religious individual (e.g., Theodosius of the Caves), but this kind of behavior could hardly be expected from Borys, an experienced warrior. In all probability, Borys would have duly prepared himself to meet the “visitors,” and the “visitors” (in a small number, incidentally) would have had to feel the might of Borys’ armed retinue. Equally unlikely is the description of the “journey” of the killers with a heavily-wounded Borys to the “accursed” prince’s headquarters. For the killers could not but understand that this increases the chances of Borys being liberated by his loyal soldiers.

Practically the same can be said about the episode of Hlib’s death. Naturally, in an attempt to save his small retinue from inevitable death, Hlib might have ordered them to leave him. But it is very unlikely that his loyal soldiers would have fulfilled this order. Aware of the destiny that awaited Hlib, they would have stayed with him to the end to die in an unequal battle. Also doubtful is the escape of the Derevlianian Prince Sviatoslav from Sviatopolk’s killers. It should be taken into account that he was not an ordinary coward but an experienced commander at the head of a not-so-small military unit.

Therefore, because it is described in The Tale of Bygone Years and some other sources, there was virtually no way Borys, Hlib, and Sviatoslav could be killed. However, Sviatopolk may have managed to put them to death by some other method. This is also rather unlikely because in this case The Tale of Bygone Years would have described the circumstances of death in a different way. And this untrustworthy version of the murder of Prince Volodymyr’s three sons in fact suggests that in reality Sviatopolk did not have them killed.

It will be noted in conclusion that this controversial question of national history still remains open and, to be finally resolved, it requires a much more thorough academic analysis than the one that this writer tried to make.

Volodymyr Horak is a Candidate of Sciences (History).