History of Kyiv
, before 1991 commonly known as Kiev, has a history spanning well over a millennium, serving as the capital city of several countries up until present-day Ukraine, but its exact origins are uncertain and debated. In the 1970s, the city was officially designated to have been founded in 482, and thus its 1500th anniversity was celebrated in 1982, but depending on various criteria, the city or settlement may date back at least 2,000 years. Archaeologists have dated the oldest-known settlement in the area to 25,000 BC.
Legend recorded in later writings such as the Primary Chronicle has it that Saint Andrew visited the hilly shores of the Dnieper River and prophesied that a great city would emerge there. The same Chronicle reports another legend asserting that the three brothers Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv and their sister Lybid founded the city and, after the eldest brother Kyi, named it Kyevû. The earliest more reliable evidence suggests it was initially an early medieval Slavic settlement paying tribute to the Khazars. Reportedly conquered or otherwise acquired by Varangians in 880, Kyiv would be the capital of medieval Kievan Rus' until 1240.
From the late 9th century, it gradually acquired eminence as a socio-economic and political center on the crossroads of early Slavic, Varangian, and Finno-Ugric languages and cultures, with a mixture of pagan Slavic, Norse, Christian, Islamic and Jewish religious traditions and influences. The Christianization of Kievan Rus' would eventually lead to the dominance of Christianity, as well as the adoption of Church Slavonic as the literary standard for communication. Its political, but not cultural, importance declined after 1169, when the troops of Andrey Bogolyubsky sacked the old town. Numerous sackings of Kyiv by other Rus' princes followed and it was thoroughly devastated in the Mongol invasion of 1240.
In the following centuries, the city was a provincial capital of marginal importance on the outskirts of territories controlled by powerful neighbors: the Golden Horde, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, its successor the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the Tsardom of Russia, which later became the Russian Empire. Kyiv was also a major center for early modern Ukrainian culture, especially during the Cossack Hetmanate in the 17th–18th centuries, although the administrative capitals in this period of Cossack independence and autonomy were Chyhyryn, Baturyn, and
Hlukhiv.
Kyiv prospered in the Russian industrial revolution of the late 19th century. In the conflicts and turbulence that followed the October Revolution of 1917, it became the capital of several short-lived Ukrainian states. From December 1922 on, it was part of the Soviet Union, and from 1934 the capital of Soviet Ukraine. In World War II the city was again destroyed, almost completely, but quickly recovered post-war to become the third-most important Soviet city and the capital of the second-most populous Soviet republic. It remains the capital of Ukraine, independent since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Origins
Founding legends
According to a legend recorded in the Primary Chronicle, some early Slavs known as "Polyanians" – "because they lived in the fields" – settled on the river Dnieper at an unspecified time. At some point, a founder-family consisting of four siblings named Kyi, Shchek, Khoryv and Lybid reportedly founded the city on three hills along the river, and named it Kyiv after their eldest brother Kyi.Archaeological and linguistic studies
Slavic settlements existed in the area starting from the end of the 5th century, and later developed into the city. Archaeological excavations have suggested seventh or eighth century commercial activity in Kyiv's Podil district, but dendrochronological analysis of ruined remnants of Podil log dwellings has only found evidence of settlement as far back as 887. Omeljan Pritsak writes that archaeologists have proven "beyond any doubt that Kyiv as a town did not exist before the last quarter of the ninth to the first half of the tenth century."Western historians speculated that the city was founded by Khazars or Magyars: Brutzkus posited an etymology of Kyiv as a Turkic place name. Meanwhile Canadian Ukrainian linguist Jaroslav Rudnyckyj connects the name Kyiv to the Proto-Slavic root *kyjь, which should be interpreted as meaning 'stick, pole' as in its modern Ukrainian equivalent кий and proposes the toponym should in that case be interpreted as 'palisaded settlement'. The Primary Chronicle, an important source of information on the early history of the area, says that Slavic Kyivans told Askold and Dir that they had no local ruler and paid tribute to the Khazars - an event attributed to the 9th century. Brook believes that in the 8th and 9th centuries the city was an outpost of the Khazar empire. A hill-fortress called Sambat was built to defend the area.
However it was founded, the city's location made it a node on important ancient trade routes. In the seventh or eighth century the Dnipro came to be the standard route between Scandinavia and the Byzantine Empire, while the Desna gave the area water access via portages to the Don and Oka-Volga basins.
