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.

The Empire Files’ Abby Martin on the Real Hillary Clinton

With Hillary Clinton looking like she’s going to be the Democrat candidate for the Whitehouse, The Empire File’s Abby Martin takes a good, long look at what Hillary really represents in this video. And it’s ugly. Very ugly.

Hillary’s campaign is heavily backed by corporate donors. These are most notoriously the Wall Street banks she has bailed out, including Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, but also the private prison industry, the pharmaceuticals, private healthcare, private schools and just about every other fat cat big multinational. Contributors to the Clinton Foundation have included the Saudis and Victor Pinchuk, the oligarch now partly responsible for turning Ukraine, the home of Gogol, Mussorgsky, and Nestor Makhno (for the Anarchists out there) into a post-Soviet banana republic. She’s also supported fracking and the NAFTA agreement that has outsourced jobs from America, as well as destroyed the industries of the other countries that have signed it.

While Bernie Sanders is the people’s candidate, Hillary’s been helped out by the system of superdelegates that the Democrats put in place way back in the 1980s to stop popular, populist candidates coming through. The votes of these privileged individuals vastly outweigh those of the ordinary delegates. And 1/3 of Hillary’s are unsurprisingly drawn from big business.

Hillary’s political history may also be described as ‘chequered’. This would be a euphemism. She started out as a Republican, campaigning for Barry Goldwater, the notorious pro-Segregation candidate. She’s tried to shrug this off as a case of personal naivety, but her activism on his behalf came after the initial peaceful protests, the freedom bus rides. She was part of the Republican reaction.

Her career in the Democrats has been untainted with racism either. The Democrats lost the Southern White vote after they embraced a minimal welfare establishment – medicare and Medicaid – and desegregation. Bill and Hillary attempted to reverse this, and win back White voters by launching the New Democrats in the ’70s and ’80s. These had an anti-welfare, pro-death penalty stance, calculate to appeal to White voters. There was also a strong racist undercurrent to her rhetoric. The Clintons attacked ‘welfare queens’ and ranted about urban ‘superpredators’, feral young males, who in the media were almost always identified with Blacks. She’s tried to distance herself from her past there, apologising for what she claims was a poor choice of words. They weren’t poorly chosen. Quite the opposite. She knew precisely what she was doing.

As Bill and her also know what they’re doing to the poor peasants of the world under the guise of charitable assistance. They’ve set up an organisation to provide help to the peasant farmers of the Developing World, such as the people of Africa. But it’s not a charity. Far from it. It’s a for-profit organisations, and the big businesses that back it expect to get something back in return. It’s another way of enslaving the Developing World’s peasant farmers under the guise of assisting them.

The video also documents her hawkish attitudes to defence, from selling arms to the Saudis, helping organise a coup against a democratically elected government in Honduras, and most notoriously, supporting the invasion of Iraq. She also tried to distance herself from this decision, but history shows that she was strongly in favour of the Iraqi invasion and urged her nation to support George Bush. She has also been responsible for the carnage into which Libya has descended through arming the rebels, who overthrew and killed Colonel Gaddafy. She’s shown on TV laughing about Gaddafy’s execution. The result has been what everyone else warned her about – the emergence of an unstable state governed by Islamist militias. She also wants America to ramp up its presence in Afghanistan. Martin states that Hillary stands for perpetual war.

And most chillingly, Hillary has repeatedly stated that she’s in favour of war with Iran, including the use of nuclear weapons. Again, it’s hard to disagree with Martin when she says that this makes Hillary immensely dangerous, as a war with Iran would be much far-reaching than the Iraq invasion. Indeed it would. It’d be a recipe for global chaos, and would mean that America was effectively at war with the whole Shi’a Muslim world.

And Martin makes it very clear, that as a woman she rejects Hillary’s campaign to gain women’s votes, because she leaves out immigrant women, poor women, and the women of the nations she’s bombed. Here’s the video: