against the Emperor Basil II (r. 976-1025) in September 987 in Asia Minor. Vladimir, in return for providing six thousand troops directly to the empire and for taking action in the Crimea against those who supported the rebels, was promised by the emperor his sister Anna in marriage, provided Vladimir converted to Christianity. Some scholars think it was at this point (in 987) that Vladimir was baptized. The army of Bardas Phokas was defeated at Abydos on April 13, 989, and Vladimir’s capture of Kherson most likely occurred following that event, in the late spring or early summer of the same year. If we accept the contention of the compiler of the Rus Primary Chronicle, then Vladimir’s conversion occurred in Kherson shortly after Anna’s arrival. The baptism of the residents of Kiev in the Dnieper River would then have happened later that summer.
Arguing against a 989 date are three sources. The first is the Prayer to Vladimir, which states Vladimir captured Kherson in the third year, and died in the twenty-eighth year, of his conversion, thus dating his baptism to 987 and placing it presumably in Kiev. Interestingly, the Prayer is found together with a composition, the Life of Vladimir, that indicates he was baptized only after he took Kherson. Neither composition is found in a manuscript copy earlier than the fifteenth century, and their authorship is unknown. The second source dating Vladimir’s conversion to 987 is the Tale and Passion and Encomium of the Holy Martyrs Boris and Gleb, which, like the Prayer, states Vladimir died in the twenty-eighth year after his baptism. The third source (or, at least, three of its nineteen extant manuscript copies), the Reading about the Life and Murder of the Blessed Passion-sufferers Boris and Gleb, attributed to an eleventh-century monk, Nestor, provides the date 987 for Vladimir’s baptism. In order to resolve this apparent contradiction in the source evidence, some historians have suggested that 987 represents the year Vladimir began his period as a catechumen and 989 represents the year he was formally baptized.
The status of the early Rus Church dating from Vladimir’s acceptance of Christianity until 1037 has been a question in the historiography, whether Rus constituted a metropolitanate on its own (with the metropolitan residing either in Kiev or Pereslav) or was subordinate to another metropolitanate such as that of Ohrid, or whether it occupied an autonomous status directly under the patriarch of Constantinople with an archbishop as its head. That question has been decided in favor of Rus having its own metropolitan in Kiev from the beginning. After the rapid conversion, well-established existing pagan rituals and practices survived, especially in rural areas, for centuries. Such residual paganism existing side-by-side with Christian rituals and practices has been described as a special phenomenon called dvoyeverie (“dual belief”), but no solid evidence exists that paganism was any more prevalent here than in other areas of Eurasia that converted to Christianity so precipitously.
The conversion of Rus by Vladimir led to the formulation of a Christian religious culture in Rus based on that of the Eastern Church. It also saw the introduction of writing (including an alphabet based on the Greek alphabet), literature (most of it being translations from the Greek), monastic communities, Byzantine-style art and architecture, and Byzantine Church law. Along with Scandinavian, steppe, and indigenous Slavic elements, this Byzantine influence contributed significantly to the cultural, political, and social amalgamation that constituted the early Rus principalities. See also: KIEVAN RUS; OLGA; VLADIMIR, ST.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text. (1953). Ed. and tr. Samuel H. Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of Sciences. Fennell, John. (1995). A History of the Russian Church: To 1448. London: Longman. Franklin, Simon, and Shepard, Jonathan. (1996). The Emergence of Rus, 750-1200. London: Longman. Poppe, Andrzej. (1976). “The Political Background to the Baptism of Rus’: Byzantine-Russian Relations between 986-89.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 30:197-244. Poppe, Andrzej. (1979). “The Original Status of the Old-Russian Church.” Acta Poloniae Historica 39:5-45. Sevcenko, Ihor. (1960). “The Christianization of Kievan Rus’.” Polish Review 5(4):29-35.
The Chronicle of Current Events (Khronika tekushchikh sobyty) was a clandestine periodical of Soviet dissent. It reported on the activities of dissidents seeking to
expand the sphere of civil freedom and political expression. It appeared at irregular intervals from 1968 to 1983.
The Chronicle was put together in Moscow by anonymous editors drawing on a network of informants throughout the Soviet Union. It was produced by samizdat (“self-publishing”) techniques. Typewritten texts with multiple carbon copies were compiled, the recipients of which retyped additional copies and passed them along in chain-letter fashion. The Chronicle documented the views of the dissidents, reported on their arrests and trials, and described their treatment in prisons, labor camps, and mental asylums.
The compilers of the Chronicle, like most of the civil liberties activists, came from the educated, professional stratum of Soviet society. The Chronicle contained reports not only on their efforts, but on the activities of national minorities and religious groups as well. These included, among others, the campaign of the Crimean Tatars to return to their homeland in the Crimea, from which they had been deported in World War II; the efforts of Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel; and the demands of Lithuanian Catholics, Ukrainian Uniates, and Baptists for religious freedom. Thus the Chronicle drew together hitherto isolated individuals and groups in an informal nationwide organization.
Though forced to publish by conspiratorial methods, the Chronicle was committed to the rule of law. It publicized repressive actions by the authorities and called on the government to observe the provisions of Soviet law and international agreements that guaranteed freedom of speech and association and other human rights. It served as an information and communication center for the dissident movement and linked its disparate strands. The publication’s existence was always precarious, however, and it was ultimately suppressed. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; JOURNALISM; SAMIZ-DAT
CHRONICLE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE USSR
The Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR was a journal devoted to the Soviet dissident movement. It was published in New York in English and Russian editions. Forty-eight issues appeared from 1972 to 1983. It was similar in nature to the Chronicle of Current Events, a samizdat (“self-published,” meaning clandestine) periodical compiled by dissidents within the Soviet Union, which was subject to suppression by the Soviet authorities.
The editor of the Chronicle of Human Rights was Valery Chalidze, who had been a rights activist in Moscow. Allowed to travel to the United States in 1972, he was deprived of his Soviet citizenship and could not return home.
The Chronicle reflected a juridical approach to Soviet dissent, reporting the Soviet government’s violations of its own laws in suppressing free expression. It documented arrests and trials of dissidents, conditions in the labor camps and mental asylums where some dissidents were held, and repression of movements defending the rights of national and religious minorities, among other topics. Citing Soviet laws, the Constitution of the USSR, and international covenants to which the Soviet Union was a party, the Chronicle sought to persuade the Soviet government to uphold its own guarantees of civil liberties.
For ten years the Chronicle of Human Rights gave dissidents a voice the Soviet authorities could not silence. By exposing repressive governmental actions that would otherwise not have come to light, it anticipated the policy of glasnost, or openness, which Mikhail Gorbachev introduced in the late 1980s. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; SAMIZDAT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chronicle of Current Events. (1968-1984). London: Amnesty International. Hopkins, Mark. (1983). Russia’s Underground Press: The Chronicle of Current Events. New York: Praeger. Reddaway, Peter, ed. (1972). Uncensored Russia: Protest and Dissent in the Soviet Union. New York: American Heritage Press.
Chalidze, Valery. (1974). To Defend These Rights: Human Rights and the Soviet Union, tr. Guy Daniels. New York: Random House. Chronicle of Human Rights in the USSR. (November 1972-March 1973-October 1982-April 1983). Nos. 1-48. New York: Khronika Press.
