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Статья // Canadian Slavonic Papers. — 1979. — Volume 21, Issue 1 — Pp. 28-44.
The purpose of this article is to investigate the nature of the power struggle which followed the sack of Kiev in the spring of1235. The sequence of events in this conflict has not yet been ascertained or analysed. It is important that this be done because an investigation of this rivalry, as presented by the sources, dictates a different interpretation of the significance of these principalities to the one traditionally held by historians. It will be seen that after the fall of Kiev the authority of the Rostislavichi, the princes of Smolensk, collapsed. It was neither the Romanovichi of Volyn’ nor the Vsevolodovichi of Rostov-Suzdal', however, who replaced them as the most powerful family of princes in southern Rus’; this was done by the Ol'govichi of Chernigov.
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MARTIN DIMNIK The Struggle for Control over Kiev in 1235 and 1236 The years 1235 and 1236 are important in the history of Kievan Rus* because they witnessed a major reorientation in the status quo between the families of princes. Historians have argued that the most powerful political centres during the first half of the thirteenth century, and more specifically, during the second quarter of that century, were the principalities of Galicia-Volyn* in the southwest and Rostov-Suzdal* in the northeast. They claimed that the other principalities, such as Chernigov and Smolensk, did not play a significant part in the history of this period. Thus, for example, the nineteenth-century historian M. Pogodin wrote that there was no chronicle evidence concerning Chernigov after 1217 since, owing to internecine wars, it had become too weak to participate even to the smallest degree in the political conflicts of this period.1 His view became commonly accepted by later historians,2 so much so that M.N. Tikhomirov, when writing about the history of Kievan Rus’ for the first half of the thirteenth century, limited his discussion to the regions of Rostov-Suzdal’ and Galicia-Volyn\ ignoring the principalities of Chernigov and Smolensk.3 There is, however, one dissenting voice among Soviet historians concerning the importance of the princes of Chernigov. A.N. Nasonov has claimed that the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth century witnessed a struggle for supremacy in Rus’ between two of the strongest principalities — Rostov-Suzdal1and Chernigov.4 The rivalry was terminated only with the death of Mikhail Vsevolodovich, prince of Chernigov, in 1246.5 The purpose of this article is to investigate the nature of the power struggle which followed the sack of Kiev in the spring of 1235. The 1. M. Pogodin, Drevniia russkaia istoriia do mongol’skago iga, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1872), I, 384. 2. See, for example, P.V. Golubovskii, Istoriia severskoi zem/ido polovinyXIV stoletiia (Kiev, 1881), pp. 189-92; V.V. Mavrodin, “Chernigovskoe kniazhestvo,” in Ocherki istorii SSSR, period feodalizma IX-XV vv., 2 vols (Moscow, 1953), 1, 400; V.T. Pashuto, “Vnutripoliticheskoe polozhenie Rusi v nachale XII v.,” in ibid., I, 770-71. 3. M.N. Tikhomirov and S.S. Dmitriev, Istoriia S SSR , I (Moscow, 1948), 55-56. 4. A.N. Nasonov, “Vladimiro-Suzdal’skoe kniazhestvo,’* in Ocherki istorii SSSR, period feodalizma IX-XV vv., I, 334. 5. Mongoly i Rus' (Moscow, 1940), p. 27; see Table 1:27. Struggle for Kiev) 29 sequence of events in this conflict has not yet been ascertained or analysed. It is important that this be done because an investigation of this rivalry, as presented by the sources, dictates a different interpretation of the significance of these principalities to the one traditionally held by historians. It will be seen that after the fall of Kiev the authority of the Rostislavichi, the princes of Smolensk,6 collapsed. It was neither the Romanovichi of Volyn’7 nor