"Going to the Poles": How one line of the chronicle became "proof" of the eternal enmity between Rus' and Poland
The short line under the year 981 made a dizzying career.
"Volodimir went to the Poles and captured their cities, Przemysl, Cherven and other cities, which remain to this day under Rus'."
It gave rise to an entire conception that Rus' and Poland have been enemies since the 10th century, arguing over "Western Russian lands" since time immemorial. Let's break this phrase down word by word and see what's true and what was added later.
What does a 19th-century reader hear in this line?
If you read it straight, it's all simple. Vladimir marched on the Poles and took "their cities," meaning foreign, Polish ones. Among them were Przemysl and Cherven. And these cities remain under Rus' control "to this day." So much for the first Russo-Polish war, the restitution of what had been captured, and the beginning of a long dispute over the border.
This is precisely how historians of the 19th century read this line. Both the Russian and Polish traditions. They argued only about the symbolism: for some, Vladimir was reclaiming what was primordially Russian, for others, he was attacking a legitimate Polish borderland. But they agreed on one thing: 981 was the starting point of a centuries-long confrontation between the two peoples.
It's worth considering the context in which this entry is placed. Next to it are campaigns against the Vyatichi, Radimichi, and Yatvingians. Year after year, the same formula: marched, fought, imposed tribute. The chronicler doesn't highlight the campaign "against the Poles." For him, it's a routine episode in the consolidation of power, not a fateful battle between two worlds.
Who wrote this line and when?
The Tale of Bygone Years is not an eyewitness diary. It is a multi-layered collection compiled in the 11th and 12th centuries, and it has come down to us in later copies, primarily the Laurentian and Ipatian. More than a century separates the events of 981 and the pen of the chronicler who committed them to parchment.
The clue is in the ending of the phrase: "which exist to this day under Russia"This is the voice not of Vladimir's era, but of the compiler's. "Until this day" means until his, the chronicler's, day. Why such a disclaimer? Because in his time, the western lands were once again the subject of conflict, and it was important to emphasize that Rus' had long-standing rights to them, dating back to Vladimir himself.
Historian Alexey Shakhmatov went further and suspected that the entire account of the 981 campaign was a late recollection of the events of 1018 and 1031, when the Cherven cities were truly fought over. A beautiful symmetry served as a clue: exactly half a century separates 981 from 1031, when the cities were recaptured.
The hypothesis is elegant, but Soviet historian Vladimir Korolyuk, who examined this "case" in more detail than anyone else, reasonably objected. The year 981, in addition to the Poles, includes a campaign against the Vyatichi, while the year 992 includes a separate campaign against the White (Carpathian) Croats: "ide na horvaty"If the account of 981 were merely a mirror image of the wars of 1018 and 1031, these adjacent entries would hang in the void. But they form a coherent chronicle of conquests, meaning the campaign of 981 should be considered an independent event, not a later "echo." Its verbalization is another matter. The name "Lyakhs" and the names of cities bear the hand of a later chronicler, and they cannot be read as a direct document from the 10th century.
Historians debate: who did Vladimir fight against?
The suspicion that something was wrong with the date of 981 arose long before Korolyuk. Nikolai Karamzin had already suggested that the Croats and Dulebi were subjugated under Oleg, lost under Yaropolk, and then recaptured by Vladimir. But this reconstruction has a flaw. A conflict over Cherven is simply impossible before the mid-10th century: Kyiv hadn't yet subjugated even the Drevlians, its closest neighbors, and hadn't yet reached the distant borderlands.
Historian Mikhail Longinov took a different view, seeing in the record traces of two separate campaigns stitched together by the chronicler. And in this version, the "grads" turn out to be not Polish cities, but the centers of independent tribal principalities.
A hypothesis by the Polish researcher Stefan Kuczynski stands apart. He linked the "Lyakhs" with the Lendzians and proposed an entire Lendzian principality, tributaries of Rus'. He sought support from reliable sources: the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus mentioned a tribe of "Lenzanins" (the same name as the Lendzians) in the mid-10th century, and a certain Vladislav is listed among the Russian ambassadors in the Rus'-Byzantine treaty of 944—a name Kuczynski saw as a trace of Lendzian nobility in Kyivan service. Korolyuk was also dubious here: there is no direct evidence that the Lendzians paid tribute specifically to Kyiv, and the names and tribes in these texts are too shaky for such a construction.
The debate wasn't limited to Russian and Polish colleagues. The German historian Gotthold Rohde accused Korolyuk's reconstruction of "hypercriticism": he argued that it was improper to so freely rewrite the chronicle based on guesswork. This criticism, I admit, was not idle, as the reconstruction truly rests on a chain of assumptions. But Korolyuk responded that he wasn't rewriting, but rather peeling back layers, and that he relied not on instinct alone, but on converging evidence from other sources. Let's move on to those sources.
What the Arab merchant saw
It's useful to verify the chronicle with an outside source, one with no interest in it. In 966, Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, a merchant and traveler from Muslim Spain, traveled through the Slavic lands. His account has come down to us through the Arab geographer al-Bakri. He was an outsider, with no interest in Russo-Polish affairs. He reports that the Polish prince Mieszko's lands bordered Rus' to the east. And there's no mention of wars, raids, or a disputed area. It's just a border between two neighbors.
