“According to the annals of Kyiv Rus, four territorial princes with throne towns on the rivers Desna and Seim, east of Chernigiv, set out on Tuesday, April 23, 1185, for the prairies beyond the river Donets to fight the Kumans. The four princes were: Igor, leader of the expedition; his brother, Vsevolod; their nephew, Svyatoslav; and Igor’s young son, Vladimir. The Kumans, nomads of obscure Turco-Mongolian origin, who had been assailing the southeastern steppes for the last hundred years, had been soundly trounced in 1183 by Igor’s cousin, Svyatoslav III of Kyiv…
Igor was moved by the spirit of rash emulation in undertaking his own expedition without consulting the senior prince.
Igor’s mounted troops, marching leisurely in a general southeasterly direction, took nine days to cover the distance, about 250 miles, between Igor’s throne town, Novgorod-Seversk, and the river Donets. They continued southward, through oak brush and pine barren, between the Donets and the Oskol. In the steppes some 80 miles south of the junction of those two rivers, about 400 miles from Novgorod- Seversk, they clashed with the Kumans.
According to the chronicler, the historical Igor met the army of the Kumans on Friday morning (May 10) on the west bank of the lost river Syuurliy (apparently a tributary of the Donets south of the Oskol). After shooting from the opposite bank a first hurtle of arrows, the Kumans fled into the prairie. The Rus pursued them and captured the tents they had left behind.
On Sunday, May 12, after three days of fighting, the army of the four princes was completely defeated. They were captured by four different khans and taken to four different camps. In the course of the following months, the Kumans invaded Rus territory between the Sula and Seim rivers and retreated with a rich booty.
Donets, with which, or rather with whom, the prince in the Liberation part of The Song of Igor’s Campaign indulges in a charming colloquy (771-802), contrasting the kind Donets with a much less amiable stream, the Stugna, in a passage (791-802) which resolves itself in a last echo of danger and misfortune. Igor’s speech of thanks to the Lesser Don [Donets River] is beautifully duplicated by his wife’s prayer to the Dnieper River(711-719): the great Kyiv river transmits as it were the power of intercession and assistance to the prairie stream, and Igor’s historical recollection of a less fortunate lady’s weeping on the Dnieper’s banks is a necessary element of rhetorical harmony to balance, at the close of the entire movement, Euphrosyne’s initial apostrophization of that river. And finally, there is the river Kayala, near which the disastrous battle is fought. The reiteration of its name with emblematic allusions is a haunting presence throughout The Song (194,251,292, 380,431,694).
And finally there is the river Kayala, near which the disastrous battle is fought. The reiteration of its name with emblematic allusions is a haunting presence throughout The Song (194,251,292, 380,431,694).
Today, the bed of Kayla’s stream cannot be located exactly. The Kayala is supposed to have emptied in the Surozh Sea (Azov Sea)… It is identified by some as applicable to the Kalmius, which also flows into the Azov Sea.”
Stolen Poem, Stolen History, and Heroes
The text above is taken from the most well-known in the West translation of the poem by Vladimir Nabokov he made after he had immigrated in the USA already. Some corrections by the author of this article had to be made to it because for Nabokov it is all about ‘russia’. But the Poem tells us otherwise.
The Poem is just one of countless examples of how Moscow forges documents, stealing history and art, and then starts wars, on the grounds of some fake ‘historic lands’ when in fact it has nothing to do with it. The importance of the Donets area to Kyiv is proven by the fact that the First Battle of Kyiv Rus with the Golden Horde took place in the same region as well. And the Moscow-Suzdal troops were absent in it as well as they were absent during Igor’s Campaing.
< Moscow’s theft of Kyiv’s legacy is the major reason for the current war. Ukraine’s Total Recall
“Kyiv Rus in Heimskringla Sagas and Byzantine Texts” is possibly the only book as of now explaining why the Donets River was so important to Chernigiv princes that Igor decided to go with his troops so far away to expell the Polovtsians/ Kumans.
