Kiev

“ We have been in Kiev several days. Our passports have been handed in to the police station to be viséed and put in order for our return trip to Bucharest. They say a human being in Russia is made of body and passport.
Kiev is full of color. It is framed in green trees that hide the ugliness of modern buildings and seem to lift the gold and silver domes of the churches up into the air. And how many churches there are! Kiev is in truth a holy city. Late afternoon, when the sun shines through the dust of the day and envelops the city in golden powder ”

“ The Ukrainian historical tradition has its roots in the ancient Kingdom of Kiev. Altho the historians of Eastern Europe are still undecided as to whether the so-called Old Russian Kingdom was founded by the Varangians in the present Northern Russia, or by the Eastern Slavic tribes of the south in Kiev, I have no doubt that the latter view should be approved. Anthropogeography knows no instance of a pirate band, at most a few thousand strong, which, within a few decades, could constitute a kingdom embracing half a continent. ”

“ How strange it will be to have no longer a Russian army between the Germans and Kiev. No more a wall of flesh to protect us. Poor soldiers, without a round of ammunition, fighting with naked hands. They will cross the Dnieper to one side of the city, crowding, fighting, falling together. And the German cannon driving them on, and crashing into the city, sometimes, wiping out whole streets of townspeople. And then, the gray lines of the Germans running into Kiev. The thousands of blue-eyed Germans and their pointed helmets and guttural speech taking possession of everything. ”

“ Stupid and dolt is Prince Vladimir of Kiev, who sends as his envoy such a slave as you. Ho there, my merciless jailors! Seize quiet Dunai by his white hands and by his flowing curls, and lead him down to the deepest dungeon. ”

“ The whole rose is there. It is a solid soft pink mass, and it tastes just as a tea-rose smells. It is simply celestial.
We dearly love Kiev, it is so hauntingly beautiful. You can’t forget it. Your mind keeps returning to it, but it is the sort of beauty that you can’t describe satisfactorily. It is like your mother’s face. You can see the beauty for yourself, but no one else can see it as you do, for the love which is behind it.
In Odessa we began to leave Russia behind us. Odessa is all sorts of a place. ”

“ Since July war has come nearer Kiev. The hospitals are full of maimed and wounded soldiers who fought to defend Russia. They made a bulwark of their breasts. It was as though one single giant breast, hundreds of versts broad, thrust itself between the Germans and home.
And it is winter now. The days are short with an icy, gray mist from the Dnieper, and flurries of snow. There is a shortage of coal, and we sit shivering in our apartment. We drag the covers off the beds and wrap ourselves up in them while we read books from the circulating library or play three-handed bridge. ”

“ In Kiev the Byzantine princes of the church constituted a state within the state. The metropolitan of Kiev was appointed by the patriarch of Constantinople, whereas in Byzantium the bishops were elected by their own colleagues. Kiev was no more than a dependency of Byzantium, and among the Greek bishops the Kievic metropolitan occupied the, seventy-first place. The Russian hierarchy always remained Greek. Among the three-and-twenty metropolitans of Kiev in the days before the Tatar dominion; three only were Russians, and three southern Slavs, the remaining seventeen being Byzantines. ”

“ This instinct reaches its culminating-point in the propensity to rob their neighbors; turn their wives out of doors when tired of them, and take to themselves a fresh one, who may please them better.
On, on, in the saddle, until the ancient city of the Steppe looms in the horizon, "the Mother of Cities." It is Kiev, the so often razed and rebuilt Jerusalem of the Scythians, with its catacombs and remains of Sarmatic saints. In the distance a deceptive Fata Morgana, looking with its gilded cupolas like a city of churches, from out which the mighty tower of Lavra rises like a giant. ”

“ Only the richest Court ladies send their daughters there to be educated, and the Dowager Empress visits them when she passes through Kiev. The trees in the garden are gold and green in the late afternoon sun. A little bell tinkles musically.
Below in the street some passing soldiers are singing. How fresh and strong and beautiful their untrained voices are. ”

