Professor Serhy Yekelchyk

Caitlin Morrissey 

Serhy, what is the DNA of Kyiv to you?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

To me, it is a city which developed on the very high western bank of a major river, the Dnipro River, and that particular location determined the fate of Kyiv as a place which could be defended, which controlled the major trade route. And also, the city which developed in more than one cluster because the administrative capital was always very high on the hill over the river but the port and the trading part of the city was, in fact, very low, right on the bank below. That was not all. Kyiv also, because of its position in medieval times, was the capital of a very large federation of principalities which we call Kyivan Rus. It also became the religious centre and that religious centre was focused in early centuries on the part of town which is different from both of those, from the administrative and from the trade one.

So there were really three settlements, very much in a medieval fashion, that were considered each of the part of Kyiv but they were not necessarily connected by any convenient roads, especially the first monastery in the lands of Rus. It took a considerable time until, really, the early 19th century to connect all three parts. And so, because of that, Kyiv’s DNA contains elements coming from all three of them. It is a traditional administrative centre where the grand princes ruled high on the hill. It is also a major port city for most of its existence which focused on the port location down below. And it's also an Eastern Slavic Jerusalem, the place where religion and writing, in fact, culture and literature of Ukraine and Russia came from. So the first known medical doctor, the first architect we know by name, the first painter we know by name, they were all actually associated with a monastic community of Kyiv. So these three identities played out differently through the city's history, but they continue to be very much in action even today.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you so much for drawing those connections to medieval Kyiv to the present day. Can you talk a little bit about how those three identities have shifted and evolved over time?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

They did in connection with how the state, the economy and society developed. When Kyiv was born as a city – which we actually don't know when that happened, we do know that it already existed in about 830 CE – it was initially the point of control over the river. The administrative role comes later. But it was really the interaction of the people and the ruling class and the influence produced by the religion that shaped the subsequent destiny of the city. Perhaps even more so was the trajectory of these three parts of the city's identity because it was the capital of Rus, the state to which Ukraine and Russia and Belarus as well trace their history. And Ukraine, by the way, has a much better claim. The legacy of Kyiv would be challenged, claimed, reclaimed throughout its history so essentially, for most of its existence, the city kept dealing with its medieval glory and who owned that medieval glory.

It was also continuing in the role of an administrative centre over the countryside until very late, so any serious industrialisation in the city only really started in the 1880s. For a long time, Kyiv was the capital of the Borderlands. It was defended. It was protected. Modern fortress was built in the city in the mid-19th Century, which is when most other European cities were in fact getting rid of the fortress walls and building the ringstraßen iand the Parisian boulevards in the space vacated by the fortress. Kyiv was going in the opposite direction. It was in fact demolishing private houses so that the new fortress would have an unobscured view of enemy forces (who could be your own people) at which to shoot from the cannons and rifles.

In this sense, Kyiv was located on the border between different worlds. One of them, for many centuries, was the Polish world with Roman Catholic religion in which the Polish elites controlled the countryside populated by Ukrainian peasantry, different religiously being Orthodox Christian, different in language and culture and the tradition too. It was also seen as the borderland of the Russian Empire for a long time. For some time, actually more than a century, the Russian Empire controlled only the city itself, but not the entire western bank of the Dnipro and that perception of the city carried over into the 20th Century. The Bolsheviks were not prepared to make the city the capital of Soviet Ukrainian Republic because they felt it was too close to the border. So they, like the Russian tsars, also kept fortifying the city and built the well-known Stalin Line, which was at its strongest actually in the western suburbs of Kyiv, so they were preparing for a major war.

For that reason, too, they and to some degree the tsars discouraged the industrial development of the area because they saw Kyiv as a city which can potentially change hands. So in other words, powerful states nearby often saw Kyiv as a fortress first and foremost. But going into the age of nationalism, it became important to determine which areas Kyiv controls and why. So the position of a Russian imperial centre in the long run was unsustainable. The city changed hands, allegedly 14 times during the revolutionary turmoil of 1917-20. I've tried myself to count and arrived 11 times for sure when different armies marched in, brought with the own interpretation of this borderline city and claimed it only to be dislodged by the next army in just a few months or sometimes in just a day. So each of these forces claiming Kyiv always included the reference to its past because it was the past that really mattered to the Ukrainian government, Russian government, the Polish military, the Russian monarchist armies of the time.