Kyivan Rus'
According to the Primary Chronicle, Oleg the Wise conquered the city in 881/2. He was a relative of Rurik, a Varangian pagan chieftain. The date given for Oleg's conquest of the town in the Primary Chronicle is uncertain, and some historians, such as Omeljan Pritsak and Constantin Zuckerman, dispute this account and maintain that Khazar rule continued until as late as the 920s.Since Oleg's seizure of the city, Kyiv functioned as the capital of Kyivan Rus', which was ruled by the Varangian Rurikid dynasty which gradually became Slavicized. The Grand Princes had traditional primacy over the other rulers of the land and the Kyivan princehood was a valuable prize in an intra-dynastic system. In 968 the city withstood a siege by the nomadic Pechenegs.
In 988, Prince Volodymyr I converted to Christianity and ordered the city residents to accept baptism en masse in the Dnipro river, an event which symbolized the Baptism of Kyivan Rus to Orthodox Christianity. The city reached the height of its position – its political and cultural Golden Age – in the middle of the 11th century under Volodymyr's son Yaroslav the Wise. In 1051, prince Yaroslav assembled the bishops at St. Sophia Cathedral and appointed Hilarion as the first native-born metropolitan bishop of Rus'.
In spite of the East–West Schism in Christianity, the Kyivan church maintained good relations with Rome. An Armenian merchant factory was based in Kyiv from the 11th century until the 13th-century Mongol invasions.
Following the feudalisation of the Kyivan Rus' polity, the inner Principality of Kyiv emerged in 1132. Subsequent years saw rivalries of the competing princes of the dynasty and the weakening of Kyiv's political influence, although the city temporarily prevailed after the defeat of Polotsk at the Battle on the river Nemiga that also led to the burning of Minsk. In 1146 the next Rus' bishop, Kliment Smoliatich of Smolensk, was appointed to serve as the Metropolitan of Kyiv and all Rus'. In 1169 Andrei of Suzdal sent an army against Mstislav II Izyaslavich and Kyiv. Led by one of his sons, it consisted of the forces of eleven other princes, representing three of the main branches of the Rurikid dynasty against the fourth, the Iziaslavichi of Volynia. The allies were victorious, and sacked the city for three days. They left the old town and the prince's hall in ruins, and took many pieces of religious artwork - including the Theotokos of Vladimir icon – from nearby Vyshhorod. Kyiv remained the political and religious capital of Rus', and the symbol of agnatic seniority within the princely family. Bogolyubsky maintained his resicence in Vladimir, while his younger brother Gleb received the Kyivan throne due to being next in line as the prince of Pereyaslavl, thereby restoring the order of succession. However, Gleb died only 2 years later in 1171, so that Andrey lost his indirect control over Kyiv. When he tried to take back the capital in 1173 with a fresh coalition army, it was utterly defeated at the Battle of Vyshgorod.
In 1203, Prince Rurik Rostislavich captured and burned Kyiv. In the 1230s different Rus' princes besieged and ravaged the city several times. Then Mongol-Tatar forces led by Batu Khan besieged and then completely destroyed the city on 6 December 1240. The Mongols had originally planned to take the city unharmed, but upon their arrival, the garrison threw down the bodies of the Mongol diplomats sent to urge them to surrender. In revenge the Mongols broke down the gates and slaughtered much of the population, then razed the city.
Golden Horde
Grand Duchy of Lithuania
Kyiv became a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after the Battle at Blue Waters in 1362, when Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, beat a Golden Horde army. During the period between 1362 and 1471, the city was ruled by Lithuanian princes from different families. By order of Casimir Jagiellon, the Principality of Kyiv was abolished and the Kyiv Voivodeship was established in 1471. Lithuanian statesman Martynas Goštautas was appointed as the first voivode of Kyiv the same year; his appointment was met by hostility from locals.At the time of the Lithuanian rule, the core of the city was located in Podil and there was a Lithuanian Kyiv Castle with 18 towers on the Zamkova Hora.
The city was frequently attacked by Crimean Tatars and in 1482 was sacked again by Crimean Khan Meñli I Giray. Despite its diminished political significance, the city still played an important role as seat of the local Orthodox metropolitan. Starting in 1494, however, the city's local autonomy gradually increased in a series of acts of Lithuanian Grand Dukes and Polish Kings, finalized by a charter granted by Sigismund I the Old in 1516.
Kyiv had a Jewish community of some significance in the early sixteenth century. The tolerant Sigismund II Augustus granted equal rights to Jews in the city, on the grounds that they paid the same taxes as Podil's burghers. Polish sponsorship of Jewish settlement in the city added fuel to the conflict that already existed between the Orthodox and Catholic churches.