The road to a new faith

Since the proclamation of independence Ukrainian po­li­ti­cians and the media have un­que­stioningly accepted the legend about Saint Andrew visiting Kyiv’s hills in the 1st century A.D. Mean­while any inquisitive school student can check Wikipedia and read that this oc­cur­rence was first men­tioned in Russian chronicles dating back to the 12th-13th cen­tu­ries. On the other hand, do­mes­tic and foreign historical fin­dings testify that the cold Scythian land was warmed by the fire of the Christian faith long before Vo­lo­dy­myr’s baptism.

According to Byzantine sources, early on the morning of June 18, 860, a Rus’ fleet of 360 ladias (boats) under Askold’s command entered the Golden Horn at Constantinople. The assault took the Greeks completely by surprise and they had no time to stretch the giant chain to bar access to the harbor. John the Deacon wrote in his oldest chronicle of Venice, known as the Chronicon Sagomini, that the men of Rus’ destroyed as much of the suburbs and as many inhabitants as they could, so a large ransom was hastily collected and paid. The biography of Byzantine emperor Michael III briefly states that he established friendship and accord with Rus’ and convinced its ruler to adopt Christianity. According to Mykhailo Braichevsky, the baptism of Askold and his troops took place immediately after the agreement was reached. Very likely, the ritual took place in Hagia Sophia, in late June or early July 860 A.D. Askold received the Christian name of Nicholas and was eventually ca-nonized. Thus, his name figures in all church calendars as St. Nicholas.

Before long, Patriarch Photius dispatched Metropolitan Michael and six bishops to Kyiv. The Primary Chronicle reads that they spent the first three years building temples (mostly on rich people’s estates) and training presbyters. Only then would they set about baptizing [Kyivan] Rus’. It is now hard to say how many people were baptized before Askold’s assassination in 882, organized by the treacherous Va­ran­gian Prince Oleg who ruled the Ladoga land. Abu’l Qasim Ubaid’Allah ibn Khordadbeh, author of the earliest surviving Arabic book of administrative geography, wrote in the late 9th century that the merchants from [Kyivan] Rus’ insisted that they were Christians. There is further proof of the popularity of the Christian faith. Shortly before his death, Askold summoned a team of Byzantine architects to Kyiv, to design a stone cathedral. Moreover, the fact remains that most European countries neighboring Kyivan Rus’ regarded it as a Christian country (as did the Va-tican). The Hustynia Chronicle reads: “The Slavs [of Kyivan Rus’] were the third to be baptized [after the Bulgarian and Moravian Slavs]; this was our Rus’, with Patriarch Photius [Photius I] taking over after the passing of Patriarch Ignatius, under Basil [I] the Macedonian.” In his Epistle No. 35, Photius was by far more eloquent. He wrote: “It is not only this people [i.e., Bulgars] that have repented by receiving Jesus Christ as their Savior, but also that other people, the so-called Rusychi, of whom we have heard so often, whom we have often discussed; a people which is superior to others with its utmost brutality, and which dared encroach upon the Roman Empire.”

The new Christian faith was adopted on a truly voluntary basis, otherwise the mob, enraged by the murder of Askold, would have slaughtered the metropolitan, bishops, and presbyters. As it was, the diocese had been transferred from Kyiv to Pereiaslav (currently known as Pereiaslav-Khmelnytsky). And so Christianity, after conquering Kyiv, was taking deep roots in other Rus’ urban localities. And it should have, considering that the light of His Grace was warming our forefathers’ hearts. Note that this took place long before the baptism of Askold. It is common knowledge that, in the centuries just after the birth of Jesus Christ, there were Christian communities in all the cities on the Crimean Peninsula. There are sources to the effect that the fourth Pope, Clement I (he headed the Church in 89-97 A.D.), ended his life in a stone quarry in the vici­nity of Chersonesos. In 988, Prince Volodymyr the Great brought his head, along with the body of his pupil Thebe, in a special casket from Chersonesos to Kyiv. Since then there have appeared place names in Ukraine like Klimentovo, Klimentovychy, Klimentievka, Klimovka, Klimany, Klimenky, and the surname Klimenko became popular.

