Kiev’s history in 1-2-3
Kiev was originally the capital of a great medieval empire – the Kievan Rus – which until the early thirteenth century was the dominant force in Eastern Europe. They say the site was chosen following a visit and prophesy by the Apostle St. Andrew in the years following Christ’s death. A wedding cake church stands today at the spot along Kiev’s Andriyivskiy Uzviz where this legendary disciple of Jesus is supposed to have once stood and surveyed the horizon.
Following on from Rome and Constantinople, Kiev is said to be the last of the ancient capitals to be built on seven hills – the basis of a claim to being the Third Rome which was later usurped by its East Slavic successor state, Muscovy.
Sofiyskaya square of Kiev
Epic imperial past
The chronicles tell of a city of vast proportions boasting palaces, cathedrals and hundreds of churches. Although few architectural monuments remain from this period of its greatest glory, Kiev’s epic imperial past can still be felt in the majesty of old Kiev, whose gold-domed cathedrals and elegant palaces remain royally perched atop rolling hills above the Dnipro River. The greatest legacy of this imperial age is undoubtedly the city’s revered status within the Russian Orthodox faith – the Moscow Patriarch continues to regard Kiev as the holy of holies and the city is acknowledged as the fount of Russian Orthodoxy. This, after all, is where the tenth century Kievan prince Volodymyr the Great converted his people en masse to Orthodox Christianity – according to contemporary records he commanded his people to engage in mass baptism in the Dnipro River.
Some historians have suggested that the implied threats which accompanied the great conversion of the Rus carry with them an early indication of the regional taste for totalitarian methodologies which was to reap such a bitter harvest in more recent times. Thanks to this crucial role in regional history modern Kiev is considered the mother city of all Russia as well as all Ukraine, a shared ancestral history which has served as the basis for many a modern geopolitical quarrel.
The most civilized city in the empire
An attachment to Kiev is not all Russia and Ukraine share – the two countries’ histories have been intimately intertwined since the mid-seventeenth century when the expanding Russian Tsarist Empire first began to exert control over the territory of modern-day Ukraine. For Kiev this meant a return to imperial splendor as the capital of the patronizingly labeled ‘Little Russian’ domains of the Tsars. Following the decline of the Kievan Rus in the thirteenth century, Kiev fell into relative disrepair. Late medieval chroniclers speak of a miserable and semi-deserted city which had become a mere ghost of its former self. However, as the third city of the Russian Empire, Kiev enjoyed a renaissance which produced many of the city’s most recognisable landmarks.
In the age of the Romanovs and throughout the Soviet era Kiev was known as the most civilized city in the empire – a place associated with parks and culture, monasteries and cobbled streets. Despite serving as the bustling capital city of a 50 million strong nation, modern Kiev has thankfully retained this laid back ambience and remains popular as a weekend break for Muscovites who wish to escape the rat race. It is a city still getting used to the idea of being an independent capital, but rather than cramping its style, this geopolitical uncertainty has given modern Kiev a sense of dynamic swagger and fuelled a mood of hedonism which intoxicates many new arrivals.
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