Kieven Rus'

I have decided to stop on Orlando Figes' book, A People's Tragedy, at around 1910, the time that Grandpa Mamyshoff left the country. I have some sense of the atmosphere then in Russia. Although there were peasant uprising, most of the significant events happened in the two main cities of St. Petersburg and Moscow. There is not as much information for the smaller towns and villages, particularly in the western provinces. Since Grandpa was Ukrainian and most likely from a village in that area, I need more background.

I have switched to Ukraine a History by Orest Subtelny. So far I have covered the Kievan Rus' period, from 880 to about 1350. Lots of princes and battles, swapping of land and conversion from paganism to Christianity. A good, short overview of this time can be found here.

Kyiv was the center of everything: trade, power, culture. The book also covers this period for Galicia, Belorussia and Vohlyn (western part of Ukraine), which is my main place of interest. Particularly Vohlyn. Ukraine didn't really exist as a nation, as generally defined. It was Kievan Rus', then Lithuaian territory, then Polish territory with the Golden Horde taking over from time to time.

I am now at the period where Poland was trying to Polanize everything under its dominion, such as the land system, language and religion. Poland was Roman Catholic, while Kievan Rus' was Greek Orthodox, due to the Great Schism that occured in 1054. The Roman Catholics were ruled by the Pope, while the Orthodox Christians took their orders from Constantinople.

This religious history also explains the Greek Cyrillic alphabet that is used by most Slavic countries.

Since there was really no form of central government in the early days, religion was the center of everyone's universe. Ukraine, as well as Russia, was originally pagan, then adopted the Greek Orthodox religion. The Greek Orthodox religion segued into Russian Orthodox. Both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches were very, very powerful in their territories.

When Lithuania took over the western part of Ukraine, it was Orthodox and shared a lot of similarities, so things went fairly well. However, when Poland got involved with Roman Catholicism, this created a lot of tension. From what I understand, this tension still exists. I will learn more as I continue reading.

By the way, the preferred spelling of Kiev is Kyiv.