Therefore, under Prince Askold [Kyivan] Rus’ had long become mature for a mass conversion to the new [Christian] faith. That was precisely why the oldest Rus’ chronicles adhere to a new calendar known as the Russian Era, from 860, when Askold baptized Rus’. At the time addressing Jesus Christ was regarded as introduction to the grace, the beginning of a new, real life. The prominent Russian historian Vasily Tatishchev saw some of these chronicles and described them in his works. All of them mentioned Askold’s (first) and Volodymyr’s (second) baptism of Rus’. Almost 300 years later, Tatishchev’s findings were fully confirmed by Academician Boris Rybakov in The Chronicles and Bylinas of Ancient Rus’ (Moscow, 1963). Naturally, this publication didn’t add to his friends among the party functionaries and numerous colleagues who had built their careers on the traditional [Soviet] interpretation of history, and so in the twilight of his life the internationally reputed academician was reluctant to broach the subject. Needless to say, The Primary Chronicle (often translated into English as the Tale of Bygone Years) contains a detailed account of Askold’s baptism [of Kyivan Rus’]. Ne-vertheless, there is ample reason to assume that, around 1118, it was “rewritten,” leaving out all sections dealing with this event. Fifty years ago, Boris Rybakov sadly noted: “The most important questions each historian asked himself — where and how this or that state took shape, when and how it adopted the Christian faith — were left unanswered… Someone deleted these most interesting pages from The Primary Chronicle.” In fact, Rybakov identifies this person: Mstyslav I of Kyiv (Mstyslav I Volodymyrovych the Great). It was thus, by humiliating his own people, that this prince tried to glorify the Varangian Riuryk dynasty, in general, and his father Volodymyr Monomakh (Volodymyr I Vsevolodovych) and grandfather Volodymyr the Great, in particular. This myth was actively upheld by the Romanov dynasty.

In actuality, Prince Oleh [of Novgorod], the ruler of the Ladoga and Germanic king of the Riuryks, started out the wrong way in Kyiv. He engineered a coup and murdered the legitimate ruler, Kiy’s descendant Askold, isolating Kyiv from the rest of Christian world, holding back civilized progress in Rus’ for a century. Not coincidentally, his name is never mentioned by Byzantine and European sources — and this considering that the name of his predecessor, Askold, is found in many European sources. There is only one Byzantine source, entitled The Life of St. Stephen of Sugdaea, that tells about Prince Bravlin of Novgorod who robbed a temple in Sugdaea (Surozh, currently Sudak in the Crimea) sometime in 900. After that he took seriously ill. Prince Bravlin got well as soon as he returned the loot and was then baptized. This prince isn’t mentioned in any of the Rus’ chronicles. The Arab geographer Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn al-Husayn ibn Ali al-Mas’udi (also known as Al-Mas’sudi) wrote that in 912 Rus’ men aboard 500 ladias attacked the Persian coast of the Sea of Azov. A number of historians believe that Oleh died during that campaign. In other words, there is ample reason to call into question all those “great deeds” of the self-styled Prince Oleh, extolled as they are in The Primary Chronicle. In the first place, this applies to his [Russian/Soviet] schoolbook campaign against Constantinople in 907. Not a word about it in any Byzantine sources. The first dubious aspect is the number of ladia boats: two thousand! Askold is known to have deployed 360 ladias in his 860 campaign, and 500 such boats in 912, on the Caspian Sea.

The story about the Rus’ warriors placing these boats on wheels/rollers and racing, with billowing sails, toward Constantinople is even less credible. Those familiar with pictures of the locality of that period know that it was a semidesert where it was difficult to find a handful of brushwood, so timber and firewood had to be supplied over tens and hundreds of miles. This was convenient from the mi-litary point of view because the enemy couldn’t possibly covertly reach the walls of the city in broad daylight. However, it is anyone’s guess how a whole forest could have grown there, which the aggressor allegedly used to make those wheels/rollers. Another unlikely possibility is that Prince Oleh and his troops had taken them along, just in case. It looks as though the monk who wrote this story saw in his mind the thick forest around Kyiv and had never traveled further south than Vasylkiv. The same is true of the story about the huge indemnity paid and special advantages conferred on the Rus’ merchants and envoys. In fact, the treaty made by Prince Ihor and the Byzantine emperor in 944 has no such clauses. The most amazing thing, however, is that these cock-and-bull stories are present in current schoolbooks, being used to inculcate the patriotic spirit in the younger generation precisely the way this was done three hundred years back. The actual result is the exact opposite, of course. Who cares to learn that his forefathers were good for nothing and tearfully begged the Varangian Riuryk, a perfect stranger, to come and rule them? Boris Rybakov laconically characterizes Oleh as a voivode and Riuryk’s right hand: “… an obscure Germanic nobleman who seized Kyiv like a regular highwayman, and who met his end God knows where.” It is also an established fact that he unlawfully usurped political power for thirty years. And so

Riuryk’s son Ihor, pronounced Prince of Kyiv when he was 19, could actually start running his state at the age of 39. Oleh was also the one to find Olha as his wife. It stands to logic that Prince Oleh allegedly died because of his horse. Folk legend has it that one’s horse, a horse-head-shaped amulet or the horse’s skull always protect good men against evil while punishing the bad ones. Apparently, during his long and crude reign, all of Oleh the Prophet’s subjects — the common folk in the first place — got sick and tired of him. That was why the Magi prophesied his mythical death because of his horse and church chroniclers committed this to paper.

