The Lost Kingdom of St. Vladimir: Crusading Mentality, Medieval Memory, and the Russia-Ukraine War

Abstract: Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has reawakened interest in the long-running historical, political, and cultural sources of the conflict, and produced a vast discourse from Russian, Ukrainian, Western, and other regional, national, and international actors. While such analyses often focus on Vladimir Putin’s perceived desire to rebuild the Soviet Union as it existed from 1922 to 1991, this article argues that his chief motivations, and the ultimate sources of his rhetoric, are drawn from much deeper medieval roots. It explores the premodern ancestries of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, Prince Vladimir the Great’s conversion to Orthodox Christianity in circa 988, and Russia’s deeply complicated relationship with the medieval crusades, especially in regard to the thirteenth-century Baltic expeditions and the heroic depiction of Prince Aleksandr Nevsky (1221–63) as a crusading defender against aggressive Western invaders. By demonstrating how the conflict between Russia and the West has long been perceived or cast in metaphors, rhetoric, and symbolism with explicit crusading origins, from the Baltic crusades to the Crimean War (1853–56) to the present-day struggle, the article offers a comparative perspective on medieval and modern historiography, illuminates the medieval origins of an ongoing modern global and geopolitical issue, and urges scholars to consider more complex frames of reference for both this war and the memory and usage of the crusades more generally.