Book on Medieval Russian State of Kiev

George Vernadsky, Kievan Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press 1948).

I picked this book up when I was at College in the mid-80s. I did medieval history at ‘A’ Level and Russian at school, and although that’s long ago, I still have an interest in eastern European history, culture and politics. One of atrocities of this war among so many is the Russian assault on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. President Zelenskyy has said that he’s afraid that his country, its history and culture will be wiped out. Kyiv is one of the great historic cities of Europe. Great Russian authors such as Mikhail Bulgakov have set their novels in the city, and in music its been celebrated by the great Russian musician and composer, Mussorgsky in his ‘The Great Gates of Kiev’. But from c. 10th to the early 13th century Kyiv, or Kiev as it is known in Russian, was the centre of a great medieval Russian empire.

This book is a comprehensive history of Kievan Russia, looking not just at the reigns of its great tsars, but also the church and religion, its literature and culture, everyday life, relations with the other states and the position of national minorities. It has the following chapters, broken down thus into sections.

1. Kievan Russia’s Place in History

1. Is Russia Europe?
2. Russia’s place in the medieval world.
3. Divergent and parallel trends in Russian and European history.
4. The notion of east European history.
5. The challenge of geopolitics.
6. The significance of the Kievan period in Russian history.

II. The imperial plan and its failure, 878-972

1. The imperial plan: dreams and realities
2. First successes – Oleg
3. First setback – Igor
4. A breathing spell – Olga
5. The great adventure – Sviatoslav

III. Conversion to Christianity

1. The Russian paganism
2. Vladimir the Saint before his conversion (972-87)
3. The story of Vladimir’s conversion
4. Laying the foundations of the Russian church (990-1037)
5. The significance of conversion: An early appraisal.

IV. The Kievan Realm, 990-1139

1. Vladimir as Christian ruler (990-1015)
2. The struggle between Vladimir’s sons (1015-36)
3. The age of Iaroslav the Wise (1036-54)
4. The triumvirate (1054-93)
5. The reign of Sviatopolk II (1093-1113)
6. A social legislator: Vladimir Monomach
7. The first two monomashichi (1125-39)

V. Economic Foundations of Kievan Russia

1. Introductory remarks
2. Natural resources and population
3. Hunting, agriculture and fishing
4. Agriculture and cattle breeding
5. Metallurgy
6. Building industries
7. Textile arts, furriery, tanning, ceramics
8. Commerce
9. Money and credit
10. Capital and labor
11. National income
12. Prosperity and depression

VI. Social organisation

1. The basic social units
2. Social stratification
3. The upper classes
4. The middle classes
5. The lower classes
6. The half-free
7. The slaves
8. The church people
9. Woman
10. The steppe frontiersmen
11. National minorities
12. Concluding queries: on “economic and social feudalism” in Kievan Russia

VII. Government and Administration

1. Introductory remarks
2. The lands and the principalities
3. The three elements of government
4. The princely administration
5. Branches of administration
6. The city-state
7. The local commune
8. The manor
9. The church
10. The judiciary
11. Concluding queries: on “political feudalism” in Kievan Russia

VIII. The Russian Federation, 1139-1237

1. Introductory remarks
2. The struggle for Kiev (1139-69)
3. Keeping the balance between east Russia and west Russia
4. Defense of the frontier
5. The first appearance of the Mongols: the Battle of the Kalka (1223)
6. Time runs short (1223-37)

IX. Russian Civilisation in the Kievan Period

1. Introductory remarks
2. Language and script
3. Folklore
4. Music
5. Theater
6. Fine arts
7. Religion
8. Literature
9. Education
10. The humanities
11. Sciences and technlogy

X. The Way of Life

1. City and country life
2. Dwellings and furniture
3. Dress
4. Food
5. Health and hygiene
6. The cycle of life
7. Public calamities

XI. Russia and the Outside World in the Kievan Period

1. Preliminary remarks
2. Russia and the Slavs
3. Russia and Scandinavia
4. Russia and the west
5. Russia and Byzantium
6. Russia and the Caucasus
7. Russia and the east

It also has a map of Russia in the Kievan period as well as a list of sources, bibliography and index.

I’ve no doubt that some of the material in the book has become out of date in the nearly 80 years since it was first published. For example, the book describes the veche, a popular assembly, as a democratic institution. But others have said that it met too infrequently really to have been an instrument of popular, democratic government. Although you do wonder what history might have been like if it had been. Would we now be looking at the Ukraine as one of the major foundations of European democracy alongside the British parliament, the Swiss cantons and the Icelandic althing?

