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The Making of Modern Ukraine, Class 5: Vikings, Slavers, Lawgivers: The Kyiv State (1)

Class 5: Vikings, Slavers, Lawgivers: The Kyiv State (1)

- All right, everybody, greetings.

Happy Tuesday.

It's good to see you all.

I'm used to being wired

and I'm used to teaching classes,

but I'm not used to being wired

while I teach classes.

And so this has led me

to a certain number already of missteps.

Like, for example, in the previous lecture,

when I unwittingly doxxed my TFs

by telling, saying what their name was

and making them stand up and turn around,

as a result of which, they're all now getting thousands

of emails from the admirers

of all of the stages of their short lives, right?

(students laugh) So I didn't think

of that, guys.

I'm sorry.

The other interesting feature of doing it this way

is that like for every one of you,

there are literally like 10,000

other people watching, or 1,000,

let's not exaggerate, but there's like behind you,

there are like 1,000 people out there

who are watching.

And it turns out they also have views,

which is interesting.

And like they're just writing.

You know, they're not coming to office hours.

Oh, speaking of which, come to office hours.

Some of you have come to office hours.

It's really nice to be able to get

to know you personally, if only for a moment.

And it helps me teach,

if I figure out what you're actually getting

and what you're actually not getting.

Okay, I promise you that by the end

of this lecture, something's gonna happen.

In the previous lectures,

we've been mainly trying to set things up.

We've been thinking about what history is.

We've been thinking about

basic problems of history.

We've been working on the colonial perspective,

and how you work your way out

from under a colonial perspective.

By the end of this lecture, I promise

there will be a state which is in Kyiv.

I'm going to deliver on that promise.

That is definitely gonna happen.

But I'm gonna begin with one more remark

about what we're doing,

because it's really important.

Like, as we're in the middle of a war

in which crimes are being committed

and people are dying and killing

because of certainties

about what had to happen in the past,

or what has to happen in the future,

it's very important to understand

that history is not that.

History is not about predetermination.

It's not about what has to be.

History can do, is it can be a kind

of guide to what was possible, right?

So there is a Ukrainian society

and Ukrainian state today,

which means that it must have been possible.

The most we can do

is we can guide ourselves

towards a greater understanding

of how such a thing was possible.

But when we get to that border

of how much we can understand,

there always has to be room

for what the people actually did, right?

Not just the people today,

but the people all the way back

1,000 years ago or more,

that we'll be talking about today.

Had their choices been somewhat different,

then other things also

would have been somewhat different.

So even as we push our understanding forward

as far as it can go,

we're always keeping in mind

that what people do and the choices that people make

are beyond our ability to predict.

And that's why history is, in a way,

like it's a science,

we're trying to figure things out,

but it's also a humanity,

where we leave room for human agency.

We try to understand human agency.

At the same time, we know that human agency,

you don't understand it with the same methods

that you understand mountains and rivers.

Okay.

So the big idea today

is how you get to a state.

And that is a big idea, right?

I mean, like you might have noticed

that whenever there's a country,

whenever there's a state,

there's always a legend

about how it came to be.

Like, for example, there's an American legend

of how America came to be.

This isn't my strong suit.

You guys can correct me, but I think George Washington

felled the cherry tree.

And then 13 cherries fell,

and from each of them

came a colony, something like that.

I don't know, but everyone has a.

Thank you. Okay.

(laughs) Good.

We have an American studies student here

who says, "Yep, that's what it was."

All right.

So, but everyone has an origin story,

which mixes usually some element

of what happened with some element

of what it would be nice

to think about what happened.

And the reason why everybody has an origin story

is that it's hard to explain

how you get from no polity to a polity.

And it's usually complicated,

and it's best to have a story about us and them,

and how it's very simple.

And those stories are never true.

But it is authentically hard.

So in this lecture today,

we're gonna be talking about

some general causal forces

which made it likely

that there would be states coming into being

in Eastern Europe around the year 1000.

And those general causal forces

are things like Christianity,

and what Christianity could do for people,

for rulers and for others.

Secondly, the fact that Christianity

was not a singularity,

but Christianity was a plurality.

There were two versions of Christianity

that were emerging.

From our point of view,

a Western version and a Southern version,

a Frankish version and a Byzantine version.

And those two versions of Christianity,

it wasn't their theological differences

that mattered so much.

It was that they were represented

by two strong political units

that were pushing outward imperially

into our region,

in competition with one another.

In competition with one another.

