The open Ruska Pravda of the 11th century is lying in front of us – it has a leather cover with a stamping and brass locks. The parchment, which turned yellow because of age, features accurate lines written in ustav, original miniatures, and ornaments created with ancient paints – egg tempera and gold leaf… This masterpiece of Old Rus’ book making smells of history: you are ready to believe that Old Rus’ princes used to leaf through this legal code. But it is not true. This book is a modern edition, a result of peculiar talent and incredible work of the Kyiv lawyer Yurii Khrapai, who recreated the handwritten Ruska Pravda, which has been preserved till this day in various versions of later lists.
Yurii Khrapai has been working on recreation of the monuments of Old Rus’ and West European book making for 25 years by now. In this period of time he has reproduced over a hundred of the authentic copies of separate pages of the ancient service and secular manuscripts, such as the Kyiv Psalter, Orshan Gospel, Lutsk Gospel, Siysky Gospel, as well as several complete manuscripts, like The Sermon of Law and Grace by Metropolitan Hilarion, The Tale of Igor’s Campaign, Story about the Life and Feat of Mykhailo of Chernihiv and his boyar Fedor, etc.
But Khrapai considers the handwritten copy of Ruska Pravda, which required from the re-writer a special diligence and mastery, as his greatest work. “I spent a year for consultations, studying and looking for the materials, and it took me three years to recreate it. I have consulted with academic lawyers, experts in book publishing, calligraphists, and experts in the field of Old Rus’ literature,” Khrapai explained to The Day. Currently professional lawyer and artist by calling Khrapai and a young graphic artist and calligraphist Yurii Antonov are working on recreation of the famous Reims Gospel of the 11th century.
The master of handwritten books is planning to create and present every year another copy of the Old Rus’ manuscripts. The artist explains that his aim is to preserve for the descendants and show the main manuscripts of Old Slavonic book making, many of which are kept in stores with no access, specifically abroad.
In your opinion, what is the phenomenon of Ruska Pravda? For it was universal and efficiently used for several centuries.
“Ruska Pravda is the first written legal code of Kyivan Rus’, which was compiled approximately in mid-11th century. At first there was the Short Edition, later – the Vast Edition, and after that the so-called Abridged Edition emerged. For me as a lawyer the primary sources are always very important. The primary sources are the legal acts, which we use to solve all kinds of problems. Ruska Pravda was the only primary source, the first document, based on which other legal norms of both Kyivan Rus’ and current states, like Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus, etc. were developed.
“Ruska Pravda was not thick; however, the development of the society was quite primitive, compared to ours. Naturally, it can be called the universal law, because it included the regulations of administrative, civil, criminal, and partially church law. However, there were also single legal regulations, which we acquired from Byzantine sources and which were used for implementing justice in the spiritual-religious sphere. These 140 articles or something of Ruska Pravda along with the norms of the Byzantine and church laws regulated the entire society’s life at that time.
“After I recreated Ruska Pravda using the ustav writing, I can say in an equivocal manner that I began to better understand the deep essence and processes that took place during the establishment and development of legal systems. Because, presumably a lot of the legal norms that are present in Ruska Pravda later transformed into modern legislation norms. Not that they were completely reproduced, but the main notions transformed into whole legal institutes. Let’s take such institute as exceeding the limit of self-defense. Ten separate norms refer to this question, although there was only one at that time: if a thief was caught red-handed, resisted and was killed as a result, nobody was held responsible for this. If he was tied up and rendered, and later murdered, the host of the house who allowed for murdering a disarmed criminal had to pay a great fine. This norm seems primitive now, but it was borrowed by the Lithuanian Statute, and the first and second ‘Sudebniks’ of Ivan the Terrible, as well as Sobornoye Ulozheniye of 1649 in Russian Empire, and further in Hetmanshchyna time, etc. Now this institute has transformed into more orderly norms.
“The inheritance law was also more primitive and reflected the needs of the feudal society. Ruska Pravda stipulates that when a free man or man-at-arms died and they did not have sons, their daughters inherited everything. If a dependent man who did not have sons died the whole legacy went to the prince.
“Such a legal notion as force majeure was also described in Ruska Pravda.”
What did the emerging of Ruska Pravda in the 11th century prove? How did it characterize the society of that time?
“The fact that a legal code emerged proves that the society of that time was well-developed and civilized to the utmost possible extent. The progress of the code consisted in regulating corporal punishments, relations connected with revenge, at the same time it had norms about large money fines, which gradually substituted the corporal punishments and execution.
“The Old Rus’ state used some Byzantine legal norms. At the same time the norms of the common law were in effect, i.e., the information about the trying and punishing for some crime in old times that was passed orally. But since many of them were outdated and did not meet the needs of the society of that time, there was a need to unite the most important regulations into a single legal code. However, the norms of Byzantine and church laws continued to exist along with Ruska Pravda even after that.”
Recently the second print-run of the book from The Day’s Library Series, The Power of the Soft Sign, or the Return of Rus’ Truth has been recently published. The book is dedicated to Kyivan Rus’, it became a kind of reaction to Russia’s attempts to appropriate the history of that time and proclaim itself by far the only heir of Kyivan Rus’, based on the similarity between the words “Rus’” and “Russian.”