So the city lived forever with that legacy of having been a glorious capital of the medieval kingdom, at the time actually the largest in Europe, from which several modern nations developed. So in a way, Mr Putin insisted on taking Kyiv and sent his army to besiege Kyiv because of his view of history, as much as because of his view of democracy, so he wanted definitely to suppress the revolutionary Kyiv in which people were always powerful, I have to say. It's a city where people’s power mattered, historically, all the time against the authorities, the city which preserved for a long time the medieval institution of a popular assembly of the people getting together, yelling as loud as possible in order to change the political system. And interestingly enough, that same type of popular democracy – people power which is won on the streets – came back in the 20th Century. I don't think that the politicians of the 20th Century were all necessarily informed about the institution of veche, or medieval assembly. But one of them was the most prominent historian of the country, Mykhailo Hrushevsky, and he was a participant who also knew work of previous historians, demonstrating that they argued that the spirit of Kyiv and in a sense, the spirit of the Ukrainian people, was different from that of the Russians because the notion of assembly. The people deciding rather than the prince deciding was very important in that part of Kyivan Rus.

So we should be, of course, very cautious not to instil the notion here of a historical determinism saying that one group of the population is inherently somehow different from another group. But the thing is that it does happen in some cases that the imperial legacy is understood by the people claiming that imperial legacy as the right one, the righteous one too. And so, we know that rulers do not just come out from nowhere. And there is a good reason why Mr Putin is enjoying a support of a very significant proportion of the Russian people because for them, the loss of the empire is something yet to be processed. They never really had such an opportunity.

But the people of Kyiv, the people of Ukraine, had a very interesting relationship with historical memory. They were justifiably proud of having lived in the city which brought statehood, culture, literacy to that part of the world, but also they felt that over the centuries afterwards they were oppressed and they needed to reclaim people's power. So, this is what is at stake there. This is what helps us understand why Kyiv was so staunchly defended by its citizens, why the Ukrainian authorities at the very beginning of this all-out invasion in February 2022 ran out of submachine guns and had to distribute hunting rifles to the volunteers. That's because they did not expect that there would be such a surge of popular resistance to the Russian aggression that there would be so many people volunteering to fight on the streets.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you so much. Serhy, what you're starting to answer now is the question what makes Kyiv Kyiv, speaking about Kyivans and that spirit, that fight for freedom. I want to ask you if there's anything else you'd like to say. But also, how many Kyiv's there are? Is there one Kyiv, or are there many Kyiv's? And what is the tapestry that sort of holds together those differences or those pluralities if indeed there are any?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

Yes, because modern Kyiv developed from three medieval townships as such the space among them in the middle was not filled by construction until very late in the city's history that produced enormous expanses of green space right in the middle of the city which actually resulted in Kyiv being seen, and that's a self-representation which all authorities consistently liked, as a City of Parks. Precisely because there was space in the new middle of the city where commerce was developing, where modern society was developing, political participation was developing. So we ended up with a city which is enveloped in a way by greenery, and the parks were fortunately protected by all successive authorities in the city. So you get the City of Parks or the City in the Park. And the legend goes that when Charles de Gaulle came to Kyiv in 1966, he said that he saw many parks in the city but he never saw a city in the park, and that's actually the perception you do get in Kyiv and citizens were always proud of that.

