Vladimir Monomakh is remembered not only for his sovereign deeds, but also for the texts he left behind

Vladimir Monomakh is remembered not only for his sovereign deeds, but also for the texts he left behind. In his "Instruction" he writes a good deal about his own life. With great pride the prince describes his military campaigns and his hunting, giving the two equal attention and setting them on the same level of importance.

It is the hunt that becomes a kind of advertising brochure of martial conduct for the feudal lords of Rus', concentrating the characteristic values of war and battle. For the Russians the hunt was what the tournament was for the Europeans, which was itself deemed the equal of actual combat.

Even then the significance of the result of military feats was put on a par with the effect of spectacle, propriety and canonical correctness in a martial ritual that had nothing to do with the battle itself. Thus it is showiness that commands greater interest and respect: death on an impossible mission becomes more attractive than a successful, well-judged and even large-scale military operation.

A case in point is the undisguised interest of the chroniclers in Prince Igor Svyatoslavich's presumptuous attempt to take the Principality of Tmutarakan with meagre forces, set against their indifference to the glorious campaign of the coalition of Kievan princes under Vsevolod the Big Nest against the Volga Bulgars.

I do not know what this vivid medieval regularity is called, but at times it seems to me that our own matrix of values differs little from the notions of the twelfth century.