The death of the accursed guardian [Oleh the Prophet] was by no means the end of problems that befell Prince Ihor as the legitimate ruler [of Kyivan Rus’]. After the assassination of Askold, the Drevlians refused to recognize Oleh and stopped paying tribute to Kyiv. The self-styled prince was never able to solve this problem. Ihor had to correct mistakes resulting from Oleh’s inactivity and paid for them with his life (945 A.D.) Mykhailo Braichevsky believes that some of the heathen Varangian men in his troops could well have been involved, and for tangible reasons. Ihor’s men must have learned that the prince’s baptism was the main clause of the 944 gentlemen’s agreement with Constantinople. In the course of his first, abortive, campaign against the Byzantine Empire in 941, the Greeks used gunpowder to destroy the Rus’ flotilla. In 944, it never got close to hostilities. As it was, Prince Ihor couldn’t expect any weighty concessions from the Byzantine emperor, Romanos I Lekapenos, while the treaty was good for [Kyivan] Rus’, in that it was practically an exact replica of the one made by Askold, back in 874. The only distinction was that Askold’s treaty showed Rus’ as a solid Christian polity, and Ihor’s 944 — as one with many religions. There was only one kind of payment for the making of this mutually advantageous treaty: [Prince Ihor’s] promise to convert [Kyivan] Rus’ to Christianity and his own baptism. There was only one step he had to take. Under Pope Leo VI (886-918) the Kyiv eparchy was 6th by the number of adherents outside the Byzantine Empire. The Primary Chronicle contains the text of the 944 Russo-Byzantine Treaty: “Being Christians, we hereby swear by the Church of Saint Elias and the Holy Cross… [that] we shall never act contrary to the interests of our country… this shall apply to Christians as well as to non-Christians…” Braichevsky believes that Prince Ihor, after returning home with his wife Olha, performed the rite of baptism secretly, in Kyiv, sometime in September-October 944. He died the following year. Meanwhile, power changed hands in Constantinople, with Romanos I Lekapenos being exiled to a monastery, and accused of betraying the national interests, notably by signing a treaty with [Kyivan] Rus’. To reaffirm this treaty, Princess Olha immediately sailed to Constantinople in 946. The new Byzantine emperor, Constantine VII (historically known as Porphyrogennetos, “the Purple-Born”) was in no hurry to welcome her, and Olha busied herself visiting local temples, accompanied by her personal presbyter. Her activities didn’t pass unnoticed and finally she reached her goal. Eventually, a beautiful legend would emerge, extolling a Rus’ princess with a masculine character, who was baptized by the Byzantine emperor. The [Russian] Orthodox Church likewise extols her and has her name on their list of saints.

Much to Olha’s chagrin, her son Sviatoslav turned out to be Oleh’s replica. Kyivan Rus’ chroniclers at the time did their utmost to glorify his numerous highwayman-like campaigns and raids, while scolding him for neglecting his princely duty of protecting Rus’ — and Kyiv, this mother of all of Rus’ cities — against nomads.

Today, Russian and Ukrainian historians accuse Sviatoslav of recklessly destroying the Khazar Khanate in 965 A.D. It had by then conspicuously fallen into decay and constituted no military threat for [Kyivan] Rus’. This powerful khanate infrastructure could have secured Rus’ merchants’ safe access to the Povolzhie Volga Region, the North Caucasus, Persia, and Central Asia. A stable alliance between these Europe’s strongest states could have ensured stability, all the way from the Urals to the Carpathian Mountains. Had this been the case, the Golden Horde would have been unable to cross the Volga. Most of the Horde’s troops were made up of nomads from Povolzhie, the North Caucasus, and lands adjoining the Sea of Azov. That was precisely why the Golden Horde’s headquarters were in Sarai (also known to historians as Sarai Batu, one of the largest cities of the medieval world, located in the Volga’s lower reaches, with a population of 500,000, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica). This uncalled-for destruction of the Khazars paved way for the Pechenegs to seize the land in the south of Rus’. Archaeologists point to a mass devastation of landowners’ property in this region [at the time]. European sources read that the lands along upper reaches of the Dnies­ter (Verkhneie Podnestrovie) were then turning into the Silva Pieczyngarum, the Pecheneg Forest. Sviatoslav’s abortive campaigns against the Bulgars turned the Byzantine Empire from formal ally into an inveterate enemy of [Kyivan] Rus.

