Princes and Urban Communities through the Eyes of Old Rus'ian Chroniclers: 1132-1157

The ancient Russian chronicles leave an impression that their main and only characters are princes. Indeed, the ancient Russian scribers recount primarily princes’ speeches and deeds. However, we conjecture that urban communities, which often had interacted with princes themselves, play a no less important role. Based on this observation, we are interested in examining the relationship between common people and the princes. Our goal is not only to analyze this relationship, but also to understand opinions of various scribers regarding this matter. This study bases on two codexes that provide the most comprehensive accounts of the events of the XII century—the Hypatian and the Laurentian Codexes. In the former codex, we are most interested in the Kiev chronicles, composed in the end of the XII century. It is important to note that we not only study the collective perspective of all scribers, but also attempt to identify the individual aspects associated with scribers from different principalities. We hypothesize that scribes from different principalities had some values and ideals in common, while also hoping to find peculiarities and identify priorities of each scriber individually.