But that also meant that the city, if it wanted to expand, it needed to expand in different directions because the centre was surrounded by three historic medieval townships, which developed into fortified areas over the period. So there was not really much space for construction. And that dilemma did not particularly worry the tsars, but it came to the front of the authority's attention in the 20th Century. So if Kyiv was located on the high western bank of the Dnipro River, what about the eastern bank? The lowlands on the eastern bank which are prone to floods, some of them are very difficult to actually navigate became for the Soviets, for the Bolsheviks, the place to expand. That also meant that Kyiv had to become the city of bridges to connect the old historical part of town which was developed in its current form by the late 19th Century and the new part of town which actually belonged to a different province until World War II. So by crossing the river, and there was always a ferry service, there were some very famous bridges. One of the most beloved bridges in the city was destroyed by the Polish army when it retreated in 1920. That was the Chain Bridge, named after Emperor Nicholas I. All of its important components were produced in the UK and then shipped off to Kyiv. It was a beautiful landmark and citizens very much missed it. But it also meant that because a new city, a 20th Century-city, was being built on the lower eastern bank there needed to be a connection. So several bridges were constructed. The construction of bridges, in fact, never ends in Kyiv. It's still ongoing. There is one bridge which remains incomplete, and we are still waiting for the city authorities to finally finish it. It also meant that the subway station, so that the subway service – the ‘Metro’ they call it in Kyiv, I think in the French fashion – had to cross the river at some point and that other kinds of services would be built to enable the unity of the city. This also meant that during the political turmoil in the 21st Century, the first thing the authorities would do, they would shut down the subway system, the Metro, because that is the way for the concerned citizens from elsewhere in the city to get into the historical heart in order to participate in the protests. So yes, there are different Kyivs.

And there is also the most recent Kyiv which includes several satellite towns. To get to the city from them, you would normally take a light rail transit. And these towns, where we would get all new construction primarily, where the population would be quite young on average, lots of young families. They were prominent in the defence of Kyiv in 2022. One of them, Bucha, was taken by the Russian forces and a variety of atrocities were committed there, subsequently documented by the Western lawyers and the politicians were actually taken for tours of Bucha. So that expansion of Kyiv into new satellite towns is a very most recent project and it is in a way on hold now because so many buildings are being destroyed and they're being restored very slowly.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you for explaining all of that so clearly and for so captivatingly laying out the different ways that we can interpret Kyiv's plurality. I'd love to ask you, Serhy, what role the geological and geographical and climatic features have played in shaping the evolution of the city? What sort of features have been most prominent influences? It's also an invitation to talk about some of the relations with other cities that the Dnipro River has produced, and how those have shaped the city?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

Geology, geographical features, the climate played a major role in the city's history. In a way, the biggest issue was, in fact, the river itself. It is by the way, a relatively recent river. It's not a very old one. Geologists think that in its current shape, the Dnipro only emerged about 200,000 years ago, whereas many rivers historically have been there for millions of years. But the problem was also that the river –because of the landscape in the area – the river would sometimes retreat from the city and at other times flood the city, especially the low-lying areas of the city. So for much of the 19th Century and the 20th, there was a project to somehow transform the river to prevent it from forming a new channel somewhere and to keep it close to the city, but at the same time not allowing the river to flood the city. So I still remember floods from the early 1970s, these are the last historically of the floods. There are photographs from the famous floods of 1929 and the previous times. But people just basically learned to live with the river. Of course for many of them, the river provided also food and employment.

So that type of attitudes between humans and environment in which the humans were accepting the environment’s power and trying to accommodate themselves to the environment, then changed to the new modernising drive in which the river had to be changed in order to keep the city the way it now was. These attempts really started in the late 18th Century and the main purpose of the plans was, in fact, not to allow the river to retreat from the city eastwards because that's what the river tended to be doing and also to keep the Dnipro deep enough for commercial shipping.

But then the problem of flooding remained unresolved. The residents of Kyiv really are divided into the categories of those who remember the floods and those who never experienced the floods. So I'm perhaps one of the last people from the first generation because as a child, I still remember some floods of the 1970s. But that changed too, as humans were managing the river to use it for various economic purposes, to build hydroelectric dams on the river, to create artificial seas both upstream from Kyiv and downstream from Kyiv. With that, floods disappeared. And I think we really need to see the city in a longer perspective to realise that our way of treating nature in Kyiv is, in fact, a very recent invention. All these photographs of people in, you know, self-made small boats navigating the flooded streets. The acceptance of the power of the nature was changed fairly recently in historic terms, to dominating the nature, to try and to reshape it the way people wanted.