After the prince was killed in a skirmish with the Pechenegs, sometime in 972, down the Dnipro rapids, his eldest son, Yaropolk, took over. He represented a new generation, considering that his [Eastern] Orthodox mother (daughter of a Hungarian king) and grandmother Olha made every effort to raise the boy in the true Christian spirit. Prince Yaropolk never succeeded in repulsing a single Pecheneg raid during his eight years in office — with hordes of Pechenegs camped out at Stuhna, 30 kilometers from Kyiv. Viewed from this angle, his assassination, ordered by Vladimir/Volodymyr, his stepbrother and ruler of Novgorod, was a step that simply had to be taken. The new prince followed in Oleh’s footsteps, hired Varangian mercenaries and seized Kyiv. Volodymyr, nevertheless, succeeded in doing something none of the Riuryks had done.

Volodymyr’s heathen way to Jesus Christ was dramatically winding and thorny. Our chronicles read that he, in the early years of his reign, ordered Christian adherents and clergy persecuted. The Metropolitan of Kyiv may well have lashed out at Prince Volodymyr, in one of his sermons at St. Elias’ Church, condemning him for the murder of Yaropolk. This may have well caused Volodymyr to hit the roof, considering that the metropolitan had to run for his life, all the way from Kyiv to Pereiaslav. Prince Volodymyr, however, wasn’t content, ordering the heathen tabernacle restored on Old Kyiv Hill, with the Perun heathen deity at the head (it had been destroyed on Askold’s orders). In the early years of his reign, Volodymyr surprised his sycophants by adopting Islam, which was conveyed by the envoys of the Khwarezmian dynasty.

Ahmad ibn Abdallah Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi, a noted Persian astronomer, geographer, and mathematician, wrote: “It was thus they had been raised and educated until they became Christians on that month of the year three hundred. After they adopted the Christian faith, their new religion rendered the cutting edges of their swords dull, left them bereft of their habitual daily occupations, and made them return to the harsh realities of life that boiled down to poverty… Then they said they wanted to adopt Islam, so they could make raids, wage Jihad, and return to the old ways.” 

What makes this quote interesting is that it confirms the fact of the baptism of [Kyivan] Rus’ under Askold. Under such circumstances, Islam stood no chance as the predominant religion in Prydniprovia, the lands adjoining the Dnipro.

Everybody in the corridors of power knew about the confrontation between the Prince and the Metropolitan of Kyiv, including Volodymyr’s sons and grandsons. The latter may well have deleted the dissenting metropolitan’s name from all Rus’ chronicles in the 11th century. Braichevsky studied Ni­kep­ho­ros Kallistos Xanthopoulos’ Historia Ecclesiastica and identified the dissenter: Metropolitan Theophylaktos.

Meanwhile, the rebellious Bulgars defeated Basil II’s troops in 986, with the emperor surviving by pure chance. The northeastern Bulgar provinces sought the Kyivan Prince’s protectorate to escape the fratricidal bloodbath. Basil II didn’t mind, for reasons best known to himself. He knew only too well that military support from [Kyivan] Rus’ was the only way to prevent his [otherwise] inevitable fiasco. Volodymyr knew as much, so he agreed to provide the required military aid, in exchange for marrying the Greek princess. This marriage was the only way Volodymyr could put an end to Rus’ isolation from the international community, as well as to the mounting rumors about his dubious parentage. Basil II took his time making the final decision, of course. Meanwhile, his Commander in Chief Bardas Phokas proclaimed himself emperor and seized Chrysopolis (currently Uskudar, a large and densely populated municipality of Istanbul, Turkey, on the Anatolian shore of the Bosporus). “Devastating revolts, acts of aggression perpetrated by whole peoples, feud, resettlement of cities and countries, famine, plague, horrible earthquakes, and the almost total collapse of the Byzantine Empire…” was how the noted Byzantine historian, Leo the Deacon, saw the situation.

