STOLʹNYI GOROD ‘Capital City’ in Old Russian and Folklore Sources

Abstract

This article attempts to determine when one of the most popular epic formulas, stolʹnyi Kiev-grad ‘Kiev the capital city’ and its variants with the attribute stolʹnyi, emerged in the epic lyrics. The fact that the adjective stolʹnyi was rarely used in Old Russian literary monuments of the 11th–17th centuries suggests that the formula might have appeared only in the 17th century, in a literary work—The Legend of the Kievan Knights. It is suggested that this formula appeared in the 17th century due to the addition of Left-Bank Ukraine and Kiev to the Tsardom of Muscovy. The formula contains a reference to the political realities of the 9th–11th centuries, when Kiev was the major city of the Russian state. The attribution of the adjective stolʹnyi to Kiev in the 17th century was intended to emphasize the fact that Moscow inherited its political leadership from Kiev.