Caitlin Morrissey 

And those interventions in the hydroelectric potential of the river, did they coincide with the rise of industry?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

They coincide in a way with, first of all, the period of Stalinist industrialisation. The famous film director Alexander Dovzhenko, who is one of perhaps best known figures in Ukrainian and Soviet cinema with some of his silent films and then a few talkies as well, actually made a film about the construction on the river which opens with a sequence of the mighty river flowing downstream powerfully. But that's not something to celebrate. That is, in fact, something to conquer. And the heroic labourers then are constructing the dam, some of them are actually the persons who do not really fit into this modernising society. He was quite sensitive to that.

 And one thing I should probably mention in this conversation because so that your listeners would be able to visualise it that Dnipro is a very wide river, really, very much so. In some locations, 1.5 kilometres wide. And that actually allowed the literary giant Nikolai Gogol – who is also claimed by both Russia and Ukraine, and when he was asked by a contemporary he said he didn't know whether he was Russian or Ukrainian – that provided him with a very famous metaphor which is still a used saying that ‘not too many birds would be able to fly to the middle of the Dnipro.’ That's indicating how wide the river in fact is. And so, indeed, it is a formidable object for the industry and for modern effort to conquer, to subdue, right? Actually, within the City of Kyiv itself, the Dnipro is quite wide too.

Caitlin Morrissey 

And it's my understanding that the Dnipro River and its connections through Ukraine and onto the Black Sea to Byzantium provided an important relationship too for Kyiv, certainly through its sort of medieval history. Is there anything that you'd like to say about that? Because I think one of the things that I've been coming across is that religion was an important part of that story, too. But perhaps there are some other influences that you might like to share?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

Yeah, that's true. I think Kyiv's religious identity, which was always in a way contested and recreated and reshaped, determined the vision of the city. One of the reasons, in fact, for the Russian invasion is that so much of what Russia considers its early history and the early Christianity is, in fact, in Kyiv. There is the first monastery and that monastery also has a number of crypts in the Caves. The name of the monastery is the Caves Monastery. So there is this famous moment in Russian epic poetry in which there is a heroic knight in shining armour who everybody thinks must be, you know, a total invention of popular literary imagination. But actually, he is buried right there and because of the Caves in Kyiv, some bodies have preserved as mummies. So you could see the hands, sometimes you can see the face or other parts. So lots of people that constitute the legendary past of Russia are actually real characters who were monks at some point in that Monastery of the Caves in Kyiv.

Also, that was understood very early, in fact, that the religious glory of Kyiv is in fact a symbolic value. You may want, for instance, to consider the fact that both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy are actually named after the same saint, The Grand Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv. The way his name is spelled in the Chronicle is neither Russian nor Ukrainian. It is in the middle. But it also shows that so much of that cultural heritage originates from Kyiv. That was understood early. There was an archbishop in the early 17th Century who made somewhat of a second profession for himself to be an archaeologist. He started digging up the old churches trying to restore them and also claiming to have found Saint Volodymyr’s burial place, distributing various parts of the body to various churches and important benefactors. So that kind of meaning of antiquity as important and symbolic was always there and it was to a significant degree connected to religious heritage as well.

I should mention also that before we imagine the City of Kyiv as this overwhelmingly Orthodox city, there are three historic synagogues operating in the city. The Jewish settlement in Kyiv is very ancient. We have documented evidence from the probably from 830 or 840CE that there was already a Jewish community in existence. There's also considerable presence of Roman Catholicism, primarily in relation to the Poles living in the city historically. The two Roman Catholic churches in the city were used by the Bolsheviks, one for the study of astronomy and another as a concert hall because it was so beautiful and musically resounding with an organ installed too. But both now, I think, have been restored to the Roman Catholic community. First the one which was used for the, you know, observing the movement of planets and such, and then the second one too, the Neo-Gothic one. So it is also a meeting place of religions, of ethnic cultures and of empires which tried and continue trying – some of them – to claim the city for themselves, for their political projects.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you so much, Serhy. What is the role that Kyiv plays in Ukraine and perhaps the broader region, and what is distinctive about that role?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

Modern Ukraine was formed during the process which continued over decades. It was not a spontaneous creation of a state. The idea of Ukraine was the homeland for ethnic Ukrainians. Even so, from the very start, it was seen by the historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky who knew very well the history of Kyiv, as the country which would be very accepting of ethnic minorities. And in fact, his project was to reserve the parliamentary seats for the major minority groups. Now the problem, of course, was that some of these minorities, Russians in particular, saw themselves as a majority in a different state. In an empire in which Kyiv would be the capital of the borderland.

