Leo Diaconus and the Ethnology of Kievan Rus'

Abstract

Today, no less than in the days of Lomonosov and Schlozer, the question of the ethnic identity of the early Kievan rulers is a controversial one. The late Adolf Stender-Petersen's criticism of the Normanist school, “that it replaced a real, well-founded historical view of the course of things by an a priori plan, in which things were arranged as well as possible,” also applies—mutatis mutandis, of course—to the historical-sociological method of the contemporary Soviet anti-Normanist school. What is needed in the field are good editions, with detailed, objective commentary, of all the sources known to us. Eventually these may lead to the “comprehensive edition of all the sources from which we can acquire knowledge as regards the Varangian problem” envisaged by Stender-Petersen. The edition of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, De Administrando Imperio by Gyula Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins and the commentary edited by the latter may be cited as an important step toward this goal.