Thread by @rynkrynk

Today, July 28th, is a huuuge holiday for Orthodox Christians — it’s the Day of the baptism of Kyivan Rus’. Now, I’m not a historian, nor am I a scholar of religion, so apologies in advance if I fudge up some of the details, but this is what day is roughly about:

Up until the tenth century, most Slavs used to be pagans and worshipped a large number of fascinating deities such as Perun (the god of thunder), Veles and Yarilo (the god of the sun). However, the Kyivan Rus’ gradually came into the influence of the Byzantine empire. In 988,

the Great Prince Volodymyr of Kyiv officially adopted Christianity as the state religion. He was baptised in Chersonesus and then proceeded to baptise his family and all of Kyiv. According to legend, Volodymyr was quite picky when deciding what religion to convert to, and had

considered Islam, but then decided against it since he liked drinking so much. Anyway, he baptised all of Kyiv (and, by extension, all of the Kyiv Rus’) by standing on one of the hills overlooking the Dnipro river, proclaiming the water holy, and having everyone in the city

get into the river and get baptised. According to accounts, it wasn’t all that fun for everyone, since the people who didn’t want to convert to Christianity were basically shoved into the water, and the statues to the pagan gods were destroyed. But yeah, that’s how Orthodox

Christianity became the mainstream religion in all of Kyivan Rus’. Now, why is my story so important today? Well, Russia portrays itself as the protector and defender of Orthodox Christianity, so it’s especially ironic that they started the day with several missile strikes at

Kyiv — the very city from which Orthodox Christianity spread throughout the Slavic world.

And although Volodymyr was definitely not a super nice human being (that’s putting it mildly, I’d actually love a Game of Thrones-style show about him and his political shenanigans), his monument is one of Kyiv’s most beautiful landmarks.

Also, just to clarify, Volodymyr definitely existed, and he ruled the Rus’ from 980 to 1015. He also made Christianity the official religion, but it probably wasn’t the overnight shebang the ancient manuscripts make it out to be.