So the Ukrainian ethnic lands joined together during several decades in the 20th Century. The initial project was the Ukrainian Revolutionary Project of 1917, but then the Bolsheviks figured out that it was to their advantage as well to steal the thunder from Ukrainian patriots and to build a Soviet Ukraine for the Soviet Union, but the process was ongoing. And until 1934 the Bolsheviks were actually afraid of Kyiv and for good reason. It was the capital of the non-Bolshevik Ukrainian Republic during the Revolution, so they saw it as a city of Ukrainian nationalists. It was also the natural capital of a very large agricultural region, the place where people from the surrounding rural areas would come for major fairs once a year and markets usually on Saturdays. It was then a location which the Bolsheviks saw as determined by the peasant culture which would be both Ukrainian and resisting to the Bolshevik efforts.

So, the Bolsheviks were only prepared to make Kyiv the Ukrainian capital if they felt that they had suppressed both in nationalism and the peasant resistance. They saw these two things as belonging together. And so, in the early 1930s they crushed the Ukrainian peasantry with a state engineered famine. It became a major event in 20th Century Ukrainian history. No peasant rebellions after the famine. But also, during the same time, 1932-33, the Bolshevik state attacked the Ukrainian cultural figures and particularly rural teachers because they saw the Ukrainian culture as subversive, just as the tsars did, who also actually banned publications in Ukrainian but they didn't possess the modern mechanisms of violence that the Bolshevik state had.

So there is then the moment in 1934 when the capital of Soviet Ukraine is relocated from the city of Kharkiv, which is right on the Russian border today and heavily showered by the Russian artillery and drones and missiles to Kyiv, which previously was the territory they saw with suspicion. That was the moment at which it was no longer the capital of the borderlands. The Bolsheviks now saw Kyiv as part of the country which they would be able theoretically to defend. That was proven wrong during World War II when Kyiv became the largest city to change hands, taken first by the German army and then retaken by the Red Army in major military engagements with colossal losses, especially for the Soviet side. So it was then, in a way, telling that some people who remembered World War II in Kyiv, including by the way my parents, were to witness in their lifetime another attempt to take Kyiv which involved bombing just as terrible as the Nazi attacks on the city. So my Mum actually stayed in Kyiv under the German occupation. She was five. Lots of shocking memories, lots of traumas. And my Dad was evacuated from the city in 1941. Both of them when the most recent war started still remembered some basic things you did when expecting to be bombed such as keeping water in large jars around the rooms so that there is a fire you have, at least, you know, a theoretical chance to try and extinguish the fire in your apartment.

So you can also say that Kyiv was the city which was perhaps in the 20th Century, unique in Europe and perhaps in the world, in that it was taken and retaken by so many forces in 1917-1920 and then changed hands during World War II which also meant a very significant change in the city's population because both the Soviet authorities and the Nazi regime wanted to cleanse the city. The Soviets did so successfully by police mechanisms, by putting Kyiv on the list of special cities where you could only get a residential permit after your record would be checked by the government and if you do not have it, if there is something suspicious about your background, then you cannot reside in this city. And of course, the Nazis tried to starve the city in which they failed. But nevertheless, that was precisely the plan and they knew very well about Stalin's state-produced famine in Ukraine in the 1930s.

But they also tried specifically to starve the city because the German argument was that cities would not exist in this part of conquered Europe. It would become an idealised agricultural colony in which German war veterans will be receiving large pieces of land. So Hitler never visited Kyiv. He of course went for the celebrated walk on Champs-Élysées in Paris in this white trench coat. Plenty of photographs on the internet. But it never occurred to him to visit the biggest Soviet city his army conquered. Also, he said it was the greatest battle in history and perhaps he was on that occasion even right given the Soviet losses and the significance of capturing Kyiv. But that was not a place for him to visit or receive a parade,  because cities were to be eliminated in that part of Europe. So the Germans actually were trying to prevent any food from getting into the city. But then they realised that, logistically they couldn't do it. The local police was too corrupt, the citizens too inventive and trying to help each other. And so, in the end, that project failed, but nevertheless it was attempted. The mass murder of Kyiv’s Jews in 1941 also changed the city forever.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Wow. Thank you, Serhy. Can I ask you to talk a little bit about the character of Kyivans? You mentioned there that their inventiveness and this willingness to help one another, and we've heard this a couple of times over the interviews that we've done about the city. Can I ask you, what does it mean to be a Kyivan?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

