The article examines the actions of grand prince Yuri Vsevolodovich of Vladimir on the river Sit’ and their descriptions in the early narrative of the chronicles about the invasion of Batu Khan. The aim of the study is to reconstruct the historical context in which prince Yuri and other rulers of Russian lands acted during the events of 1237–1241, and to reveal the attitude of the authors of chronicles and hagiographic works of the late 13th and early 14th centuries to the princes’ flight from the Tartars. The scholarly novelty of the research consists in the complex use of statistical and axiological methods. The author concludes that almost half of total number of Russian princes (18 out of 37) mentioned in the early narrative of the chronicles about the invasion either defi nitely escaped from the Tatars, or did so with a high probability. This allows us to believe the interpretation in the older version of the Novgorod First Chronicle, according to which Yuri Vsevolodovich also escaped from the Tatars and thus ended up on the River Sit’, where he was killed. Most likely, the princes’ flight itself was not a compromising circumstance in the eyes of their nearest descendants. Quite the contrary, the successful escape was perceived as God’s intercession and was extolled in every possible way. However, Yuri’s case was special: unlike the overwhelming majority of princes who fled, he perished. As a result, the author of the Laurentian Chronicle, who set out to write a eulogy to the grand prince, had to create a rather contradictory picture of events, according to which Yuri Vsevolodovich allegedly was not going to escape, but, on the contrary, he was preparing to withstand the enemy on the river Sit’. And he revealed himself not as an experienced and courageous warrior, but as a martyr who, like saints Boris and Gleb, was ready for sacrifi cial slaughter and, like “new Job”, to meekly face the trials that came upon him.

This study seeks to identify the origins and subsequent evolution of the “heroic” interpretation of princely conduct during the assault on Vladimir by Batu’s forces in February 1238, and to assess the credibility of that interpretation. Its object is the complex of accounts of Batu’s invasion preserved within Russian chronicles from the late thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, together with works of early domestic historiography of the second half of the eighteenth century. Analysis of these texts indicates that, in the earliest chronicle monuments, the princes were not represented as heroic resisters of the conquerors. The “heroic” reading that later became entrenched in historiography emerged from a subsequent reinterpretation of the Laurentian Chronicle’s narrative, which itself does not speak of any active struggle by the princes against the Tatars. Efforts to cast their actions in heroic terms begin to appear from the first third of the fifteenth century, finding their most vivid expression in the account of the First Sofia Chronicle. At each successive stage of rethinking this episode, the Vladimir princes were attributed ever more bellicose intentions toward the invaders. Within later chronicle compilations — up to and including the Nikon Chronicle of the first third of the sixteenth century — this approach came to predominate among learned compilers. The Nikon Chronicle’s interpretation, with only minor refinements, passed into early domestic historiography, shaping the works of V.N. Tatishchev, M.M. Shcherbatov, Catherine II, I.M. Stritter, and others. In this respect Shcherbatov’s History stands somewhat apart: while endorsing the “heroic” construal of princely conduct, he nonetheless reproached the princes for a “spirit of immoderate piety,” which, in his view, contributed to their refusal to “defend the Fatherland” and thus to defeat. This historiographical position, however, did not develop in subsequent generations: N.M. Karamzin, S.M. Solov’ev, and other nineteenth-century classics of Russian historiography continued to interpret the events surrounding the siege of Vladimir in accordance with the stance consolidated in the Nikon Chronicle.