Kievan Chronicle

The Kievan Chronicle or Kyivan Chronicle is a chronicle of Kievan Rus'. It was written around 1200 in Vydubychi Monastery as a continuation of the Primary Chronicle. It is known from two manuscripts: a copy in the Hypatian Codex (c. 1425), and a copy in the Khlebnikov Codex (c.  1560s); in both codices, it is sandwiched between the Primary Chronicle and the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle. It covers the period from 1118, where the Primary Chronicle ends, until about 1200, although scholars disagree where exactly the Kievan Chronicle ends and the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle begins.

Composition
When historian Leonid Makhnovets published a modern Ukrainian translation of the entire Hypatian Codex in 1989, he remarked: 'The history of the creation of this early-14th-century chronicle [compilation] is a very complex problem. Equally complex is the question of when and how each part of the chronicle appeared. There is a vast literature on this subject, different views are expressed, and discussions are ongoing'.

Among the sources used by the anonymous chronicler of the Kievan Chronicle were:
 * a chronicle of the city of Pereyaslavl;
 * various family chronicles of the Monomakhovichi, specifically of Rurik Rostislavich, Igor Svyatoslavich (the protagonist in The Tale of Igor's Campaign), Oleg III Svyatoslavich, and Vladimir Glebovich; and
 * a chronicle of Kyiv Pechersk Lavra (Monastery of the Caves).

There is evidence that a redactor added material from the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle in the 13th century. Because its sources, save for the monastic chronicle, are secular and were probably not written by monks, the Kievan Chronicle is a politico-military narrative of the disintegration of Kievan Rus', in which princes are the main players. It contains a historiographical account of the events celebrated in the epic Tale of Igor's Campaign, in which the basic sequence of events is the same. It also contains a passion narrative of the martyrdom of the prince Igor Olgovich in 1147.

Pelenski (1987) pointed out that the Kievan Chronicle has a length of 431 columns, describing a period of about 80 years; a much higher information density than the Primary Chronicle, which describes as many as 258 years in only 283 (actually 286) columns. Nevertheless, at the time, the Kievan Chronicle had received far less attention from scholars than the Primary Chronicle. The text of the Kievan Chronicle shows strong similarities with that of the Suzdal'–Vladimirian Chronicle found in the Laurentian Codex and elsewhere, but also some remarkable differences.

Authorship
Based on the 1661 Paterik of the Kievan Caves Monastery, 17th-century writers started to assert that Nestor wrote many of the surviving chronicles of Kievan Rus', including the Primary Chronicle, the Kievan Chronicle and the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle, even though many of the events described therein were situated in the entire 12th and 13th century (long after Nestor's death c. 1114). From the 1830s to around 1900, there was fierce academic debate about Nestor's authorship, but the question remained unresolved, and belief in Nestorian authorship had persisted.

Structure
Lisa Lynn Heinrich (1977) divided the Kievan Chronicle into the following chapters:
 * 1) Last years of Vladimir II Monomakh; reign of Mstislav Vladimirovich (Mstislav I of Kiev, 1118–1126)
 * 2) Reign of Vsevolod Olgovich (Vsevolod II of Kiev, 1140–1146)
 * 3) Reign of Iziaslav Mstislavich (Iziaslav II of Kiev, 1146–1147)
 * 4) Reign of Iziaslav Mstislavich (Iziaslav II of Kiev, 1148–1149)
 * 5) Reign of Yuri Vladimirovich (Yuri Dolgorukiy, 1149–1150)
 * 6) Reign of Yuri Vladimirovich (Yuri Dolgorukiy, 1151)
 * 7) Reign of Yuri Vladimirovich (Yuri Dolgorukiy, 1152–1154)
 * 8) Reigns of Rostislav Yuryevich (of Novgorod), Yuri Vladimirovich, and Iziaslav Davidovich (III of Kiev) (1154–1160)
 * 9) Reign of Rostislav Mstislavich (Rostislav I of Kiev, 1160–1169)
 * 10) Reigns of Mstislav Iziaslavich (Mstislav II of Kiev), Gleb Yurievich (Gleb of Kiev), Vladimir II Yaroslavich (of Halych), and Roman Rostislavich (Roman I of Kiev) (1169–1174)
 * 11) Reign of Yaroslav Iziaslavich (Yaroslav II of Kiev, 1174–1180)
 * 12) –15. Reigns of Sviatoslav Vsevolodovych (Sviatoslav III of Kiev), and Rurik Rostislavich (1180–1200)

Style and events
The Kievan Chronicle is a direction continuation of the text of the Primary Chronicle. The original text of the Kievan Chronicle has been lost; the versions preserved in the Hypatian Codex and Khlebnikov Codex are not copied from each other, but share a common ancestor that has (so far) not been found.

The Kievan Chronicle contains 72 announcements of princely deaths, 60 of which are about men who died as princes (84%), and 12 of them are about women who died as princesses (16%).

Unlike the Primary Chronicle, in which the Lithuanians were portrayed as a people which had been subdued by Yaroslav the Wise, and paid tributed to Kievan Rus' until at least the early 12th century, the Kievan Chronicle narrates about a 1132 campaign in which a Rus' army burnt down Lithuanian settlements, only to be ambushed by Lithuanians on the way back and taking heavy losses.

The Kievan Chronicle contains references to the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 and the death of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa on the Third Crusade in 1190, considering the former—and the failure of the crusade—divine punishment for sin and the latter a martyrdom.

Ending
The (pen)ultimate entry of the Kievan Chronicle is the year 1200 (erroneously named "1199" in the text), which contains a long panegyric praising Rurik Rostislavich (intermittently Grand Prince of Kiev between 1173 and 1210, died 2015), ending with "Amen". However, in the Khlebnikov Codex, the text of the Kievan Chronicle ends in the year 6704 (1196).

There is some disagreement amongst scholars whether the entry of the year 6709 (1201), which is not found in the Khlebnikov Codex or the Pogodin text, should be considered the final sentence of the Kievan Chronicle (Perfecky 1973, Heinrich 1977), or the first sentence of the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle (earlier scholars such as Bestuzev-Rjumin, A. Galakhov 1863, and A. Shakhmatov 1908). Perfecky stated: 'I believe that [the entry of 6709] and not Roman's quarrel with his father-in-law Prince Rjurik of Kiev under 1195–96 (Hruševs'kyj, Istorija, p. 2) is the last information about Roman in the Kievan Chronicle, of which it is an integral part (or more specifically "abrupt-ending" - to which the chronicler perhaps planned to return or possibly even returned, but that fragment never reached us).'

Literature

 * Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'.
 * Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'.
 * Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'.
 * Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'.
 * Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'.
 * Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'.
 * Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'.
 * Reprinted in Pelenski, The Contest for the Legacy of Kievan Rus'.