Vadym Aristov
Fellow 2023/2024
History
Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv
Volkswagen Stiftung
aristov3000@ukr.net
Bio
Vadym Aristov was born in Kyiv in 1987. He graduated from the National University of ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’ in 2010 with a Master's degree in History. In October 2014, he defended his PhD Thesis in History at the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, which focused on the methods of studying Old Ruthenian chronicles. Based on this thesis, he wrote his first book, which was published in Kyiv in 2018.
Since 2013, he has been working at the Center for Kyivan Rus Studies at the Institute of History of Ukraine, currently holding the position of Senior Research Fellow. Since 2012, he has also been teaching part-time at the Department of History of the National University of ‘Kyiv-Mohyla Academy’. His main courses include ‘Medieval History of Ukraine’, ‘History of Western Civilization: Middle Ages’, and ‘Halych-Volhynian Principality’. Since 2018, he has also held a part-time position as a Research Fellow at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine. In 2020, he became the secretary of the Center for Kyivan Rus Studies. Since 2021, he has been the managing editor of Ruthenica, a journal of medieval history and archaeology of Eastern Europe.
His research interests include the medieval history of Eastern Europe, focusing on the political history of Kyivan Rus, Old Ruthenian historical writing in the medieval context, early medieval ‘barbarian kingdoms’, intellectual history, and the history of ideas. Currently, he is working on a project about the formation of the Rurikids’ dynastic tradition in a comparative context.
The Making of the Rurikids: Historical Writing and Dynastic Traditions in Early Medieval Eastern Europe
The project examines practices of power sharing and the formation of dynastic memory and identity of the Rurikids, a ruling clan of Rus. The Rurikids’ history is analyzed in comparison to early medieval ruling elites of the “barbarian kingdoms”. Two key approaches are applied in this research. A study of Rus’ political history is inevitably a study of its historical narratives at the same time. This is all the more important that traditionally textual criticism of the Ruthenian chronicles and political history of Rus exist as autonomous disciplines instead of a mutually beneficial collaboration. The second approach is the shift from the traditional “institutional” view on Rus’ political history (still dominating the studies in the field) to a cultural and anthropological view. Political history of Rus in the 11th–13th centuries is regarded here in terms of accumulating of the ruling family’s experience, shaping of identity, and rituals of elite communication. The research involves two stages. At the first stage, a deconstruction of the ‘dynastic narrative’ of the Rurikids will be conducted. The second stage is the reconstruction of the process of formation of this ruling family and analysis of the key elements of its dynastic identity. The proposed study benefits from effective combination of such disciplines as textual criticism, narrative analysis, comparative history, political anthropology, and cultural history.