St. Vladimir and the process of Rus’ baptism in Ukrainian historiography in the late 20th - early 21st centuries

The process of Christianization of Rus’ as well as the image of the Prince who completed this process - St. Vladimir - is just one aspect of Russian stategenesis and personal history. However, it also traces the main characteristic features and transformations of scientific and “para-scientific” (“theological”) historiography of the modern (independent) Ukraine. The article covers the period of the development of Ukrainian historiography from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s. Two lines of development can be clearly distinguished: a theological one, emphasizing the moral aspects and importance of Christianization, and a scientific one, studying its individual elements, causes and importance for state development. Their common feature may well be the recognition of Christianization as a long-term process started under Askold in the middle of the 9th century and completed by Vladimir the Great. The difference between the two lines is that theological historiography has been highlighting the importance of Baptism for spiritual formation of mentality of the Ukrainian nation ever since the mid-1990s. In scientific historiography, estimation of significance of Prince Vladimir’s activity (not only in the religious sphere) appears only in the second half of the 2000s, first for the formation of the “Old Russian civilization”, then for the formation of the “Ukrainian civilization”, while for the formation of the “first Ukrainian” (Kiev-Russian) state - in the 2010s. The most probable year of the scientific turning-point was 2012, the reasons for this being more ideological and political than scientific. However, even after the turning-point, purely scientific studies continue to appear, revealing St. Vladimir’s activities and the Baptism of Rus’ often with the use of methods that are often not uncontroversial, yet in many cases innovative and open-minded.