“Only a small area around Kyiv was called Rus’. Practically that was the post property of the Kyiv prince. The Kyiv princes changed according to the age principle, i.e., the prince’s place was not taken by his oldest son, but, for example, his uncle or nephew, the oldest in the kin in this branch. The new prince moved to Kyiv then, and the territory called Rus’ became his post property. For example, neither Chernihiv, nor Pereiaslav princes said they were Rus’ princes. There was no Rus’ there. Only later the princes began to look for lands and went to the East. Gradually seizing the new lands, they mixed with the Hungarian-Finnish population. That was how Vladimir-Suzdal and Smolensk principalities were created. After Moscow became a powerful state, these lands had the name of the Moscow State, not Rus’ or Russian, until Peter the First implemented the notion ‘Russian Empire’ and Russia. So Ivan the Terrible was a Moscow tsar, like Alexei Mikhailovich, father of Peter the First, was a Moscow tsar.”
When history becomes an instrument of various manipulations, how can one preserve the true history?
“Only by frequent and objective presentations of this history. The more scientific and opinion-journalism works are dedicated to this topic, the more chances we stand that the historical truth won’t be lost or distorted for the future generations. Russia is now a really powerful world state, but of course there are no grounds to say that it is the only heir of Kyivan Rus’. It is not true. Theoretically Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian peoples have the same root, although the process was much more complicated. It seems to me that the major disparity is the lifestyle. Ukraine is typical of great distances, lack of centralized power, there have been no monarchy for long and all the hetmans were elected, so it was a kind of half-military democracy. That is why the mentality of the Ukrainian people is somewhat different that of Russian people’s, for example.”
When you became fond of recreating the masterpieces of book making of the time of Kyivan Rus’ you studied history in depth. What stereotypes and myths you had to leave behind after you obtained deeper integral knowledge?
“First, I left behind the stereotypes connected to some extent with the heroization of Old Rus’ figures. As a rule they are depicted as patriarchal and just princes. But when you study deeper the history of that time, you come to understanding that they all were product of that epoch, with absolutely different views of things, a different kind of worldviews and morals. And it also should be taken into account. Our worldview is not even close to theirs. We are living in a more or less peaceful time in a free society with a regulated life organization and rules. But at that time people were living under conditions of hostile tribes or princes’ internecine strife, although even then the slowing factor was the fear before the statesmen or the stronger people, as well as religious.”
Our state has the law-making tradition, which dates back practically to the 11th century: Ruska Pravda was a progressive document in its time. Why such a law-making disorder is taking place in Ukraine nowadays, in your opinion?
“Looking at our legal norms from the angle of sheer law, they are all harmonic and just. The question is about something different – how to implement the norms? If the state allows for neglecting the legal norms and their selective usage, we see the disorder like we have today. So the situation is based namely on the traditions of using the law. The legislation is just in itself. The legislation in Germany or France is almost the same, if we don’t take into account certain nuances and slight differences, like stipulation of certain punishment by the norms of the criminal law. Another question is how to use this law. If the law is used selectively, when simple people who became the victim of a crime cannot achieve justice either in law-enforcement bodies or in court, this is the problem not of legislation, but the law traditions and practice of law application in a concrete state.”
So the tradition of law application has not taken shape in Ukraine by this time?
“This is a living process. In the countries we call developed, which have European democracy, the traditions of establishing the law systems are much older than in our country. We used to have the Soviet Union, whose legislation and constitution of 1936 were very progressive, by the way, but a huge number of people were destroyed because of invented suspicions. The law does not have any relation here – that was the problem of law usage.
“Unfortunately, we have such a system now, when not the law, but various notion institutes are ruling. I.e., the power institutes or oligarchic structures have a possibility to operate the law. Therefore we cannot be speaking about equality before the law, because living people are standing behind the laws.”
What needs to be done to change the tradition of using the law? Won’t it evolve with time in a natural way, like it happened in the countries that are not post-Soviet ones?
“It seems to me this is an objective process. The sooner the civic society is created, the more we will be able to say about really just usage of law, because the society will not change its mentality all of a sudden, and politicians won’t be guided immediately by the norms of morals and law in the judicial activity, not one-moment interests. This is a long and complicated process.”
Why is it so important that our contemporaries and descendants knew and read the masterpieces of the Old Slavonic book publishing, what can this knowledge give to a modern man?
“A person feels immediately a huge sacral influence even on the level of looking at the illustrations of the Old Rus’ books. This is not contemporary printing industry, when hundreds thousands of books are published in huge print-runs. Previously it took more than one year to create one book. This is an incredible art, which united the art of rewriting, and making miniatures, and the cover etc. Since making a book was a long and laborious process, people put in it their souls and all accumulated knowledge, colossal energy, love, mastery, and talent.
“This is part of our culture, our spiritual and cultural legacy. Look at the gothic prints: they are harmonious and very strict, they are more routine and resemble one another. Our gothic ustavs and half-ustavs are more versatile, various methods were used in writing them. This also has an impact on the visual perception and in my opinion has partially influenced the formation of our mentality.
“The knowledge of one’s history is a very serious component of self-respect. People can understand and consider the fact that over a thousand years ago their ancestors had a civilization, and Kyiv in that time was significantly bigger than many European cities. Then the understanding comes that our current lagging behind in terms of economy and social politics, is simply a temporary phenomenon, and it can be corrected, simply we are at this specific historical stage.”
The Day’s FACT FILE
Yurii Khrapai was born in Rovenky, Luhansk oblast, in 1962. He graduated from the department of international relations and international law of the Kyiv Shevchenko National University. Since 1988 he has been a private lawyer, and in 1998 he became the managing partner of the law firm “Yurii Khrapai and Partners.” At the same time, since 1986, he has been working on recreation of Old Slavonic and West European manuscript book publishing, exact and artistic copies of the old manuscripts. Currently Khrapai is working on restoration of the Reims Gospel of the 11th century, as well as judiciary monuments, the manuscript lists of the Lithuanian Statute of 1528, “Sudebnik” of Ivan the Fourth, 1550. He takes part in various projects connected with the revival of the old writing.