Yeah, it is a city in which there is every year, new citizens, new residents, arriving and reshaping the city's character. The city has changed on my memory even, but historically even more so. Because if it is an administrative centre and the economic centre of the surrounding countryside, if it controls a major river, it means that every time the new authority in the city would bring in more people. But when it happens, not according to the design of the authorities but because of the society's development, you end up with what the current city is in which you have the most socially active people, successful in business, good scholars, excellent lecturers who by default find themselves in the capital of Ukraine because it is the place where their profession is taking them. And because it is also the capital of a modern Ukrainian state which explicitly declares itself the state of the people of Ukraine, not the Ukrainian people. It is a multinational group. There aren't too many residents who can trace their family roots beyond third generation to Kyiv. The city was reshaped by the Revolution and the Civil War, World War II, but the generation which made the two more recent Ukrainian revolutions in 2004 and 2013 is the generation of people who usually, in most cases are not from there but who made it their project to create a Kyiv which would correspond to this notion of civic Ukrainian identity.

So for instance, this is one of my favourite examples when discussing Ukraine. The Revolution of 2013 which is known as the Revolution of Dignity or sometimes the European Maidan Revolution started with a Facebook post by a popular oppositional journalist whose name was Mustafa Nayyem, who arrived in Kyiv as a child refugee from Afghanistan and who at that point didn't even speak Ukrainian. So if a child refugee from Afghanistan can start a Ukrainian Revolution, which is now defended by Ukraine's Jewish President too, that means that the Ukrainian identity is very different from what, you know, previous generations imagined it to be. It has a very prominent component of civic or political community, acceptance of cultures, but also like in so many European cultures, the understanding that the Ukrainian language was suppressed for many decades or disadvantaged. And therefore, when we restore justice in this world, or at least we strive to restore justice, it would have to involve also trying to promote the Ukrainian language as a language of those dispossessed peasants killed by Stalin.

So that brings to you modern Kyiv. The city in which not too many people have a long family history but the city that they are passionate about because it represents the new Ukraine as for good reason that the two revolutions took place in Ukraine, in Kyiv in the 21st Century. All of them starting in Kyiv, not in the western part of the country, which some people would argue have better developed Ukrainian ethnic consciousness, being aware of what it means to be ethnic Ukrainian. But actually in the more cosmopolitan City of Kyiv because it is in the name of that particular community, a relatively recent political community, that these people fought. And of course, that imposes on  Kyivites an obligation too. And the memory of those who gave their lives during the most recent Revolution of Dignity is represented very widely in the city. Actually, the city centre contains several major memorial places with memorials more permanent and more spontaneous with the murals. A mural on one of the city buildings actually represents the face of Serhiy Nigoyan, the Armenian person who was one of the heroes of the Revolution who was one of the first to be killed. And, you know, he is from the Caucasus. He is not a person you would normally imagine as a typical Ukrainian, but nevertheless, he is the face of that Revolution. And lots of people also commented on the fact that he looked Christ-like and I was actually very happy to hear this,  because that would not be the image of the blonde, white, Anglo-Saxon Christ you would encounter so prominently here in North America, but actually that would be the Middle Eastern man, or the person from the Caucasus. So if Jesus Christ ever actually existed, then that's what he most likely would look like. So it is a city which, as you see, never truly, really forgets its identity as a religious centre, the centre of pilgrimage which was so important economically for Kyiv over centuries, receiving the pilgrims. But also, it is a modern community at the same time.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you. What are the myths and the stories that are told in Kyiv? And what essence are they trying to capture about the city? These can be songs or common stories that people tell in the city.