And then underlying all this

is the basic economic status

of the place we're talking about,

where nomads are still coming and going,

where slavery is still very prominent.

And when you think of what statehood does

for people, one of the things

that statehood does for people,

and this is not just true in Eastern Europe,

this is a sort of general characterization

of what a state is,

statehood protects the people

that the state recognizes

from being enslaved by other people.

So the basic economics

of the globalization that we're in at this point,

circa 800, 900, 1000,

is a globalization of a slave trade,

in which the human beings of our part of the world

are being shipped, very far distances sometimes,

in order to be enslaved.

That is a form of global economics.

It persists and expands and continues

well beyond our region,

well beyond this time.

What a state can do is put a stop to that locally.

A state can say, "We recognize you.

"We have the coercive means to make sure

"that you will not be sold into slavery.

"We also have the coercive means to tax you.

"So we prefer," making a very long story short,

"We prefer that you stay here and work the land,

"and we tax you,

"rather than we capture you

"and sell you into slavery."

And, you know, not to make you too cynical

about the world, because I know

you're, you know, young and naive,

but the same people who do the enslaving

are also often the same people who start the state.

And that's gonna be true in our case as well, right?

The people who are doing the enslaving

are also gonna be the same people who,

by the end of the story, are gonna start the state.

So there's a general story

about causality here,

but then there's a particular story

that I want you to keep in mind, too,

and be thinking about, which is, okay,

maybe Professor Snyder is right,

that Christianity, the clash of two Christianities,

this economic and human issue

of slavery, that these made it likely

that there would be states.

Fine, but why some states and not others?

Why some states and not others?

From the point of view of a national historiography,

this question never arises, right?

Your state is always inevitable.

Others people's states might be questionable,

but yours is always inevitable,

but it's a real question.

Why some states and not others?

Why Kyivan Rus'? Why Kyivan Rus'?

And here, we're gonna get into particularities,

which involve Vikings,

which involve rivers,

which involve Khazars, and which also involve,

and this is very important,

the presence of other Slavic states.

So a huge amount of politics is copying.

A huge amount of politics is taking things

which someone else has already done

in a neighboring place,

and applying them yourself.

So it's very important for Kyivan Rus',

that there was already Moravia

and that there was already Bulgaria.

Okay, so you remember the basic setup

of where we are.

We've tried to set up

this period in various different ways.

Europe is being created, right?

So again, Europe seems self-evident,

but the difference between Europe

and the classical world

is that Europe is north of the Mediterranean,

and the classical world goes around

the Mediterranean, right?

So when the classical world

blends into Europe

is when Islam begins, in the 7th century,

and the line between Europe

and what's not Europe then becomes a Christendom,

non-Christendom sort of divide, right?

There are famous, you know, examples

of when we should think of this.

The 720s, when the French

stop Arab armies in Poitiers.

The 750s, when the Khazars stop Arab armies

in the Caucuses.

Those are kind of symbolic.

But the basic idea is that Europe

is now north of something,

whereas the classical world

encircled something, right?

So Europe is coming into being,

and is coming into being

as the failure of Christianity

south of the Mediterranean,

or the serious decline of Christianity

south of Mediterranean,

and the spread of Christianity

north of the Mediterranean,

up into, eventually into Scandinavia,

around the year 1000,

and into Eastern Europe, around the year 1000.

Remembering that these are territories,

Scandinavia, Eastern Europe,

which were not directly part

of the classical world, right?

So they're going from their own versions of paganism,

which we've talked about, into Christianity.

Okay, so this brings us to the question,

which we're gonna look at now in a little more depth,

of what is Christianity at this time, right?

And this is tough because,

I mean, many of you will have been raised Christians

or have some contact with Christianity.

And the Christianity that we have in the third decade

of the 21st century

has all kinds of varieties.

And these varieties all have their traditions,

some of them going back to this thing

called the Reformation or the Counter Reformation.

We need to sort of clear our minds of all that,

and try to think what Christianity looked like

to pagans, from the point of view

of the 9th and 10th and 11th centuries.

And to make a long story short,

it's almost always true

that when you convert as a ruler,

you're not converting because you believe.

I'm sorry.

You might believe, I'm not saying it's impossible,

but you're generally converting

because the religion in question

is bringing something to you

that your native cult does not have.

Like, for example, a written language,

a set of elites who can use

that written language,

who can be your ambassadors and your bureaucrats,

like legitimacy with other states, right?