Ibrahim also gives the scale of the empires. Mieszko's country is the most extensive of the Slavic ones. And the possessions of the Czech Boleslav stretch "from the city of Fraga to the city of Craco", from Prague to Krakow. This detail will come in handy in a minute.
The fact is that the phrase from 981 also has a "Czech" explanation. Historians Gerard Labuda and Lubomír Havlík have suggested that the origin lies not in the Polish-Russian War, but in the Czech-Russian War, and that the "Poles" were added later. There's only one direct argument, and it's a weak one: the chronicle clearly distinguishes between Poles, Czechs, and Moravians, making it difficult for the chronicler to confuse them. The Czech state itself, judging by the Prague-Krakow line, extended precisely to the east, so geographically, Cerven isn't as far removed from it as it seems. Therefore, the "Czech" version isn't so much refuted as left unconfirmed.
And another silent witness. The early 12th-century Polish chronicler known as Gallus Anonymus says nothing about the events of 981. If Poland had been deprived of its original hometowns back then, the memory of it would hardly have been completely erased.
What the earth is silent about
Let me make it clear right away: archaeology isn't a verdict here, but rather a backdrop. It's impossible to prove or disprove a specific chronicle entry with a shovel. But it does shed some light.
Cherven is most often associated with a large settlement near the village of Cheremno in eastern Poland. It was a fortified center with mighty ramparts, crafts, and trade, a nexus worth holding onto. This land cannot be called "originally Polish," nor "originally Russian." Both sides converged here, and the cultural layer bears witness to this: West Slavic elements lie intermingled with East Slavic elements.
The authority of the first Polish princes, the Piasts, was tenuous on the eastern border. The Lendians and related groups, the Slavs, lived there, only partially drawn into Krakow's orbit. Therefore, the chronicle "their cities" It should be understood with caution: not “native Polish cities,” but the lands of the border Lendzian tribes, who only loosely gravitated toward Krakow and over which neither Poland nor Rus' really maintained control.
These cities subsequently changed hands repeatedly. They were captured by Bolesław the Brave in 1018, recaptured by Yaroslav in 1031, and later contested by the Galicia-Volhynia Principality. Such a mercurial state of affairs is in itself ill-suited to the idea of "ancestral" ownership, and maintaining the borderlands as someone's ancestral domain is untenable.
What really happened?
Let's put it all together. Back in 1952, Korolyuk proposed a reconstruction of the original text: "Ide Volodimer na Croats and Dulebs"So, there was a campaign, but, according to this version, it was aimed at the independent East Slavic tribal principalities, which Kyiv was then subjugating one after another. The name "Lyakhs" and the names of the cities were added by a later chronicler, already influenced by the battle for Cherven in the 11th century.
It's worth recalling the word "Lyakh" itself. In the early chronicle, it didn't refer to Poles in the modern sense, but to a broad community of West Slavic tribes. It's no coincidence that the Radimichs in the Tale of Bygone Years are called "of the Lyakh clan." The root of this name is the same as that of the Lendzian tribe. Only over time did "Lyakh" narrow its meaning to Poles. To invest the line from 981 with a modern national meaning is anachronistic.
What was Vladimir's true motive? Most likely, control of the road, not hostility toward his neighbor. The Kyiv-Krakow-Prague trade route, the very one Ibrahim wrote about, passed through the Cherven lands. The prince's other campaigns fit the same logic: against the Yatvingians for the routes to the Baltic, against the Volga Bulgars for the route to the East. Vladimir was gathering hubs of trade and power, and "Russian versus Polish" had simply nothing to do with it.
And one final detail. Vladimir's contemporary, the monk Jacob the Monk, listed his campaigns in his praise of the prince. The campaign "against the Poles" is not on this list. For an author contemporaneous with his time, such a story simply did not exist.
Let me emphasize: "Go against the Croats and Dulebes" is the most plausible of the reconstructions, not a proven fact. Rode was right about one thing: we are reconstructing the chronicle here from circumstantial evidence. But this version is consistent with all the independent testimonies, while the literal "to the Poles" agrees with almost none of them.
Where did this “eternal enmity” come from?
Now we can see how it all fits together. The 12th-century chronicler added the caveat "to this day." Contemporaries of the events—Ibrahim, Jacob the Monk, and the silent Gallus—knew no Russo-Polish war in the 10th century. Archaeology reveals a borderland, not someone's ancestral domain. The concept of "primordial antagonism" reveals no basis.
The main trap lies in the words. In the 10th century, there are no "Russians" or "Poles" as nations. There are the princely houses of Rurik and Piast, there are shifting tribal loyalties, there are disputed cities changing hands. The population of Cherven changed princes, but it still had no "nationality" to change. The category of national enmity is simply inapplicable to this era.
The legend was further elaborated later. First, the chronicler explained the long-standing Russian claims to the west. Then, historians of the 19th and early 20th centuries, both Russian and Polish, transformed this meager account into "the first clash between two peoples." The feud was attributed to her later, but it has nothing to do with Vladimir.
If we peel back the layers, what remains is the young Kyivan prince's campaign for a trade route and the subjugation of his own East Slavic borderlands. A typical border policy of the early Middle Ages. There's no eternal enemy here, but there's no point in looking for eternal friendship, either.
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