Russian Culture Lexicon

Начало книги

also called  Chronicle of Nestor  or  Kiev Chronicle , Russian  Povest vremennykh let (“Tale of Bygone Years”)

      medieval Kievan Rus historical work that gives a detailed account of the early history of the eastern Slavs to the second decade of the 12th century. The chronicle, compiled in Kiev about 1113, was based on materials taken from Byzantine chronicles, west and south Slavonic literary sources, official documents, and oral sagas; the earliest extant manuscript of it is dated 1377. While the authorship was traditionally ascribed to the monk Nestor, modern scholarship considers the chronicle a composite work.

▪ Russian monk

born c. 1056, Kiev [now in Ukraine]

died Oct. 27, 1113, Kiev

      a monk in Kievan Rus of the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev (from about 1074), author of several works of hagiography and an important historical chronicle.

      Nestor wrote the lives of Saints Boris and Gleb, the sons of St. Vladimir of Rus, who were murdered in 1015, and the life of St. Theodosius, abbot of the Monastery of the Caves (d. 1074). A tradition that was first recorded in the 13th century ascribes to him the authorship of the Povest vremennykh let (“Tale of Bygone Years”; The Russian Primary Chronicle (Russian Primary Chronicle, The)), the most important historical work of early medieval Rus. Modern scholarship, however, regards the chronicle as a composite work, written and revised in several stages, and inclines to the view that the basic (though not final) version of the document was compiled by Nestor about 1113. The chronicle, extant in several medieval manuscripts, the earliest dated 1377, was compiled in Kiev. It relates in detail the earliest history of the eastern Slavs down to the second decade of the 12th century.

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