Serhy Yekelchyk 

I think the two most famous ones are very telling actually for our purposes as historians of the city. One famous one is that it was St Andrew who is not only claimed by Kyiv, but of course, by some other nations in Europe. It was St Andrew who allegedly arrived and erected a large cross on the hill over the Dnipro saying that a great Christian city will be built there. So there are quite a few people who call Kyiv the city of St Andrew. Although, I have to say that on the coat of arms of the city, on the city emblem, it is actually St Michael who is portrayed. But, you know, you cannot have too many saints protecting the city.

But the second one is about how the city was founded historically, without the religious legend. And the legend we have for that, the myth we have for that is of a simple, lowly ferryman who was ferrying passengers and goods from one shore of the Dnipro River to another. And his name was, the legend goes, Kyi – and that’s why ‘Kyiv’. That word also means in Ukrainian, could mean, potentially the stick you would use to push the ferry along. So that sort of makes sense linguistically. But of course, it is a legend and even the chronicle writer who wrote it down, he pretty much warned us that he doesn't think it is true but he wanted to tell this story. And today the monument to the three founders, three brothers and a sister, although they are legendary. And you know, even the number of brothers already tells you, oh, there are three brothers in all kinds of cultural legends all around the world. The monument to them, which stands right on the shore of the river is one of the most popular landmarks of the city. Even though, it was built in Soviet time in 1982 and most monuments from that period are highly questionable. Lots of them were removed or in the process of being reimagined. That one stood well the trials of history, interestingly enough. The interesting part of it is also, so the chronicle writer, St Nestor, who is also buried at the same Caves monastery, by the way, and we know he is a real person and because it is a mummy you could actually see on his right hand a kind of a small bump on the bone which comes from many years of handwriting on the middle finger of his right hand. So he was, in fact a person who was doing lots of writing. So he said he told us the legend the way it was in his time, and was repeated ever since. But then he said, I doubt that it is true. Kyi must have been some kind of a prince, but then we don't quite know how to connect him to the history of statehood.

That's the most beautiful moment when the first documented historian of the city is already confused and says it is legendary. But he still tells us the legend because it is so beautiful and it takes you to the common roots of the city, to the grassroots city, to the city of the working people who live by the river who are not, you know, princes conquering the land because they really like the place for the fortress. So that's the reason I like it and that’s the reason so many people born in Kyiv and those who arrived in the city to build their lives, they go to this monument quite. Actually, the newlyweds go there often to leave their flowers there which is a peculiar tradition in that part of the world. Initially introduced by the Soviets actually, when everybody was supposed to bring some flowers to the Lenin monument, or whatever, the October Revolution monument. But of course, the newlyweds also had a little bit of freedom, even in Soviet times, to decide to which monuments they were in fact going to lay the flowers. And these choices could demonstrate cultural resistance. So the Founders Monument, which is not large, it's quite intimate actually, on a small scale, remains enormously popular and with it the legend that it was in fact the simple working people who established the city.

Caitlin Morrissey 

I have, actually, an additional follow up that you've just prompted there. Earlier on in the conversation, you mentioned that the very beginnings of Kyiv as a city-- well, we don't actually know how that happened. And so, from what point are we certain of Kyiv's history, and how much history do these legends represent?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

Unfortunately, the nature of the soil is such that it completely consumes everything made of wood, including paper as well, unless you are down by the river, but there are other challenges there. So we don't actually have too many written sources because of multiple invasions in which the city was destroyed over and over again. From the Mongol storming of the city in December 1240 – the date, by the way, which is still remembered in the city, so on some anniversaries people would get together to remember the Mongol storming in 1240 – and of course, up to the Nazi occupation in the 1940s when they used historical documents to clean their horses or something like that. We don't actually have too many written records for the early period of the history of Kyiv. So our reliable identification, comes from the Greek and Byzantine sources. So when the Byzantine Empire received ambassadors from Rus, from Kyiv, there are names recorded and there are treaties recorded as well. So from that, we can conclude that the city definitely exists already in the middle of the 9th Century, around 840. But of course, archaeologically, every time you start digging, you get more and more evidence for the earlier periods, which you then have to interpret somehow in the complete absence of written sources, right? And that imposes a number of limits because if you really are an imaginative historian you can say, well, the Soviets actually claimed that Kyiv was 1500 years old. So they arbitrarily picked up the date 482 just because it allowed them to celebrate a major jubilee in 1982. But based on the coins, based on the various signs left by ancient settlements, you can go down in history all the way. Problem is, we are not quite convinced that this was a continuous settlement in exact same space on the same hill, as it were. So the hill, very high up the river, which is considered the place where the Rus state emerged can reliably be traced back to about 830s-840s really.

