The Wars of Svyatoslav: Time and Memory

The paper gives an analysis of the temporal structure of three main historical sources about the Balkan campaigns of Prince Svyatoslav — “The Tale of Bygone Years” (beginning of the 12th century) and two Byzantine chronicles — “History” by Leo the Deacon (after 994) and “Synopsis of History” by John Skylitzes (second half of the 11th century). These testimonies, very different in composition, reflected different temporalities. The basic narrative of Byzantine “histories” and “The Tale of Bygone Years” is built in accordance with linear Christian time. At the same time, the complex structure of these sources also demonstrates other, nonlinear (cyclical) temporal logics that go back to epic narratives of various origins. The chronicle news about Svyatoslav represents epic “slavy” that have undergone literary processing and chronologization under the pen of the chronicler. The same applies to the heroic short stories and “ethnographic excursuses” widely used by Leo the Deacon when compiling his story about the wars with Svyatoslav. The chronological artifacts mentioned in the stories and excursuses dating back to these stories appear to be elements of a ritual context and cannot serve as an accurate dating indication. The heterogeneous temporality of the news about Svyatoslav’s campaigns, recorded in the Byzantine “histories” and “The Tale of Bygone Years”, makes the problem of reconstructing a consistent chronology of events in the positivist sense an insoluble task.