So from the point of view of pagan rulers

looking outward at this world,

the math was working against them.

What do I mean by the math?

The math of slavery, okay?

So if you're a pagan,

everyone can enslave you.

And for a while, you might say,

"Well, I can enslave everyone else.

"I can enslave other pagans.

"I can enslave Christians. I can enslave Muslims."

And so long as the power balance is on your side,

that may seem like an acceptable answer.

And for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Learn languages from TV shows, movies, news, articles and more! Try LingQ for FREE

Class 5: Vikings, Slavers, Lawgivers: The Kyiv State (1) Klasse 5: Wikinger, Sklavenhändler, Gesetzgeber: Der Kiewer Staat (1) Class 5: Vikings, Slavers, Lawgivers: The Kyiv State (1) Clase 5: Vikingos, esclavistas, legisladores: El Estado de Kiev (1) クラス5:バイキング、奴隷商人、法の番人:キエフ国家 (1) Klasse 5: Vikingen, slaven, wetgevers: De Kyivische staat (1) Klasa 5: Wikingowie, niewolnicy, prawodawcy: Państwo Kijowskie (1) Aula 5: Vikings, esclavagistas, legisladores: O Estado de Kiev (1) Занятие 5: Викинги, рабовладельцы, законники: Киевское государство (1) Klass 5: Vikingar, slavhandlare, rättsskipare: Staten Kiev (1) Sınıf 5: Vikingler, Köleciler, Kanun Koyucular: Kiev Devleti (1) Заняття 5: Вікінги, слов'яни, законотворці: Київська держава (1) 第 5 類:維京人、奴隸主、立法者:基輔國家 (1)

- All right, everybody, greetings.

Happy Tuesday.

It's good to see you all.

I'm used to being wired Ich bin|||| Я звик до того, що мене прослуховують.

and I'm used to teaching classes, а я звик до викладання,

but I'm not used to being wired

while I teach classes.

And so this has led me ||||led|

to a certain number already of missteps. ||||||Fehler ||||||missteps ||||||errores

Like, for example, in the previous lecture,

when I unwittingly doxxed my TFs ||unabsichtlich|entblößt|| ||without realizing|revealed their identities||trusted friends |||revelé información personal||

by telling, saying what their name was

and making them stand up and turn around,

as a result of which, they're all now getting thousands

of emails from the admirers ||||Bewunderer ||||fans

of all of the stages of their short lives, right? |alle||||||||

(students laugh) So I didn't think

of that, guys.

I'm sorry.

The other interesting feature of doing it this way

is that like for every one of you,

there are literally like 10,000

other people watching, or 1,000,

let's not exaggerate, but there's like behind you, lass uns||übertreiben||||| ||overstate|||||

there are like 1,000 people out there

who are watching.

And it turns out they also have views,

which is interesting.

And like they're just writing.

You know, they're not coming to office hours.

Oh, speaking of which, come to office hours. ach so|sprechen|||komm vorbei|||

Some of you have come to office hours.

It's really nice to be able to get

to know you personally, if only for a moment.

And it helps me teach,

if I figure out what you're actually getting якщо я з'ясую, що саме ви отримуєте насправді

and what you're actually not getting. і що насправді ви не отримуєте.

Okay, I promise you that by the end Добре, я обіцяю вам, що кінець

of this lecture, something's gonna happen.

In the previous lectures,

we've been mainly trying to set things up.

We've been thinking about what history is.

We've been thinking about

basic problems of history.

We've been working on the colonial perspective, |||||kolonial|

and how you work your way out

from under a colonial perspective.

By the end of this lecture, I promise

there will be a state which is in Kyiv.

I'm going to deliver on that promise. |||einlösen|||

That is definitely gonna happen.

But I'm gonna begin with one more remark

about what we're doing,

because it's really important.

Like, as we're in the middle of a war

in which crimes are being committed ||Verbrechen|||

and people are dying and killing

because of certainties wegen|| ||assured outcomes ||certezas

about what had to happen in the past, über das|||||||

or what has to happen in the future,

it's very important to understand

that history is not that.

History is not about predetermination. Geschichte|||| ||||preordained outcome ||||predeterminación

It's not about what has to be.

History can do, is it can be a kind

of guide to what was possible, right?

So there is a Ukrainian society

and Ukrainian state today,

which means that it must have been possible.

The most we can do

is we can guide ourselves

towards a greater understanding

of how such a thing was possible.

But when we get to that border

of how much we can understand,

there always has to be room

for what the people actually did, right?

