Kyiv Again - Slavic Jerusalem

So it was back to Kyiv, once again, our third stint there on this trip, and our longest one. We saw ourselves heading back into the heat of things (read Euromaidan), though in hindsight our fears were very much exaggerated. The standoff between the government and the protestors seemed to have fizzled out into a stalemate. Victor Yanukovich looks pretty pleased with his newly-obtained Russian financial backing, and unwilling to invite further criticism by forcing out the protestors. The protestors, on the other hand, have no other option but to sit out, tight, the winter. Any escalation on their part plays right into the government's hand. On the Maidan the mood is daily becoming more benign than Bastille. Meanwhile, Yanukovich hopes every passing day will wear down his opponents' patience and resolve.

Correspondent's report aside, we were really in Kyiv to see the Slavic Jerusalem. Kyiv has a hallowed place in East Slavic history. It was the seat of the first major East Slavic polity - the fabled Kyivan Rus. At the height of its powers, it extended from the Dniester to the Volga. Rus has been a hotly contested historiographical heirloom in two ways. The first, the so-called Varangian Controversy, concerned its provenance. Did Varangian (Scandinavian) princes really found Rus or were they just the uppermost elite strata ruling over a largely indigenous political infrastructure? The second concerned its progeny. Which of Ukraine and Russia had a better claim to the mantle of Rus?

While Moscow took upon itself the more martial title of Third Rome, whose role was to protect Christianity, Kyiv saw itself as a new Jerusalem, the fount of Christianity in Slavdom. The conversion of Rus was ascribed to the Grand Prince Volodymyr (Ukrainized version of the Russian Vladimir). Legend (possibly apocryphal) has it that before settling on Orthodox Christianity Volodymyr also considered Judaism, Roman Catholicism and Islam. Judaism he rejected as the faith of a folk in exile, abandoned by God. Roman Catholicism he rejected as the choice of his ancestors. Islam he considered briefly, for he had eight hundred concubines and it condoned polygamy. But he loved a drink and that Islam forbade. Greek Orthodoxy he was persuaded by a philosopher to see as the truest pursuit of wisdom. A visit to a Constantinople church left him awestruck and eventually convinced him. Thus was Kyiv converted.

Above: from top to bottom, the entrance to the Upper Lavra, the Great Bell Tower, the recently rebuilt Assumption Cathedral (it was originally destroyed by the Nazis or Soviet partisans, depending on whose side you're on, or not on), the sloping road down to the Lower Lavra and the Holodomor Memorial, which commemorates the collectivization-induced famines in the dark 1930s.

A profusion of golden-domed churches also bestowed upon Kyiv another moniker - Constantinople  on the Dnieper. These awed us as much as it must have Volodymyr. First, the Pecherska Lavra (Monastery of the Caves) complex a fifteen minutes' walk south from Sherborne Hotel where we stayed. The Upper Lavra was large enough to be a small town in its own right, and what a splendid one it would be too. The Lower Lavra was where the caves were located. We took a little detour inside - a warren of subterranean candle-lit chambers linked by low narrow tunnels. Inside was interned the sarcophagi of revered monks long gone. Devotees frequented these tunnels, pausing to kiss each icon and sarcophagus at their feet. Mary felt a little spooked. And it would be if it weren't sitting under God's house.

The next day we took a walk around the Old Town - up Andrew's Descent to the historical district of Podil. St Andrew's Cathedral stood at the crown of the hillock which the street climbed. It marks the spot where the apostle St Andrew was said to have gazed on the Dnipro and prophesied that it would be the site of a city blessed by God. Andrew's Descent was home as well to a clutter of souvenir stores, which slowed our progress considerably. On the other side of Podil were the St Michael and St Sophia Cathedrals. We looked on St Michael's from a distance as the protestors made their encampment right before it. The compound of St Sophia was serene enough for us to enter. But dusk and cold hastened our walk around its multiple green domes.

Below: descending, St Andrew's Cathedral, St Sophia's and the venerated Bohdan Khmelnytski, with St Michael's in the background. Bohdan invited the Russians into Ukraine to help oust the Polish. The Russians have never quite left since.

The sumptuous magnificence in Kyiv was a fitting way to end our stint in Ukraine. It crowns the diversity that has infused both its past and present. Alas, it is a diversity not all Ukrainians have come to terms with. The portly Ukrainian elderly who denigrated a Roma bard on the Khotyn-bound marshrutka, the lanky chap clad in his national colours who raised his fist and bared his teeth at me - they were not enough to make us forget the countless instances of hospitality we've received from their other compatriots. Diversity embraces difference. It is an unredeemable shame that difference often does not embrace diversity.