Despite its inaccuracies, I think that the book is nevertheless an excellent history of this most ancient Russian state and its people.

And I hope it is not too long before peace and justice is restored to this part of eastern Europe.

Jewish Labour Party Members Attack the Suspension of Ken Livingstone

Mike has put up several articles today about the suspension of Ken Livingstone from the Labour party for bringing the party into disrepute with his remarks stating that Hitler initially collaborated with the Zionists in order to send Jews out of Germany and into Palestine. This has been viciously denounced as anti-Semitic by the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire and a range of other Jewish leaders.

It is rubbish. As I have said on this blog time and again, Livingstone for all his faults is not remotely anti-Semitic. He has always stood up for persecuted minorities against racism and Fascism, whether those picked on are Blacks, Asians, Jews or Irish. His book, Livingstone’s Labour, published in 1987 makes this very clear, and he devotes several chapters to revealing Britain’s shameful actions in recruiting Nazi thugs and collaborators to assist the British intelligence services in the war against Communism.

A letter criticising the old Leninist newt-fancier’s suspension, signed by 30 Jewish members of the Labour party has been sent to the NCC in advance of Livingstone’s hearing. Mike has also posted up on his blog not only the collective statement of the Jewish Labour members against this injustice. He has also put up statements from five Jewish Labour members, who personally appeared to present their views. They are Walter Wolfgang, Jonathan Rosenhead, Noami Wimborne-Idrissi, Diana Neslen and Jenny Manson. Several of these have personal and family experiences of real, genuine anti-Semitism. Mr Wolfgang, 93, was one of those, who found sanctuary in this country from persecution from the Nazis. Jenny Manson’s mother was forced to leave Ukraine in 1919 because of the pogroms there. (You can find a description of the outbreak of violent anti-Semitic persecution and the lynching of Jews simply for being Jews during the Russian Civil War, in Bulgakov’s novel The White Guard.) Jonathan Rosenhead and Jenny Manson also come from very Zionist backgrounds. Manson’s mother lived for ten years in Palestine, and her father’s mother was also active in Zionism in Britain. One other lady, Diana Neslen, is a Labour councillor and an active anti-racism campaigner. She has been chair of the Redbridge Race Equality and Community Council. Her family has also suffered anti-Semitic abuse, but in this country. Her son was beaten up by one of the British Nazi groups. After this vile individual was jailed, her family suffered a torrent of anti-Semitic phone calls.

The five have been members of the party for a very long time. They are not complacent about anti-Semitism. Indeed, it is because they take it so seriously, that they make it very clear that accusations of it should not be devalued simply to make a political point. They state very clearly that Livingstone was historically correct about the Transfer Agreement between the Nazis and the Zionists in Palestine. They point out that the definition of anti-Semitism that has been used against Livingstone is one that specifically equates includes criticism of Israel. This definition is discredited. The real definition of anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews for simply being Jews. This is the definition Marr, the founder of the League of Anti-Semites used for his organisation in the 19th century. They make the point that Ken Livingstone’s defence of Naz Shah was not anti-Semitic, nor were his historically accurate comments about the Transfer Agreement. They also state very clearly that these accusations come from Zionist organisations. However, not all Jews are Zionists, and those that are include many, who believe that the movement should be open to historical criticism.

Diana Neslen also points out that when, four years ago, the Daily Mail used dog whistle anti-Semitic insinuations against Ed Miliband – stating that his father ‘hated Britain’ and was a ‘Marxist’ – standard accusations from the Nazi playbook, the Board of Deputies of British Jews kept their mouths firmly shut. She also asks the Labour party to pay no heed to organisations that have been openly hostile to the Labour party, pointing out that the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews called on the Jewish community to vote Tory in the 2015 election.

Their testimony is powerful, and their knowledge of the subject is clearly very extensive. Please read it. It’s on Mike’s blog at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/04/05/jewish-labour-party-members-slam-decision-to-suspend-ken-livingstone/

Go there, and follow the links to more material from the people at their own websites.

Incidentally, I think Walter Wolfgang may have been the elderly gentleman, who was forcibly bundled out of a Labour conference by two goons simply for making a statement from the floor that embarrassed Blair. Mr Wolfgang was entirely correct, and it shows the authoritarianism and bullying contempt for grassroots democracy at the heart of the New Labour project. Just as this shabby pronouncement against Ken Livingstone does.

