[Article] The Struggle for Control over Kiev in 1235 and 1236

Статья // Canadian Slavonic Papers. — 1979. — Volume 21, Issue 1 — Pp. 28-44.
The purpose of this article is to investigate the nature of the power struggle which followed the sack of Kiev in the spring of 1235. The sequence of events in this conflict has not yet been ascertained or analysed. It is important that this be done because an investigation of this rivalry, as presented by the sources, dictates a different interpretation of the significance of these principalities to the one traditionally held by historians. It will be seen that after the fall of Kiev the authority of the Rostislavichi, the princes of Smolensk, collapsed. It was neither the Romanovichi of Volyn’ nor the Vsevolodovichi of Rostov-Suzdal', however, who replaced them as the most powerful family of princes in southern Rus’; this was done by the Ol'govichi of Chernigov.