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2 - What happened to the Rus′ Land?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2009

Serhii Plokhy
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
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Summary

The period from the mid-thirteenth to the late fifteenth century is probably the least researched in the history of the Eastern Slavs. Yet the events of that time gave rise to extremely important developments in the ethnocultural history of the region that led, according to most scholars, to growing differentiation among the East Slavic ethnonational communities. Soviet historians claimed that this was the period in which one all-Rus′ nationality ceased to exist and the three East Slavic nationalities were formed. There are also a number of other questions pertaining to the period that seem vital to modern-day national narratives. Did the final disintegration of Kyivan Rus′ and the establishment of appanage principalities in its place lead to the fragmentation of Rus′ identity, bring out already existing differences, or have no serious impact on the sense of Rus′ unity developed in Kyivan times? I address this question by examining changes in the concept of the Rus′ Land after the dissolution of the Kyivan state. What happened to the sense of commonality of the Rurikid princes and the Rus′ elites when they lost control over the Kyiv-Chernihiv-Pereiaslav triangle and had no common patrimony to care about? To answer this question, I shall consider changes in the treatment of the concepts of Rus′ and the Rus′ Land as markers of political, territorial, and ethnocultural communities in regions that were rarely considered to be part of the Rus′ Land in Kyivan times but became carriers and strong promoters of Rus′ identity during the appanage period.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Origins of the Slavic Nations
Premodern Identities in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus
, pp. 49 - 84
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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