ABSTRACT
The Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians emerged as distinctive and separate nationalities in the course of some two hundred years that stretched from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Centered on the banks of the Dnieper River with its capital at Kiev, Kievan Rus engaged in trade between the forest and steppe zones of the vast Eurasian plain and between the Baltic Sea and Black Sea and the Byzantine empire with its capital at Constantinople. The major distinction between Orthodoxy and Catholicism was papal supremacy with the pope insisting on his right to rule the Church and to judge political leaders. Catholics believed that Christ was born without sin, whereas Orthodox believers argued that he was born with the frailties of human nature, including sin. During the time that the Russians suffered under the Mongol yoke, Catholicism transformed Europe. While the Ukrainians and Belorussians moved along a Westernizing path beginning in the thirteenth century, the Russians remained under Mongol control.
