To the role of the church in Ancient Russia: a view from modern Czech Republic (review of the chapter “Dělníci poslední hodiny: Církevní organizace a křesťanství na Kyjevské Rusi” from the book by M. Téra “Kyjevská Rus: dějiny, kultura, společnost”)

Abstract

This review examines one of the key chapters of the fundamental book “Kyjevská Rus: dějiny, kultura, společnost“ [Kievan Rus: History, Culture, Society] by Czech historianmedievalist Michal Téra. The chapter under review is titled “Dělníci poslední hodiny: Církevní organizace a křesťanství na Kyjevské Rusi” [Workers of the Last Hour: Church Organization and Christianity in Kievan Rus]. This chapter emphasizes that the adoption of Christianity at the end of the 10th century fundamentally transformed the East Slavic space, predetermining its cultural and historical unity for many centuries to come. At this period a type of Old Russian church and East Slavic Christianity formed, which for a long time ensured and preserved the unity of the East Slavic space. As Téra says, the Uniate projects of the 16th–17th centuries did not change anything. The culture, literature, language and mentality of local peoples to the present day are determined by the processes that took place in Kievan Rus in the 11th–13th centuries. This statement of Téra is in direct conflict with the claims of some post-Soviet historians, who seek to question the unity of Kievan Rus by isolating the separate East Slavic peoples as early as in the Middle Ages. The obvious factors of the unity of Ancient Rus have nowadays become the object of an aggressive revision on the part of politically engaged historiographies of modern East Slavic states to please the current interests of political elites. Therefore, familiarity with the fundamental work of M. Tera will be useful for specialists in the history of Russia and Eastern Europe.