The Tale of Bygone Years Was Compiled Three Times in 1110s Kyiv

When telling the story of how Kyivan Rus began, most books rely on a single chronicle. In Ukrainian, it is Повість минулих літ (Povist minulykh lit); in the old spelling, Повѣсть временныхъ лѣтъ. This article calls it The Tale of Bygone Years. Its Japanese translation was published under the title ロシア原初年代記 (The Russian Primary Chronicle), and other articles on this site have referred to it as 原初年代記 (the Primary Chronicle).

This article is about the book itself, not the events the chronicle recounts. The seizure of Kyiv in 882 and the baptism of 988 are covered in our article on Kyivan Rus through the 16th century and What Was Happening in Kyiv, from Heian-kyō to the Ōnin War.

The Opening Line States the Book’s Question

The chronicle opens with a single sentence that doubles as its title. Here is the opening of the critical edition published from the 19th into the early 20th century (based on the Hypatian Codex, 1908 edition):

Повѣсть временныхъ лѣтъ, черноризца Федосьєва манастыря Печерьскаго, ґкуду єсть пошла Руская земля … и хто в неи почалъ пѣрвѣє кнѣжити

Полное собрание русских летописей, vol. 2, “Ipatiev Chronicle” (1908). The spelling has been partly simplified.

This means: “The Tale of Bygone Years, by a monk of Feodosii’s Monastery of the Caves: from where the land of Rus took its origin, and who first began to rule there as prince” (this article’s own translation). In other words, the book names itself as one that asks where the land of Rus arose and who first ruled it.

In a note to his 1989 translation, the Ukrainian translator Leonid Makhnovets explains that the chronicle’s word земля (“land”) can mean a state, a territory, the people living in it, and at times even an army.

Who Compiled It, and When

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta, The Tale of Bygone Years was assembled in the early 12th century from compilations of chronicles that had until then been kept up in Kyiv and Novgorod. The compiler traditionally named is Nestor, a monk of the Kyiv Monastery of the Caves (c. 1056 – c. 1114). IEU states that most scholars hold the view that Nestor compiled it.

The book was then revised twice more within a few years. According to IEU, the three redactions were as follows.

The chronicle preserves words that Sylvestr added at the end of the second redaction. In the colophon quoted in Makhnovets’s preface, Sylvestr records that he “wrote this book of chronicles” while Prince Volodymyr ruled in Kyiv and he himself was hegumen of St. Michael’s Monastery, and asks readers to pray for him. Makhnovets notes that Nestor’s name disappears in this redaction.

How to divide the stages before Nestor differs among scholars. IEU lists earlier compilations from 1037, 1073, and 1079, while Makhnovets presents the view that a first compilation was made in Kyiv around 996–997. Both are theories reconstructed from the relationships among manuscripts that no longer survive.

The Years Are Counted from the “Creation of the World”

The chronicle’s years are not Anno Domini years. Each year’s entry begins with something like “In the year 6415.” This counts from the year the world was believed to have been created; to convert to the Christian era, subtract 5508. The “year 6624” in Sylvestr’s colophon is 1116 CE. The critical edition’s table of contents likewise gives the CE year alongside, as in “6415 [907].”

Where the Manuscripts Survive

According to IEU, no original manuscript survives. What can be read today are copies made in later periods. The main ones are as follows.

Of these, it is the Khlebnikov Codex whose opening line names “Nestor.” The 1908 critical edition adds a textual note stating that where the Hypatian Codex reads simply “of a monk,” the Khlebnikov Codex reads “of a monk named Nestor.”

According to Makhnovets’s 1989 preface, all three manuscripts were held in two libraries in what was then Leningrad (now St. Petersburg, Russia). Although the book was compiled in Kyiv, the Laurentian Codex was made for a prince of Suzdal and the Hypatian Codex was copied in the northern Rus lands, so the old manuscripts have ended up gathered in Russian libraries.

Traces of Old Ukrainian

In the Hypatian Codex, the third redaction of The Tale of Bygone Years is followed, in unbroken sequence, by the 12th-century Kyivan Chronicle and the 13th-century Galician-Volhynian Chronicle. IEU’s entry “Hypatian Chronicle” (updated 2025) states that, once northern scribal habits are stripped away, this codex shows numerous features of Old Ukrainian, though not systematically, and that it is the most important chronicle for the study of Old Ukrainian. It was also this Hypatian Codex that Makhnovets translated into modern Ukrainian.

How “Rus’” Is Written

The book opens with the story of Noah’s three sons dividing the world after the Flood. It goes on to describe the Slavic peoples spreading out to various lands, the tale of the Apostle Andrew traveling up the Dnipro River, planting a cross on the hills of Kyiv, and prophesying that a great city would arise there, and the story of the three brothers Kyi, Shchek, and Khoryv and their sister Lybid founding the town of Kyiv. IEU writes that the history of Kyiv and the Polianians who lived there is at the center of the narrative.

As “the Slavic peoples living in Rus’,” the chronicle lists the Polianians, Derevlianians, the people of Novgorod, the Polochanians, the Dregovichians, the Siverianians, the Buzhanians, and the Volhynians, and separately lists other, linguistically different peoples who paid tribute to Rus’ (per Makhnovets’s translation). The chronicle’s “Rus’” can be read as a unity of peoples and lands ruled by the princely house of Kyiv. IEU likewise states that the central idea of the book is the unity of the land and state of Rus’, symbolized by the Rurikid dynasty of Kyiv.

The chronicle goes on to relate the story of Rus’s first rulers being traced to an invitation extended to the Varangians (peoples from the north). How later ages have read this account has been tied up with the dispute over whose history Kyivan Rus represents. The theory of a single “Old Rus’ nationality,” formalized in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and Ukrainian historians’ rebuttal of it, are covered in our article on Kyivan Rus through the 16th century.

A Translation Whose Title Says “Russian”

According to IEU, the chronicle has been translated, beginning with a French translation in 1884, into Swedish, German, Romanian, Russian, English, Czech, Polish, and Ukrainian. The English translation (1953) was published under the title The Russian Primary Chronicle. In Ukrainian, besides Makhnovets’s translation, The Rus’ Chronicle (1989), there are also the Bryzhnets translation (1982) and the Yaremenko translation (1990).

The Japanese translation, led by Tetsuo Kunimoto, Iwao Yamaguchi, and Naoki Nakajo, was published as ロシア原初年代記 (“The Russian Primary Chronicle,” Nagoya University Press, 1987; reissued 2022). As with the English translation, its title contains the word “Russian.” We give the title as it was published. But the book’s contents are a chronicle compiled at a monastery in 12th-century Kyiv, centered on Kyiv and the people who lived there. Please do not take the word “Russian” in the title to mean that the book originated in a Russian town.