Elite Women in Pre-Mongol Chronicles

This paper examines Rus’ chronicles’ information about female political participation. Frequent omission of women’s given names in the chronicles is often interpreted as evidence that Rus princesses were less politically significant than Western and Byzantine elite women. An analysis of East Slavonic name usage offered below challenges this interpretation. The paper argues that the scarcity of information about women in the extant sources does not reflect the realities of pre-Mongol Rus, and that elite women in Rus were no less politically active than their counterparts in the rest of Europe.