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Primary Chronicle

St Nestor the Chronicler, tr. Cross, 1930

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The earliest native sources for Russian history are the mediaeval annals. Practically all extant Russian chronicle texts include, regardless of their date and nature, a generally uniform account of the period extending from the traditional origins of Rus to the early twelfth century. This narrative is a literary expression of the civilization and the political system which prevailed while Kiev was the great national and intellectual centre of the Eastern Slavs, and is known as the Primary Chronicle, the Nachalnaya Letopis (Начальная Летопись). Until the nineteenth century, it was habitually attributed to the monk Nestor. Modern investigators have not only placed his authorship in doubt, but have also sought to establish by internal evidence that the Primary Chronicle, instead of being a homogeneous work, is a compilation from several chronicle texts of greater antiquity.

The complex of Russian annalistic literature thus has its roots in this relatively uniform text. In all surviving annalistic compilations, however, the existence of independent local tradition, and even of local records, is indicated by traces of information originating from other cities besides Kiev. As the domains controlled by scions of the Kiev ruling family became more independent, the practice of keeping annals extended even to the minor principalities. From the early twelfth century, local chronicles thus appear in every Russian centre of any prominence. Some of these, like the Chronicles of Tver, Pskov, and Novgorod, have been preserved, while others, which have disappeared as independent compositions, survive only as excerpted for the construction of later annalistic complexes. With the consolidation of Muscovite authority in the sixteenth century, the importance of local historical literature declined, and the regional chronicles gave way to extensive compilations which cover the totality of Russian historical evolution from the origins to the established supremacy of Moscow.

The Russian Primary Chronicle, formerly referred to as the Chronicle of Nestor but in modern Slavic critical literature most frequently termed The Tale of Bygone Years (Povest Vremennykh Let) from the title occurring at the beginning of the traditional text, thus covers the period which extends from the year 852, the conventional dawn of Russian history, to the second decade of the twelfth century. The Primary Chronicle will frequently be referred to in this study as the Povest. The most primitive text is preserved in two outstanding redactions, each of which presents a fairly distinct type of textual tradition. The first of these is the Laurentian redaction, so called because the colophon of the manuscript declares that it was copied between January 14 and March 20, 1377, by the monk Lawrence (Lavrentii) for Prince Dmitri Konstantinovich of Suzdal. The second is the Hypatian redaction, dating from the middle of the fifteenth century and copied probably at Pskov from a South-Russian original. It is named after the Hypatian Monastery at Kostroma, where it was discovered. Of these two manuscripts, the Laurentian belongs to the State Public Library at Leningrad, and the Hypatian to the Russian Academy of Sciences, in the same city.

The text of the Povest in the Laurentian redaction is notable for the fact that the narrative for the year 1110 is followed by this subscription:

In the hope of God’s grace, I Sylvester, prior of St Michael’s, wrote this Chronicle in the year 6624 (1116), during the reign of Prince Vladimir in Kiev, while I was presiding over St Michael’s Monastery. May whosoever reads this book remember me in his prayers.

The Hypatian redaction does not contain this colophon, but under the year 1110 supplements at some length the pious reflections contained in the Laurentian text and inspired by …. The Laurentian redaction, in distinction to the Hypatian, also includes the Testament of Prince Vladimir Monomakh (1053–1126), his letter to Oleg, Prince of Chernigov, and a prayer attributed to Vladimir.¹

While Peter the Great had directed in 1722 that all chronicle texts should be collected and copied, these documents were not subjected to any critical scrutiny until the nineteenth century. They were, in fact, unknown to western scholars prior to the publication by Gerhard Friedrich Müller, in the first volume of his Sammlung Russischer Geschichte (Leningrad, 1732), of excerpts translated from a chronicle text then in the possession of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. These selections aroused the curiosity of August Ludwig Schlözer, who arrived in Russia just as the publication of the Königsberg (Radziwill) chronicle text was begun (1761). The fruit of Schlözer’s preoccupation with the Russian chronicles was his Probe Russischer Annalen (Bremen and Göttingen, 1768), the first effort at an analysis of the annals and their contents. Though several other chronicles (mostly late texts) were printed before the end of the eighteenth century (the Sinodalny in 1781, the Nikonovski in 1767–1792, the Tipografski in 1784, the Akademicheski in 1786, the Lvovski in 1792, the Voskresenski in 1793, and the Sofiski Vremennik in 1795), no attempt was made to publish the Laurentian MS. until 1804. This labor was interrupted by the French invasion, in which perished such scanty presswork as was already complete (ten sheets). A second attempt resulted in the publication of thirteen sheets in 1824. A systematic national study of early source material was, however, undertaken only from 1828 forward, when the Imperial Academy of Sciences equipped and sent out an expedition to Northern Russia for the collection and description of literary monuments and documents preserved in local archives and libraries.

For the arrangement and publication of the materials gathered by this expedition, a permanent organ was created in 1834 and designated as the Archaeographical Commission in the Ministry of Public Instruction. A few years later, the Commission, which is a self-perpetuating body existing to the present day, proceeded to the publication of its most important series, the Full Collection of Russian Chronicles (Полное Собрание Русских Летописей), of which the initial volume (1846) was the first printed edition of the Laurentian text complete through the year 1305. A reprint of this text through the Sylvestrian colophon but with modified orthography was subsequently edited by Miklosich.² The exhaustion of its two reprints from the first edition of the Laurentian text of the Povest led the Commission to sponsor the preparation of a modern diplomatic text imitating the edition of the Hypatian MS. prepared in 1908 by Professor A. A. Shakhmatov for the Commission’s collection of annals. The resulting text of the Povest, edited by Professor E. F. Karski of Leningrad, was thus published in 1926, and it is upon this edition that the present translation is based. The Hypatian MS. was first printed complete in 1843 in the second volume of the Full Collection. A reprint of 1871 was superseded first by Shakhmatov’s second edition of 1908, and more recently by the third edition of 1923 (to the year 1146), prepared by the same scholar, who was until his death in 1920 the greatest modern student of Russian annalistic literature.

A reprint of the Hypatian text, with a Polish translation, is contained in Monumenta Poloniae Historica, I (Lemberg, 1864). The first translation of the Povest into a Western European language is that of Joseph Müller, Altrussische Geschichte nach Nestor (Berlin, 1812), followed by the French translation of L. Paris, La Chronique de Nestor (Paris, 1834). The latter was superseded by Louis Léger’s rendering under the title La Chronique dite de Nestor (Paris, 1884). A Czechish translation by K. Erben appeared in 1867 (Nestorův Letopis přeložil K. E., Prague), a revision of which by Professor Miloš Weingart of the University of Bratislava (Czechoslovakia) is now in preparation. A Danish translation by C. W. Smith is also available (Nestors Russiske Kronike oversåt og forklaret, Copenhagen, 1869). The present translation is the first English rendering of the Povest.

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