Introduction

Abstract

Igor’s warriors galloped across the southern plains of the Rus’ lands in the twelfth century. Eight hundred years later, on the same great open landscape, millions of peasant conscripts trudged behind clanking, smoking, ponderous tanks. Igor’s brightly comparisoned horses would have found no grass to eat in the wasteland that modern armies left in their wake; indeed, the vast front between German and Soviet forces was littered with the corpses of horses ground up by the war machine. And yet, the foot soldiers of the Second World War were urged into battle with songs and banners and speeches that called on the very martial ideals that had inspired the Rus’ of the twelfth century. Images of medieval warriors beckoned from Soviet posters during the Second World War, and the tales of long-dead princes such as Alexander Nevskii and Ivan the Terrible were told again.

And my men of Kursk are famed as warriors. They were swaddled under trumpets.

They were brought up under helmets.

They were fed at lance point.

The roads are known to them.

The ravines are familiar to them.

Their bows are taut, their quivers are open, their sabers have been sharpened.

They race into the prairie like gray wolves, seeking honor for themselves and glory for their prince.

The Lay of Igor’s Campaign ¹