Summary of Paul Bushkovitch's A Concise History of Russia

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The lands of Kiev Rus were in the forest zone of the great East European plain. The best soil was in the south, where fields opened out among the trees closer to the steppe.

#2 The Eastern Slavs were the predominant group in Rus from Kiev to Novgorod by at least AD 800. They had built many villages and fortifications of earth with wooden palisades, and they buried their dead with the tools and weapons necessary for life in the next world.

#3 The Rurikovich dynasty was originally Scandinavian, as legend and the early names suggest. They came to Russia around AD 900 and began to rule that area, quickly establishing their authority over the whole vast area of Kiev Rus.

#4 The great powers and centers of civilization were the Arab Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines were a Christian society with a rich monastic culture, and they were the heirs of classical antiquity. The Arabs were a nomadic people who had taken Islam to the far corners of western Eurasia.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822511446

IRB Media

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Insights on Paul Bushkovitch's A Concise History of Russia

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 8

Insights from Chapter 9

Insights from Chapter 10

Insights from Chapter 11

Insights from Chapter 12

Insights from Chapter 13

Insights from Chapter 14

Insights from Chapter 15

Insights from Chapter 16

Insights from Chapter 17

Insights from Chapter 18

Insights from Chapter 19

Insights from Chapter 20

Insights from Chapter 21

Insights from Chapter 22

Insights from Chapter 23

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The lands of Kiev Rus were in the forest zone of the great East European plain. The best soil was in the south, where fields opened out among the trees closer to the steppe.

#2

The Eastern Slavs were the predominant group in Rus from Kiev to Novgorod by at least AD 800. They had built many villages and fortifications of earth with wooden palisades, and they buried their dead with the tools and weapons necessary for life in the next world.

#3

The Rurikovich dynasty was originally Scandinavian, as legend and the early names suggest. They came to Russia around AD 900 and began to rule that area, quickly establishing their authority over the whole vast area of Kiev Rus.

#4

The great powers and centers of civilization were the Arab Caliphate and the Byzantine Empire. The Byzantines were a Christian society with a rich monastic culture, and they were the heirs of classical antiquity. The Arabs were a nomadic people who had taken Islam to the far corners of western Eurasia.

#5

In the tenth century, Kiev Rus was an assembly of tribes ruled from Kiev by a prince of the dynasty of Rurik. The tribes paid tribute to the Kiev princes, who visited them occasionally for that purpose.

#6

Vladimir’s son, Vladimir II Monomakh, was the first ruler of Russia to convert to Christianity. He maintained control over the Kiev lands by placing his many sons to rule over distant territories. He tried to organize their pagan beliefs and set up a temple in Kiev to Perun, the god of thunder.

#7

The conversion of Rus to Christianity in the 1050s was done by the Greek clergy in Constantinople, but other bishops were mostly natives. The founding of the Kiev Monastery of the Caves in the 1050s provided Rus with its first monastery, which produced saints and bishops for the eparchies outside of Kiev.

#8

Orthodox Christianity played a large role in Russian culture until the eighteenth century, when it was replaced by Western Christianity. The differences between Orthodoxy and the Western Catholic church that emerged during the Middle Ages were mainly theological, and did not affect the actual understanding of the Trinity.

#9

The Eastern Church had a different attitude towards learning. For the Catholic church of the Middle Ages, the great intellectual enterprise was the interpretation of Aristotle’s corpus of writings in the light of revelation and the teachings of the church. The Orthodox did not bother with philosophy or Aristotelian science.

#10

Iaroslav’s son, Iaroslav the Wise, ruled Kiev Rus from 1016 until his death in 1054. He banned blood revenge in cases of murder, and instead instituted a system of payments. The laws gave much space to listing the payments for insults of all kinds.

#11

After Iaroslav’s death, the Rus princes began to grow apart. The Vladimir princes had rivals in the west and south, particularly in Galich near the Polish border. The territories of Kiev Rus were beginning to separate.

#12

By the 1200s, Kiev Rus was a single state in name only. The ruler of Kiev was either an outsider or a minor princeling. Other than Novgorod, each territory had a local princely dynasty springing from the old Kiev dynasty of the Rurikovichi.

#13

The church was the only remaining institution in Rus, and the Greek clergy and priests and monks of the Rus had their hands full with the Christianization of the people and the creation of a new culture. The Christianization of the people went slowly, and outside of the towns there were few churches.

#14

The first saints were the Princes Boris and Gleb, younger sons of Vladimir who were murdered in 1015 by their brother Sviatopolk the Cursed during the succession struggle after the death of Vladimir. The brothers were made saints by the end of the eleventh century.

#15

The Kievan Saint Sophia was a church that was connected to the prince’s palace by galleries. It was decorated with Greek-style mosaics and frescoes, and it featured a row of icons along the altar rail. The Mongols destroyed the Kipchak/Rus army in 1223, and went on to raid the area of Kiev.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The Mongol Empire was the last and largest of the nomadic empires formed on the Eurasian steppe. It was largely the work of Temuchin, a Mongolian chieftain who united the Mongolian tribes in 1206 and took the name of Genghis Khan. In his mind, the Eternal Blue Heaven had granted him rule