People & Histories
988

The Christianisation of Kyivan Rus'

Prince Volodymyr the Great of Kyiv adopts Byzantine Christianity for his realm.

Well established religionstatehoodidentity

Part of the story of Ukraine and Orthodox Christianity.

By the late tenth century Kyiv was the capital of Kyivan Rus’, a large and loosely held realm of East Slavic tribes, ruled by a dynasty of Scandinavian origin.

  • Kyivan Rus' (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2015)
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)
Its prince, Volodymyr (Vladimir in Russian), had come to power in 980 by defeating his half-brother, and at first he backed the old gods. He set up idols of Perun and other deities on a hill above his palace.

Then he changed course. The Byzantine emperor Basil II needed troops against a rebel, and Volodymyr offered them at a price: marriage to the emperor’s sister, Anna. Basil agreed only once Volodymyr promised to convert himself and his people.

The mass baptism of Kyiv’s citizens in the Dnipro is traditionally dated to 1 August 988.

A legend recorded in the medieval Primary Chronicle gave the city an even older Christian pedigree. According to the chronicle, the Apostle Andrew blessed the hills where Kyiv would one day stand. There is no documentary evidence of such a visit, and many historians regard the story as a later legend, but it is still part of how the city tells its story.

What changed

The choice of Constantinople over Rome, or over Islam, mattered for centuries. Byzantium sent the first bishops and clergy, and with them Greek-style church art, schools and books. A shared faith also helped bind the Rus’ tribes together.

  • Volodymyr the Great (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)
The change was not instant. Outside Kyiv people were converted slowly, sometimes by force.
Ethnographers have long argued that older beliefs lived on beside the new faith and can still be traced in Ukrainian folk ritual, such as the Christmas Eve customs meant to bring a good harvest, though historians debate how far these are true pre-Christian survivals rather than later Christian folk practice.
  • Christmas (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)

Volodymyr was later venerated as a saint “equal to the Apostles”.

Today Ukraine, Russia and Belarus all claim him and the heritage of Rus’. Ukrainian historians trace a continuous Ukrainian history from Rus’, Russian imperial historians made the Russian state its sole heir, and Soviet historiography presented Rus’ as the common cradle of all three peoples.
  • Hrushevsky, Mykhailo (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2015)
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)

Whose heritage?

This is where a medieval baptism turns into a modern argument. In the nineteenth century, Russian imperial historians drew a straight line of succession from Kyiv to Moscow, which made the Russian state the heir of Rus’.

  • Hrushevsky, Mykhailo (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Ukrainian Question: The Russian Empire and Nationalism in the Nineteenth Century — Alexei Miller, Central European University Press (2003)
  • The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2015)
The Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky challenged that scheme. He argued that the lands around Kyiv had their own continuous history, while the north-eastern principalities that grew into Muscovy went another way.
  • Hrushevsky, Mykhailo (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2015)
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)

The argument has not stayed in seminar rooms. In 2021 Russia’s president published an essay insisting that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people”, heirs of a single Rus’.

It quoted the Primary Chronicle line in which Prince Oleg calls Kyiv the mother of the cities of Rus’, rendering it in modern terms as “the mother of all Russian cities”. The chronicle’s word means “of Rus’”, not “Russian” in today’s sense, which is exactly what the argument is about.
For many Ukrainians, Volodymyr is the founder of their state, and the baptism of 988 is proof that Kyiv’s story is older than Moscow’s.

How it's seen
How Ukrainians see it

The founding moment of a Kyiv-centred Christian civilisation that Ukraine continues directly, on a path that later diverged from Moscow's.

  • Hrushevsky, Mykhailo (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)
  • The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2015)
  • A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (2nd ed.) — Paul Robert Magocsi, University of Toronto Press (2010)
  • Kleine Geschichte der Ukraine (5th revised ed.) — Andreas Kappeler, C.H. Beck (2019)
  • History of Ukraine (Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine) — Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (signed entries by subject specialists), Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (2024)

How the Russian state sees it

The shared cradle of a single people. Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians are its branches, and Kyiv is the chronicle's "mother of Rus' cities", rendered in Russian as "the mother of Russian cities".

Orthodox tradition

The Primary Chronicle tells how Volodymyr's envoys, sent to compare religions, found the liturgy in Constantinople so beautiful that "we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth". For Orthodox Christians the story captures how their faith wins hearts: through worship and beauty more than argument.

  • The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text — Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor (trans.), Mediaeval Academy of America (1953)
  • The Orthodox Church — Timothy Ware, Penguin (1993)

Why it matters today

Ukraine

Ukraine and Russia (and Belarus too) claim Volodymyr's baptism as part of their own story. When Russian leaders quote the medieval chronicle calling Kyiv "the mother of Rus' cities", rendered in Russian as "the mother of Russian cities", Ukrainians hear a claim on their past, and on their present.

Orthodox Christianity

For Orthodox Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, 988 is the birth of their Christian world, and Volodymyr is venerated as "equal to the apostles". The same baptism is now fought over: Moscow's church sees Kyiv as the cradle of a single "Holy Rus'", while Ukraine's independent Orthodox church claims Volodymyr as its own founder.