As scholarship continues to expand the idea of medieval Europe beyond "the West," the Rus' remain the final frontier relegated to the European periphery. Examining a wide range of medieval sources, ...and through an innovative analysis of medieval titles, The Kingdom of Rus' challenges the perception of Rus' as an eastern "other" - advancing the idea of the Rus' as a kingdom deeply integrated with medieval Europe.
An overriding assumption has directed scholarship in both European and Slavic history: that Kievan Rus' was part of a Byzantine commonwealth separate from Europe. Raffensperger refutes this, and ...offers a new frame for two hundred years of history, in which Rus' is understood as part of medieval Europe, and East is not so neatly divided from West.
In The Nature and the Image of Princely Power in Kievan Rus', 980-1054, Walter K. Hanak provides a critical analysis of the annalistic and literary record of a newly Christianized state and its ...impact upon the formulation of princely authority.
This 2006 book documents developments in the countries of eastern Europe, including the rise of authoritarian tendencies in Russia and Belarus, as well as the victory of the democratic 'Orange ...Revolution' in Ukraine, and poses important questions about the origins of the East Slavic nations and the essential similarities or differences between their cultures. It traces the origins of the modern Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nations by focusing on pre-modern forms of group identity among the Eastern Slavs. It also challenges attempts to 'nationalize' the Rus' past on behalf of existing national projects, laying the groundwork for understanding of the pre-modern history of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The book covers the period from the Christianization of Kyivan Rus' in the tenth century to the reign of Peter I and his eighteenth-century successors, by which time the idea of nationalism had begun to influence the thinking of East Slavic elites.
Historians in pre-revolutionary Russia, in the Soviet Union, in contemporary Russia, and in the West have consistently relegated the medieval dynasty of Chernigov to a place of minor importance in ...Kievan Rus'. This view was reinforced by the evidence that, after the Mongols invaded Rus' in 1237, the two branches from the House of Monomakh living in the Rostov-Suzdal' and Galicia-Volyn' regions emerged as the most powerful. However, careful examination of the chronicle accounts reporting the dynasty's history during the second half of the twelfth and the first half of the thirteenth century shows that the Ol'govichi of Chernigov successfully challenged the Monomashichi for supremacy in Rus'. Through a critical analysis of the available primary sources (such as chronicles, archaeology, coins, seals, 'graffiti' in churches, and architecture) this 2003 book attempts correct the pervading erroneous view by allocating to the Ol'govichi their rightful place in the dynastic hierarchy of Kievan Rus'.
Over the last two decades, it has become clear that Russia insists on its great power status, even at considerable cost. Chasing Greatness provides an interpretive explanation of the tacit rules that ...shape Russia's great power identity today. Anatoly Reshetnikov argues that this never-ending chase for greatness is a result of how Russia and its predecessors—including the USSR, Russian Empire, Muscovy, and Kievan Rus’—historically interacted with its neighbors to the east, the south, and particularly the west. By analyzing an extensive amount of original source material, including primary sources that have not been previously translated into English, he is able to reconstruct a millennial history of the Russian concepts that express political greatness. He also traces numerous encounters between Russia and the West, as well as Russia’s troubled integration into the European society of states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to show how these concepts have affected Russia’s interaction with international society. Despite its substantive historical depth, Chasing Greatness is not a book of history. Rather, it is a synthesizing social science work inspired by the continental tradition of the critical history of modernity. As such, the book is more about the present than about the past. Its main aim is to expose and explain the rich conceptual baggage behind Russia’s unceasing great power rhetoric (domestic and international) and how this rhetoric drives the current international crises involving Russia.
This book intertwines two themes in medieval studies hitherto kept apart: comparisons of Latin and Orthodox Europe and the "feudal revolution" of the late- and post-Carolingian periods. The book ...broadens the debate by comparing texts written in "learned" and "vulgar" Latin, Church Slavonic, Anglo-Norman, and East Slavonic. From this comparison, the Kingdom of the Rus appears as a regional variation of European society. This suggests current interpretations overemphasize factors unique to the medieval West and overlook deeper pan-European processes.
This revised edition is a concise, yet comprehensive narrative of the history of Russia from the reign of Vladimir I the Saint, through to the reign of Ivan IV the Terrible. Supplementing the ...original edition with results of recently published scholarship as well as her own research, Janet Martin emphasizes the dynamics of Russia's political evolution from the loose federation of principalities known as Kievan Rus' through the era of Mongol domination to the development of the Muscovite state. Her analyses of the ruling dynasty, of economic influences on political development, and her explorations of society, foreign relations, religion, and culture provide a basis for understanding the transformations of the lands of Rus'. Her lines of argument are clear and coherent; her conclusions and interpretations are provocative. The result is an informative, accessible, up-to-date account that will be of interest to both students and specialists of early Rus'.
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