My historical research gravely offended Putin. He wants revenge

Vladimir Putin attends an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson

What have I done to be placed on the sanctions list of the Russian Foreign Ministry, alongside several distinguished historians of eastern Europe?

My normal hunting ground (not the right word for a maritime historian) is the Mediterranean and the oceans beyond. But maybe Russia’s mandarins know that I am now writing about the Black Sea.

Since the reign of Peter the Great in the 18th century, Russia has seen the Black Sea as a vital gateway to the wider world. The Ottoman sultans blocked Russian attempts to reach warmer waters via Istanbul. Russian ships bound for intended conquests had to creak their way out of the Baltic, entering the Mediterranean at Gibraltar.

The search for Mediterranean harbours became a central theme of Russia’s foreign policy, and Putin has not lost sight of it. Witness the Russian naval base at Tartus in Syria, not far from the British Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus.

The inclusion of historians on the latest list of people who are persona non grata reflects Putin’s certainty that he is Russia’s best historian. But is he? Much turns on the question of the origins of Russia. Was the early medieval principality of Rus a Slavonic foundation, as Putin told Tucker Carlson, or was it founded by Viking warriors?

The eminent Oxford historian Dimitri Obolensky, himself descended from the Viking prince Rurik, was happy to recognise them as Scandinavian warriors and traders who carved out territory in Ukraine and Belarus. Towards the end of the ninth century, they established themselves around a pre-existing settlement at Kyiv, making it into the capital of a principality whose rulers eventually adopted eastern Orthodox Christianity.

This created a bond with the Byzantine Empire in Constantinople that was perpetuated through the long centuries of Ottoman rule over Istanbul and the Black Sea.

The Russian tsars dreamt of recovering Constantinople for Christendom, and under Catherine the Great they colonised Ukraine with Russian serfs, as well as with plenty of Greeks, who settled in newly-founded cities such as Odesa and Mariupol. The Scandinavian lords of Kyiv spoke a form of Swedish. Their names included Harald.

Not so, numerous Russian historians have insisted. In the Soviet period, they wrote the Swedes out of their early history. In their version of Marxism-Leninism, state-formation could only be achieved by the native population, mostly Slav; and these Slavs had supposedly lived under the rule of Slav princes, beginning with Kyi after whom Kyiv was apparently named.

The truth about the ethnic history of Ukraine is that the open spaces north of the Black Sea have permitted mobile populations to come and go: ancient Scythians, Turkic Khazars (whose leaders adopted Judaism), Mongol Tatars, Buddhist Kalmyks, Christian Cossacks – the list is virtually endless.

The idea that any single group has dominated these lands since time immemorial does not stand up. Modern Ukraine is a nation made up of people of varied origins whose sense of a common identity has only been strengthened by the Russian invasion.

Writing history well depends on using hard evidence. Personal preferences about what one wishes had happened in the past have had a corrosive effect on the study of history. Putin’s version of Russian history falls at the first hurdle.

David Abulafia is professor emeritus of history at the University of Cambridge

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