"‘In the current context of the Russian-waged war in Ukraine, calls to decolonize the study of Eastern Europe and Eurasia abound. The search is on to shed the teleological framework that casts Russia’s early modern and modern imperial ambitions into the medieval past and onto the lands that comprise today’s Belarus and Ukraine. In The Ruling Families of Rus, Christian Raffensperger and Donald Ostrowski provocatively venture to displace some of the myths of Russia’s aggrandizement that have been projected onto a medieval past that belongs to many others. The authors destabilize claims of a continuous Riurikid dynasty often used to link the Kyivan past with late medieval Muscovy, and instead focus on families, which opens historical space for women and the numerous kniazi who lived their lives unaware of the national historiographical claims that would come to define modern visions of the East European medieval period. Tracing the stories of families and individuals from the ninth to the late sixteenth century, this book evidences the entanglement of peoples across Europe and Eurasia and shows readers how diversity of intention is a mark of both the present and the past. Raffensperger and Ostrowski take a brave step in replacing the popularized Russian myth of the Middle Ages with a history that emphasizes multiplicity and complexity of identities, relationships and choices."

Olenka Z. Pevny, University of Cambridge