“ I go to glorious, royal Kiev town to pray at the sanctuary of Kiev and to pledge myself to Vladímir the Prince, to serve him in faith and in truth, and to uphold the Christian faith.”
The old farmer Iván blessed Ilyá and said:
“I give thee my blessing for the good work, but for evil work no blessing I give. Go thou on the right road, and do no harm to any woman whether she be Christian or Tartar.”
Ilyá of Múrom bowed to the earth before his father, and said farewell to his mother and his sisters and brothers, and then he mounted his good horse and rode [31] through the open plain. ”

“ As the weeks went on, the rumors grew thicker and there began to come through to Poland, our land of the fields, the news that the country lands of the Ukraine were ablaze. Then it was heard that Kiev had fallen, then Lvov, the city of the Lion, and now there was naught between the savage band of warriors and the fair city of Krakow, save a few peaceful villages and fertile fields.
The Tartars came through the world like a horde of wild beasts. They left not one thing alive nor one green blade of wheat standing. ”

“ In Kiev, though there is every sign of its being in the minds of all, materially the war is hardly felt. It is in fact wonderful how little effect of this kind it seems to have made on the body of Russia. On the other hand, the atmosphere of nervous tension begins to disappear the moment one begins to get really near to the front. ”

“ What petty town is this of Kiev? My palace alone covers five miles, my halls of white oak [164] are hung with pelts of the grey beaver, the roof with skins of the black sable. The floors are of silver and the locks and bars are of steel.
“Furthermore, Prince Vladimir, I have thirty young men in my hire, each one a master shoemaker. With never a pause the thirty continue making shoes, and I wear a pair for one day and only by a chance wear them a second day. ”

“ In the Kievan period, whoever became prince of Kiev, removed to Kiev, and named someone of his own family as ruler in his own principality, so that if Kiev were lost and it should pass into another family, he would not lose his own patrimony.
During the Tatar period we note a new phenomenon: the princes did not merely separate themselves from their patrimonial lands, but even from their capitals; for instance: Iaroslav lived in Tver, Basil in Kostroma, Andrew in Gorodeza, Dmitri in Pereiaslavl, and so on. ”

“ A huge retinue accompanied her, together with the foreign ambassadors, Cobenzl, Fitzherbert, and Ségur, the last of whom has described this strange procession. Forty miles were covered every day. There is a palace at every stopping-place; towns and villages dot what six months ago had been a howling wilderness. Painted forests seem to clothe the horizon: fertile solitudes swarm with gayly dressed peasants—imported for this occasion only. From Kiev floating pavilions carry them down the Dnieper: the prince-magician alone has a hundred twenty of his beloved musicians. ”

“ In 882 he set out from Novgorod with an army composed of Varangians and the subject Slavo-Finnish tribes—Tchuds, Merians, Vesians, Ilmen Slavs, and Krivitchi—sailed down the upper Dnieper, took Smolensk, freed the Radimichi and the Severians from the yoke of the Chazars and incorporated them in his empire, and finally reached Kiev. Askold and Dir were then got rid of by an act of treachery, and Kiev was made the capital of an empire embracing nearly all the eastern Slavs. ”

“ Nevertheless the Jews continued to reside in Kiev. In 1124 they suffered severely from a fire which destroyed a considerable portion of the city. In the chronicles of that period (1146-1151) mention is frequently made of the "Jewish gate" in Kiev. Jewish merchants were attracted towards this city, a growing commercial center serving as the connecting link between Western Europe on the one hand and the Black Sea provinces and the Asiatic continent on the other. Reference to Kiev is made by the Jewish travelers of the time, Benjamin of Tudela and Pethahiah of Ratisbon (1160-1190) . ”

“ This term was later appropriated by the Great Russians. "Because of the Byzantine commerce, learning and craft," observes the Polish historian Zakrzewski, "Kiev, the 'mother of Russ cities,' was for the Poland of the eleventh and twelfth centuries what Rome had been for earlier Germans." The French geographer Reclus notices that academies flourished at Kiev and Ostrog before the Great Russians owned a single high school, and draws attention to the fact that Russia, during the regenerative period of Peter the Great, received her teachers from Ukraine. ”