Not just the people today,

but the people all the way back

1,000 years ago or more,

that we'll be talking about today.

Had their choices been somewhat different, Hätten|||||

then other things also dann auch andere Dinge|||

would have been somewhat different. wäre gewesen|hätte|||

So even as we push our understanding forward

as far as it can go,

we're always keeping in mind

that what people do and the choices that people make

are beyond our ability to predict. |jenseits||||

And that's why history is, in a way,

like it's a science,

we're trying to figure things out,

but it's also a humanity, |es ist|||

where we leave room for human agency. |||||menschlich|

We try to understand human agency.

At the same time, we know that human agency,

you don't understand it with the same methods

that you understand mountains and rivers.

Okay.

So the big idea today

is how you get to a state.

And that is a big idea, right?

I mean, like you might have noticed

that whenever there's a country,

whenever there's a state,

there's always a legend

about how it came to be.

Like, for example, there's an American legend

of how America came to be.

This isn't my strong suit. Das||||

You guys can correct me, but I think George Washington

felled the cherry tree. fällte||| cut down|||

And then 13 cherries fell, ||cerezas|

and from each of them

came a colony, something like that.

I don't know, but everyone has a.

Thank you. Okay.

(laughs) Good.

We have an American studies student here

who says, "Yep, that's what it was."

All right.

So, but everyone has an origin story, |||||Ursprung|

which mixes usually some element

of what happened with some element

of what it would be nice

to think about what happened.

And the reason why everybody has an origin story

is that it's hard to explain

how you get from no polity to a polity. wie||||||||Staatswesen |||||political organization|||

And it's usually complicated,

and it's best to have a story about us and them,

and how it's very simple.

And those stories are never true.

But it is authentically hard. |||authentisch| |||truly|

So in this lecture today,

we're gonna be talking about

some general causal forces |allgemein|| ||causal factors|influences ||causales|

which made it likely

that there would be states coming into being

in Eastern Europe around the year 1000.

And those general causal forces

are things like Christianity, |||Christentum

and what Christianity could do for people,

for rulers and for others.

Secondly, the fact that Christianity

was not a singularity, |||Einzelereignis |||unique event

but Christianity was a plurality. ||||Vielfalt ||||diverse group ||||pluralidad

There were two versions of Christianity

that were emerging.

From our point of view,

a Western version and a Southern version,

a Frankish version and a Byzantine version. |fränkisch||||byzantinisch|

And those two versions of Christianity,

it wasn't their theological differences |||teológicas|

that mattered so much.

It was that they were represented

by two strong political units

that were pushing outward imperially ||drängend||imperialistisch |||toward the outside|in an imperial manner

into our region,

in competition with one another. im Wettbewerb||||

In competition with one another.

And then underlying all this

is the basic economic status

of the place we're talking about,

where nomads are still coming and going, |Nomaden||||| |travelers||||| |nómadas|||||

where slavery is still very prominent. |Sklaverei|||| |||||prevalent

And when you think of what statehood does ||||||Staatszugehörigkeit| ||||||becoming a state|

for people, one of the things

that statehood does for people,

and this is not just true in Eastern Europe,

this is a sort of general characterization ||||||caracterización general

of what a state is,

statehood protects the people

that the state recognizes dass|||anerkennt

from being enslaved by other people. von|||||

So the basic economics ||grundlegend|

of the globalization that we're in at this point, ||Globalisierung||||||

circa 800, 900, 1000,

is a globalization of a slave trade, ||Globalisierung||||

in which the human beings of our part of the world

are being shipped, very far distances sometimes,

in order to be enslaved.

That is a form of global economics.

It persists and expands and continues |besteht||||

well beyond our region, |||Region

well beyond this time.

What a state can do is put a stop to that locally.

A state can say, "We recognize you.

"We have the coercive means to make sure |||zwangsvollziehend|||| |||forceful methods||||

"that you will not be sold into slavery.

"We also have the coercive means to tax you. ||||compelling||||

"So we prefer," making a very long story short,

"We prefer that you stay here and work the land, |||||||arbeiten||

"and we tax you,

"rather than we capture you

"and sell you into slavery."

And, you know, not to make you too cynical

about the world, because I know

you're, you know, young and naive,

but the same people who do the enslaving |||||||esclavizando

are also often the same people who start the state.

And that's gonna be true in our case as well, right?

The people who are doing the enslaving

are also gonna be the same people who,

by the end of the story, are gonna start the state.

