The Christianization of Kievan Russia: thousandth anniversary

In 988, a thousand years ago, the people of Kiev waded into the Dnieper River, in obedience to a decision taken by their prince, Vladimir, and underwent mass baptism. This "was an event of great historical significance", writes Metropolitan Juvenaly, a high dignitary of the Russian Orthodox Church, in his contribution to this issue, "bringing as it did a major part of the population of eastern Europe into the family of Christian nations".

Vladimir's decision had an immediate bearing on the fortunes of his Kiev-based principality known as Rus', a grouping of east Slav tribes from which the Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian Slav peoples of the USSR would later emerge.In the short term, Rus' was enabled to assert its position vis-à-vis the Byzantine Empire and the other Christian States of Europe. But Vladimir's decision also had a more lasting influence on the later history and identity of the peoples who inherited its legacy. In the words of Pope John Paul II, head of the Roman Catholic Church, in an Apostolic Letter published on the occasion of the millennium of the baptism of Kievan Rus', "The elements of the Christian heritage have imbued the life and culture of those nations.... making room for a totally original form of European culture, indeed of human culture itself."

This issue of The UNESCO Courier is a contribution to a number of activities which Unesco is organizing to mark this anniversary, including a symposium on "the significance of the introduction of Christianity in Rus' for the development of European and world culture and civilization", which will be held at the Organization's Paris Headquarters from 28 to 30 June 1988.

We also pay tribute in this issue to three poets who all shared, in addition to talent, a hunger for freedom: an Englishman, Lord Byron, who was born 200 years ago ; a Frenchman, René Char, who died this year; and a Peruvian, César Vallejo, who died fifty years ago. Also commemorated in the following pages is an important act of liberation the abolition of slavery in Brazil 1 00 years ago. The granting of liberty by decree, by a stroke of the pen, was followed by a hard struggle to enjoy its fruits on the part of a black Brazilian community which is only today starting to discover its own identity and forms of expression.

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