British Shell Companies and the Attacks on Liberal Journalism in the Ukraine

Private Eye has long been extremely critical of the shell companies and the British tax legislation and accountancy firms that support them. These are companies that largely exist in name only, which are used as an accountancy trick to allow corporations to avoid paying tax in Britain by falsely claiming that they are resident, or owned by companies in foreign tax havens. It dates back to Blair and New Labour, but as with everything corrupt that benefits big business, it’s been taken over by the Coalition. Now, according to the Eye’s Christmas edition, these companies have been used for something even more pernicious and sinister: the attack on liberal journalism itself on the Ukraine. The Eye’s article ‘Tricking Kiev’ reports how a network of shell companies was used by the American-Ukrainian businessman, Alexander Altman, to wrest control of Ukrainian news agency, TVi, from its rightful owner, Konstantin Kagalovsky, a Russian businessman based in Britain.

The Eye says:

‘The battle in the Ukraine between pro-European reformers and the friends of Russia’s Vladimir Putin is partly a fight for control of the media.

Luckily for the oligarchs, they can rely on the acquiescence of TVi. Once a source of investigative journalism, it is now a feeble wreck thanks to a massive fraud perpetrated with the help of Britain’s lax corporate regulations.

As Eye 1344 reported, American-Ukrainian “businessman” Alexander Altman walked into TVi in April, and astonished its journalists by saying that he was now their boss. He locked out its owner, the British-based-based Russian businessman Konstantin Kagalovsky, and ordered reporters to stop causing trouble on pain of dismissal.

In a withering judgment at the High Court in London last week, Mr Justice Turner said there had been a “coup” at TVi, accomplished by “using forged documents comprising fake powers of attorney, board resolutions and board minutes”.

TVi’s baffled owner found that control had passed to a British firm called Balmore he had never heard of. No one could blame him for his ignorance. Balmore was an off-the-shelf firm, which Mr Justice Turner said “was in the precarious position of having beern served with a notice that it was to be struck off the company register for failing to submit an annual return”.

On the day Altman moved against liberal journalists in Kiev, Balmore’s annual return was prepared and filed electronically to Companies House in Britain.

The rightful owners’ lawyers secured an injunction in the summer saying that Altman must disclose information on how TVi had gone from Balmore into a maze of British shell companies. Robert Dougans, Kagolovsky’s solicitor, said Altman had refused to comply and was thus guilty of contempt of court. Even Altman’s London lawyers, Kerman & Co appeared to suspect that something unprofessional and unethical may have been going down. Internal emails, revealed to the court, show Sebastian Devlin, an associate lawyer at the firm, warning partner Carl Robinson that he saw a “real risk” in complying with Altman’s wishes. As the judge drily noted, Robinson was “unable to proffer any clear Explanation” on what Altman had asked Turner that had so worried his colleague.

Throughout the contempt case, Altman said he was the victim of a “set up”. He got out of bed one morning and found that he was associated with mysterious British companies. The judge was having none of it. If Altman were an innocent victim, “he would have made far more strenuous efforts to find out what had happened”. He “knew full well “why the companies had been formed. He was their “controlling mind”, who had retained Kerman & Co and handed them boxes of corporate documents.

The judge found Altman guilty of contempt, and will sentence him next year.

Robert Dougan, the victorious solicitor, told the Eye that despite the judgement there was still no guarantee that the Ukrainian courts would hand TVi back. “One of the reasons why people are on the streets in Kiev is because shady operators in and out of government can commit frauds and no one does anything about it.” As in so many other frauds, the fraudsters turn to “light touch” Britain for help. Dougans explained how he had found out for himself how light that touch was. “I decided to test our controls by registering my cat as a company director,” he said. “No one tried to stop me.”

(Private Eye, 21 December – 9 January 2014, p. 33).

This is a serious attack on the nascent free press in the new, post-Soviet state. The Ukraine is one of the oldest of the Russian states. As the kingdom of Kiev, tt was founded in the early Middle Ages by Varangian Vikings, who intermarried with and adopted the culture of the indigenous Slav population. Under its king, Oleg, in the 9th century it established relations with the Byzantine Empire. Oleg marched to Constantinople at the head of an army and after sacking its suburbs and nailed his shield to the city’s wall. As well as extracting tribute, he also demanded a number of agreements establishing trade between the Empire and Kievan Russia. The Byzantine Emperor acceded to his demands, and Oleg married a Byzantine princess. Later in the century, sometime after 988, the Kievan king, Vladimir the Great, converted to Christianity. This marked the beginning of the Orthodox Church in Russia, as well as the beginning of the Russian view that they are the ‘Third Rome’, after the Eternal City itself, and Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine or eastern Roman Empire.

