Rus' in the narrow chronicle sense of the word (11.06.2023)
A structured lecture by Vitaliy Dribnytsya (≈4 pages of text with references), in which he draws on the works of Russian historians — V. Kuchkin, a critical scholar and D. Kotyshev — to show that in the chronicle (narrow) sense “Rus’” is the territory of modern northern Ukraine, not Russia. Separately he refutes the myth of Tatishchev’s “5 Rus’es”, in particular the invented “Novgorodian Rus’”. The material supplements the analysis “Kyivan Rus’ did not exist”.
Key moments
- 01:33 Tatishchev's "5 Rus'es" (Novgorodian/Little/White/Red/Black) — an 18th-c. armchair invention
- 04:04 Kuchkin: chronicle-writing was conducted in different centres (the Laurentian, Hypatian, Trinity, Novgorodian copies) — the geographic and temporal dynamics of the term
- 05:50 A paradoxical conclusion: over time the understanding of Rus' did not expand but narrowed
- 12:33 Statistics: 717 uses of "Rus'" across the three copies, only 4 of them in the broad sense
- 20:42 Conclusion: until the mid-12th c. Rus' was the Kyiv/Chernihiv/Pereiaslav lands; later — mostly the Kyiv region