The Uses of the Medieval Past in the Russian Federation: St. Volodymyr, “Holy Rus” and the Russia-Ukraine War

Abstract

The phenomenon of the uses of the Medieval Past in history politics became extremely visible in Russia in the past decade, and remains central for their political agenda of a full-scale invasion on Ukraine on 24 February 2022. This short article examines the uses of the Medieval Rus’ in the Russian history politics before and during the Russia-Ukraine war. The first section considers the role of medieval Rus for the various stages of Russian aggression against Ukraine. The involving the medieval history to history politics presents several myths created in different times and for other auditoria’s. It includes the active uses of several extremely archaic concepts (“Russian World”, “Russian land” and “Holy Rus”) which were in a basis for the formation of the Russian history politics in 1991–2014. The following part explores the renaissance of the political cult of the Prince Volodymyr. I argue that the role of this political cult of medieval prince in Putin’s Russia has changed following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. On one hand, this political cult was dedicated to the Reconquista of the “historical Russia” and his road headed to Kyiv. On other, St. Volodymyr has become the icon of “Holy Rus”. Unlike real history of this medieval prince, this new role of St. Volodymyr in the Russian history politics after 2014 had anti-Western reminiscences. The final part leads to a re-examination of the much-debated issue of “Holy Rus”. The section demonstrates that the archaic elements of this church concept collapsed in the light of the Russia-Ukraine war. It concludes that this fiction of the Russian history politics was not suitable for the legitimization of the war. The recent attempts by Patriarch Kirill (with the help of pseudo-Byzantine rhetoric) toward to save this archaic concept have not been successful.