The country takes its name from the Ukrainian word ‘Krai’, which means a border area. During the Middle Ages it was part of the Republic of Poland, before being conquered and incorporated into Russia. The Ukraine has produced some of the greatest Russian authors, including Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Bulgakov, the author of the White Guard and the Master and Margarita.

One of my father’s workmates was Ukrainian, who finally moved back his native country to be with his family after the fall of Communism. One of my friends has also lived and worked in the former Eastern Bloc. A few years ago he holidayed in Kiev, and really loved the place. When he came back he proudly showed me the various sights he’d seen. Back in the 1990s there was some pessimism about the new, post-Soviet nation’s future. There has been considerable friction between the western Ukraine, which is largely rural and Roman Catholic, and the industrialised, Orthodox east, which has a large Russian population. Some observers and commenters feared that the country would degenerate into ethnic conflict and possible civil war, along with the emergence of anti-Semitism. While the country is clearly divided over the question of its ties to either the EU or Putin’s Russia, large scale conflict has been avoided. Indeed, the Financial Times was so impressed with the new state that in an article about it, the newspaper described it as almost a magical place, straight from a fairy-tale. The question of whether the country has closer ties to Russia or the EU is, of course, an issue for the Ukrainians themselves to decide. To do so, and to strengthen their democracy, they need a genuinely liberal, free press able investigate corruption and dodgy political dealing. Unfortunately, the extremely lax corporate legislation over here has meant that this is being stifled to serve very powerful, corporate interests.

The use of this legislation to attack Ukrainian free journalism also poses a threat to the free press in the rest of the world, including this country. Globalisation has meant that the world is now interconnected, and once international big business feels it can get away with something in one country, it will try and use the same tactic elsewhere. We cannot afford to see this as merely a problem for a far away country, tucked away in the former USSR. If it is allowed to succeed in the Ukraine, then it will eventually come here.

A Hellish Morass of the Demoralised, Poorly-Paid and the Back-Stabbing: Life at the Bottom of the Civil Service

I’ve been doing a course run by one of the local further education colleges and held at one of Bristol’s museums these past two weeks, intended to give the unemployed some of the skills and qualifications to help them find work. It’s been fascinating meeting the other people on the course, and hearing their stories and views about employment and the Job Centre. They’re a very mixed group. Some are intellectual and academic, while others’ skills and experience lie in the practical, manual trades. Listening to them, it’s a complete mystery why some of them don’t have jobs. There are a few, who have been out of work for a couple of years, yet are clearly articulate, capable and willing. Several have been on other courses before. Several of them have suffered from bullying employers in what were blatantly cases of constructive dismissal. Many also have been badly treated by the Job Centre.

One of the gents on the course has worked at one time in the Civil Service. It is not a job to which he wishes to return. He stated that at the lowest levels – that of the AAs, it is extremely poorly-paid, and the other employees are personally treacherous in their desperation to move on. AA stands from ‘Administrative Assistants’. Their job is basically going round taking claimant’s files to those higher up the chain of command, to the AOs, who interview clients, and the EOs, HEOs and office managers making the decisions. They also deliver the mail. According to this fellow, the pay is below £7,000. As a result, many are forced to ask for advances on next month’s salary in order to make ends meet. What he found shocking is that they were so acculturated to this exploitative arrangement, that they accepted it as normal. He also was shocked and disgusted at the amount of back-stabbing he had encountered amongst them, as each one fought against the others to climb up the corporate ladder. From the way he describes it, it sounds very much like he was glad to leave the job. It sounds very much like Thomas Hobbes’ ‘war of each against all’, with personnel, who are very definitely nasty and brutish.

This is very different from the civil service AAs I met in my career over twenty years ago. I don’t know how much they were paid, but they were largely a very good-natured, cheerful bunch, who got on well together, while doing their jobs efficiently and conscientiously. That, however, was over two decades ago, and clearly years of re-structuring by Blair and now the Coalition has taken its toll.

I don’t think this fellow is alone in his feelings about working in the Civil Service either. I’ve met other civil servants, who were bitterly disgusted at their working conditions and the poor management from above. They too, wanted to get out of it.

