The destruction of the city in the interpretation of the 13th-century East Slavic letopises

The study analyses the reports of the Laurentian Codex about the catastrophe that struck Kiev in 1230 and the destruction of Vladimir in 1238, as well as the report about the fire of Kholm in the Galician–Volhynian Chronicle. Although the causes of these three disasters were entirely different, the primary cause of the disasters was always identified as the shameful deeds of people. Indeed, the concept of the wrath of God, brought about by the sins of men, quite consistently formed the basis of all the East Slavic chroniclers’ reasoning about disasters in human history. The depiction of the events in Kiev in 1230 stands out among these accounts for its distinctly apocalyptic interpretation.