So there's a general story

about causality here, |Ursächlichkeit| |cause and effect|

but then there's a particular story

that I want you to keep in mind, too,

and be thinking about, which is, okay,

maybe Professor Snyder is right,

that Christianity, the clash of two Christianities, |||conflict|||

this economic and human issue

of slavery, that these made it likely

that there would be states.

Fine, but why some states and not others?

Why some states and not others?

From the point of view of a national historiography, |||||||national| ||||||||historical writing ||||||||historiografía nacional

this question never arises, right?

Your state is always inevitable. ||||unvermeidlich

Others people's states might be questionable,

but yours is always inevitable,

but it's a real question.

Why some states and not others?

Why Kyivan Rus'? Why Kyivan Rus'? |Kiewer||||

And here, we're gonna get into particularities, ||||||details ||||||particularidades

which involve Vikings,

which involve rivers,

which involve Khazars, and which also involve, ||Chasaren||||

and this is very important,

the presence of other Slavic states.

So a huge amount of politics is copying. |ausschneiden||||||

A huge amount of politics is taking things

which someone else has already done

in a neighboring place, |in einem benachbarten Ort|| in a neighboring place,

and applying them yourself.

So it's very important for Kyivan Rus',

that there was already Moravia ||||Mähren

and that there was already Bulgaria. |||||Bulgarien

Okay, so you remember the basic setup ||||||arrangement

of where we are.

We've tried to set up

this period in various different ways.

Europe is being created, right?

So again, Europe seems self-evident,

but the difference between Europe

and the classical world

is that Europe is north of the Mediterranean,

and the classical world goes around

the Mediterranean, right?

So when the classical world

blends into Europe verschmilzt|| merges with||

is when Islam begins, in the 7th century,

and the line between Europe ||border||

and what's not Europe then becomes a Christendom, |||||||Christentum |||||||Christian world

non-Christendom sort of divide, right?

There are famous, you know, examples

of when we should think of this.

The 720s, when the French Die||||

stop Arab armies in Poitiers.

The 750s, when the Khazars stop Arab armies

in the Caucuses. ||Caucasus region ||Cáucaso

Those are kind of symbolic.

But the basic idea is that Europe

is now north of something,

whereas the classical world

encircled something, right? umgeben|| surrounded by a circle||

So Europe is coming into being,

and is coming into being

as the failure of Christianity

south of the Mediterranean,

or the serious decline of Christianity

south of Mediterranean,

and the spread of Christianity

north of the Mediterranean,

up into, eventually into Scandinavia,

around the year 1000,

and into Eastern Europe, around the year 1000.

Remembering that these are territories,

Scandinavia, Eastern Europe,

which were not directly part

of the classical world, right?

So they're going from their own versions of paganism,

which we've talked about, into Christianity.

Okay, so this brings us to the question,

which we're gonna look at now in a little more depth, welches|wir|||||||||Tiefe

of what is Christianity at this time, right?

And this is tough because,

I mean, many of you will have been raised Christians

or have some contact with Christianity.

And the Christianity that we have in the third decade

of the 21st century

has all kinds of varieties.

And these varieties all have their traditions,

some of them going back to this thing

called the Reformation or the Counter Reformation. ||||||Reformation movement ||||||Reforma Protestante

We need to sort of clear our minds of all that,

and try to think what Christianity looked like

to pagans, from the point of view |paganos|||||

of the 9th and 10th and 11th centuries.

And to make a long story short,

it's almost always true

that when you convert as a ruler, |wenn|||||

you're not converting because you believe. ||changing beliefs|||

I'm sorry.

You might believe, I'm not saying it's impossible,

but you're generally converting

because the religion in question |die|||

is bringing something to you

that your native cult does not have.

Like, for example, a written language,

a set of elites who can use

that written language,

who can be your ambassadors and your bureaucrats, wer||||||| |||||||administrators |||||||burócratas

like legitimacy with other states, right? wie|Legitimität||||

So from the point of view of pagan rulers

looking outward at this world,

the math was working against them. das|||||

What do I mean by the math?

The math of slavery, okay? Die||||

So if you're a pagan,

everyone can enslave you.

And for a while, you might say,

"Well, I can enslave everyone else.

"I can enslave other pagans.

"I can enslave Christians. I can enslave Muslims."

And so long as the power balance is on your side, |also|||||||||

that may seem like an acceptable answer.

And for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania |||großherzoglich|||