“ For the Ukraine, as for all the nationalities of the Russian Empire, the Revolution of 1905 was the bursting of a dam behind which had gathered the pent-up forces of many generations. In South Russia the democratic movement at once assumed a national Ukrainian form, and its swift progress surprised even its own adherents. After thirty years of utter suppression there suddenly sprang up a flourishing Ukrainian press at Kiev, Harkov, Odessa, Poltava, Yekaterinoslav, and Mohilev. ”

“ Let us lay a wager of roubles, a wager of thirty thousand. For the space of three years you and I shall live in Kiev, and upon every single day of the year each shall wear fresh clothes of the richest, and upon every single day ride a horse of a different hue. And the wager shall pass to him whom all men acclaim as the most glorious. This can I do to uphold the honour of the court of Prince Vladimir, the Fair Sun of Kiev.”
“It is easy for you to wager such a sum and to propose such a test,” said Diuk somewhat wearily, “for you live at home where your clothes presses and your stables are full ”

“ There is no wonder, therefore, that the State of Kiev never attained a power in keeping with its great territory and population. The people ostensibly supported everything which tended to weaken the power of the government. Thru the entire existence of the ancient Kingdom of Kiev, its Great Princes were forced to wrestle with the Boyar nobility and the people for absolute power. This limitation of the monarchic power turned out to be a disaster for the Kingdom of Kiev. ”

“ Russia.—The architecture of Russia is only a somewhat degraded version of the style of the Byzantine empire. The earliest buildings of importance are the cathedrals of Kiev and Novgorod, 1019-1054. The original church of Kiev consisted of nave, with triple aisles each side, the piers in which are of enormous size, a transept and square bays of the choir beyond, each with deep apsidal chapels. Externally the chief features are the bulbous domes adopted from the Tatars, which sometimes assume great dimensions. ”

“ Kiev is the most convenient emporium for the forest and grain regions of the Ukraine, which border on one another here. In the last decades a considerable factory industry has developed in Kiev, embracing all possible branches of industry. Above all, the sugar industry has its center here. Kiev has a Russian University and a technical college. Ukrainian cultural life, which has always had its main headquarters in Kiev, has experienced an unexpected rise here since 1905. ”

“ At Kiev people still remember that the earliest Russian civilization had its beginnings in the Ukraine. There Christianity first took root, and there were the first Russian Princes.
Before Shevchenko’s arrival there was organized at Kiev the Society of Cyril and Methodius, called after the great apostles of Russia, and the leading spirits of the Society were professors in the University of Kiev.
Into this brilliant company Shevchenko was welcomed. Its leaders became his devoted friends. A chair of painting in the University was to be established for him. ”

“ The Princess Nastasya looked at him, and a world of wisdom was in her glance. "Your boast is emptiness, Dunai," she said. "I have not dwelt long in this city, but I have learnt much. There are handsomer, braver, more courteous heroes in Kiev town whom I could name. Neither in deeds nor promise are these men lacking, and, apart from them, even I, the wife of a boaster, have some skill with the bow. Let us take a stout bow and set up a sharp dagger on the open steppe a mile away, and before the dagger a silver ring. ”

“ There are a great many patients but all that is interesting material for alienists and not for psychologists. One patient, a mystic, preaches that the Holy Trinity has come upon earth in the form of the metropolitan of Kiev, Ioannikiy. “A limit of ten years has been given us; eight have passed, only two years are left. If we do not want Russia to fall into ruins like Sodom, all Russia must go in a procession with the Cross to Kiev, as Moscow went to Troitsa, and pray there to the divine martyr in the noble form of the metropolitan Ioannikiy.” ”

“ Nobody objected to the nationalization of industry and it was of course expected that the Bolsheviki would expropriate. But when the bourgeoisie had been relieved of its possessions it was found that only the raiders benefited. Neither the people at large nor even the proletarian class gained anything. Precious jewellery, silverware, furs, practically the whole wealth of Kiev seemed to disappear and was no more heard of. Later members of the Tcheka strutted about the streets with their women gowned in the finery of the bourgeoisie. ”