Now this reflects very strongly on IDS’ claim to leadership quality. Ian Duncan Smith has made much of attending Sandhurst, even if there are considerable doubts about whether or not he actually graduated. He desperately wants the public to be impressed with his alleged leadership ability through his claimed rank in the army.

Well, the treatment of the employees in the civil service seems to disprove this.

It hardly needs to be said that the armed forces are tough environments. Discipline is rigorously enforced, frequently through lurid personal abuse screamed at you by the Sergeant Major. However, team work, and a paternalistic attitude by the commanding officers are also vitally important. Conservative opponents of Bush’s Neo-Con policies and the invasion of Iraq within the US military were highly critical of the extreme individualism and personal touchiness of the Neo-Con political advisers they were required to obey. They derisively referred to them as ‘chickenhawks’, because despite their belligerence and willingness to expend lives, they personally had never seen combat, and had frequently done their best to make sure they had avoided military service. They were also greatly unimpressed by the fact that only two of Bush’s army of advisers ever did team sports. The army, at least in the US, liked team sports because the survival and effectiveness of troopers in combat depends on their working well as a team, not as a group of individuals. In team sports, like American Football, no single player was more important, or immune to criticism for poor performance than the others. It didn’t matter if you were a great quarterback, if you dropped the ball, you could still expect to be bawled at by the coach, like anyone else, observed one female general. She stated that Bush’s Neo-Cons could never handle professional criticism as a result of their not playing such sports. When their judgements or decisions were criticised, they took immense umbrage as if it were an attack on them personally. Other officers have been critical of the way the armed forces has stressed individualism in its recruiting drive, and its apparent omission of how much teamwork and the active subordination of individual interests to that of the group plays in the forces as a whole. One senior officer in the US army voiced his low opinion of its recruiting slogan ‘Be an army of one’. He stated it was ridiculous, as the army was one of the biggest, least individual bureaucracies there was. Despite the horrors of war, it was the camaraderie that many soldiers found in the army and the solidarity they experienced with their fellow squaddies that they enjoyed, and which has been celebrated in literature, songs and poetry, like Kipling’s.

Good generals also frequently have a paternalistic attitude to the personnel under them. Nicholas Courtney, The actor, who played Brigadier Lethbridge-Stuart in Dr Who remarked in an interview that a good commander looks after his men. This was explain the Brigadier’s decisions in combating the various alien invasions and attempted coups by mad scientists, which plagued Earth regularly during his long career with the Doctor. Now these adventures were clearly fictional, but the ethos guiding the Brigadier’s treatment of the men and women under him in UNIT is real. General Sir Peter de la Billiere, who is very definitely an Eton-educated member of the establishment, states in his memoirs that he found out that one of the key leadership skills was looking after one’s troops. This didn’t mean being soft with them, but it did mean you took more care of them than you did yourself.

Almost none of this seems to be present in civil service that has been created and over which Ian Duncan Smith and his fellows preside. There clearly is no comradeship amongst people, who are all bitterly fighting each other for the merest chance of promotion. Neither can one see a paternalistic attitude amongst the senior staff and ministers, when they have increasingly inflated salaries while the people on the lowest rungs of their organisation are reduced to asking for advances to cover their inadequate pay. One can find accounts of great generals, who personally risked their careers to get their troops the equipment they needed despite the obstructions of the army bureaucracy. There’s a fictional description of such in Bulgakov’s The White Guard, set during the Russian Civil War in the 1920s. IDS certainly doesn’t seem to have fought to improve conditions for the civil servants under his management. Added to this, there is the personal cowardice of IDS himself. Like the Neo-Cons described and derided by traditional American Conservatives, IDS appears unable to take professional criticism and reacts badly when he meets it. He has repeatedly failed to meet opponents of his welfare reforms, and avoided answering questions by parliamentary committees. Once upon a time, generals led from the front. IDS, it appears, prefers to be well behind lines so he doesn’t have to take the flak dished out to his troops. And as we’ve seen, if he can’t legitimately get his way, then he reverts to bullying. No wonder he may have been returned to his unit.

This, then, is the state of the civil service under Ian Duncan Smith. It’s badly led, with no team spirit or esprit de corps, at least at its lowest levels. There it is a poisonous hell of back-stabbing by the desperate and demoralised, acculturated to poor treatment and poor pay. It’s little wonder that the civil servants in turn mistreat and abuse the job seekers and other benefit claimants. And all while IDS and his fellow ministers vote themselves increasingly bloated salaries. This constitutes the Tories’ ideas of leadership and ideal social conditions in modern Britain.