On learning about Bardas Phokas’ revolt, Prince Volodymyr led his troops to the Crimea and reached Chersonesos in the fall of 987. The siege lasted six months and the city was seized in March 988. Volodymyr then faced Basil II with an ultimatum: the princess as his wife or the siege of Constantinople. The Byzantine emperor had no alternative and complied, on condition that Volodymyr adopts the Christian faith by baptism. [Prince Volodymyr agreed.] Most historical sources have it that both events took place in April 988, at a temple named for Saint Jacob in Chersonesos. It was only then that Volodymyr dispatched a six-thousand-strong detachment of Rus’ warriors to Constantinople. The troops of the impostor Bardas Phokas were defeated before long and Byzantine quickly recovered from the shocking experience. This is a fact confirmed by several Byzantine sources, among them John Skylitzes (also known as Ioannes Scylitzes) who noted that Basil II, even prior to the battle between the men of [Kyivan] Rus’ and the rebels at Chersonesos, had his sister Anna marry Prince Volodymyr. Therefore, the generally known story about Volodymyr being cheated by the Greeks was contrived by scribes who subsequently copied [The Primary Chronicle].

Who then did actually baptize the people of Kyiv after Volodymyr’s return? The Primary Chronicle reads: “Hereupon Vladimir took the Princess and Anastasius and the priests of Kherson [i.e., Chersonesos], together with the relics of St. Clement and of Phoebus…” and returned to Kyiv. Braichevsky believes that Anastasius was that Chersonesos priest who sent Volodymyr a message, attached to an arrow shot by a bowman, telling the Kyivan prince to cut off water supply to the besieged city. Not surprisingly, Anastasius would become Prince Volodymyr’s personal spiritual mentor. There is also the strong likelihood of this priest heading the baptism campaign in Kyiv. The fact is, The Primary Chronicle doesn’t mention the Metropolitan of Kyiv and/or his Novgorod, Rostov, Belgorod, Chernihiv, and Volodymyr-Volynsky eparchies as participants in this significant event. Nor should one ignore the Kyvites’ enthusiasm, as the chronicle reads that they were happy, their joy reaching the sky above. Well they should, considering that, for the first time during the hundred years of the Riuryks’ incompetent governance, the people of Kyivan Rus’ stood the real chance of becoming citizens of a powerful civilized state headed by an able statesman, the great political leader who had defended them against the Peche­negs, and to whom Basil II had betrothed his sister. Now the Christians didn’t have to conceal their religious affiliation. Thanks to the baptized Prince of Kyivan Rus’, they would soon offer up prayers to Jesus Christ in a grand temple made of stone. As it was, Volodymyr had the Church of the Tithes built quickly (996) where Anastasius would conduct the divine services. The conflict between Prince Volodymyr and Metropolitan Theophylaktos ended only with the latter’s passing in 990, when Metropolitan Ioann [John] I took over.

Much to everyone’s amazement, Prince Volodymyr died on July 28, 1015. At the time Kyiv boasted some 400 [Eastern Orthodox] temples, several Roman Catholic ones, and an Irish church. This is proof that Kyivan Rus’ under Prince Volodymyr held its doors open for all of Europe. After his passing, priests of all Christian confessions in Kyiv offered up prayers for his soul. During the 27 years of his reign, as a Christian, Prince Volodymyr had worked a miracle, turning Kyiv from a heathen town of highwaymen into a Christian capital city of Eastern Europe. This was something very likely to keep Constantinople worried: they well remembered the persecution of Theophylaktos and the ungrounded exaltation of the dissenting priest Anastasius. The latter would flee from Kyiv besieged by the troops under the command of Boleslaw I the Brave, the first king of Poland, in 1018, side with him and end his life somewhere in Poland. Yaroslav the Wise and his sons would send repeated messages to Constantinople, asking the Patriarch to canonize Volodymyr, to no avail. He was finaly canonized by the Moscow diocese. In Russian folk ballads and legends he is referred to as Krasno Solnyshko, the Fair Sun.

What are the conclusions to be made from everything stated above? Our forefathers’ hearts were warmed by the fire of the Christian faith, and that they weren’t the last to adopt this religion (as proudly alleged by our schoolbooks), but rather took to the new religion simultaneously with most European peoples. This is something the Eastern Orthodox hierarchs knew only too well, including the names of all those who had baptized Kyivan Rus’: Prince Askold, Princess Olha, Prince Volodymyr the Great. Also, apparently, Kyivan Rus’ could become Christian only under the reign of its own princes, Askold and Volodymyr — not under strangers like the Riuryk dynasty — and join the European community nations on an equal footing.

For the umpteenth Ukraine is faced with a choice between remaining in the boondocks and becoming a full-fledged member of a united Europe. Most Ukrainians prefer the latter option, so what we need is a leader capable of making this age-old dream come true.

Valentyn Moiseienko is a historian and journalist