But we know that-- and you can easily imagine too, right? If there is a place high on the river, easy to defend and it controls a major river, there must have been settlements there before, right? Of only the outposts of trading empires that existed in this region for a long, long time. We are in the dark here. But that is also very humbling for historians because otherwise there would be even more of an impetus to keep inventing the glorious ancient past. And there are such attempts to claim, for instance more recently, that there was a Roman settlement in Kyiv because of the pattern of some streets in the lower part of the town, which, of course, was laughable to specialists but the locals loved the idea. And I understand why, right? Because so many European cities, as you know of course, have been historically at first Roman settlements even though the Romans looked at them as distant outposts of the Empire.

Caitlin Morrissey 

Thank you, Serhy. I'm glad I asked. And the final question I have for you is to ask what you see as the future for Kyiv, and what sort of elements of its DNA do you see as being influential or part of that future?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

It is going to be very diverse for sure. That's because Kyiv sustained a significant loss of population at the start of the war. Many, particularly women and children, went abroad as displaced persons. Being realistic, not all of them are going to return. There is also a significant loss of life, primarily among the men serving in the army, but lots of women are serving as well. It will be a city of the veterans, a very, very large proportion of whom, because of the nature of modern warfare, have lost a limb or two or three or sometimes four. But there will be a lot of disabled veterans in that city, and there will be new arrivals because the city would not be able to continue reconstruction and further development without an influx of new people prepared to make it home. Because they live in the 21st Century, we realise these things that many of these people would will be immigrants from elsewhere and this will be an opportunity for Kyivites to confirm the representation at a place where cultures meet, where people keep arriving because they have jobs and because this where the main cultural hub is, but staying to create that will be a more modern, different community. And so, you know, there are good reasons to think that there will be refugees arriving there from other countries and other communities. And then you see why we have to live up to the challenge of accepting them in the same way the city had been accepting new arrivals. So it will be a city which will cherish its historical past, but at the same time, share it with the arrivers from different cultures. It’s happening already to some degree but the process will probably intensify after the war is over.

Caitlin Morrissey 

The very final question is to simply ask if there's anything else that you would like to say about the DNA of Kyiv that the questions I've asked you so far haven't elicited from you?

Serhy Yekelchyk 

The DNA of Kyiv would, to me, consists of its historical specificity as a kind of society that develops because it was for a long time divided into medieval townships and it was established as a contiguous city very late in its history. Several legends, several foundation mythologies and several traditions had to be merged. And the city, as a very modern one, was built by a multinational group of business people and workers who joined in in the age of industrialisation. For them, it was not the pride of having been born in this city but rather an economic opportunity of arriving into the city, but their work defined the city's future. And that process is in fact going to continue. So Kyiv is the city which was repeatedly taken by various armies, cleansed by various dictators with of course, and sustaining in the current war significant damage to civilian infrastructure. So the people who live there and who come there would be prepared for the challenge of rebuilding it. And just in the same way as the previous generations of Kyivites, wherever they were originally from, were building the city and creating a new city culture which would incorporate the ancient past and the present very diverse society, and the effort, which is a global effort, to defend Ukraine in the most recent war. But it is not a surprise for Kyivites to see the war. They have seen wars, right? But in this particular case, it is also the moment when those who decide to make their lives in Kyiv would need to be accepting of its diversity with end of the political project of the Ukrainian revolution of constructing a new Ukraine. So that would actually make a society which is conscious, very much so, of the ancient past but is really very modern in the outlook. And we might, in fact, call this a very peculiar DNA of Kyiv because it's a place where people come and which people continuously rebuild.