By Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. (Anthropology, UCLA)
MY GRANDPARENTS’ KYIV: FAMILY STORIES, REVOLUTION & THE SEARCH FOR HISTORY
Kyiv, the Capital of Ukraine, interests me because my grandparents lived there when the Russian Czar controlled the city. Their stories bring the city’s history into my family’s history—stories of rebellion, flight, survival, labor, wealth, and conflicting memories.
My grandfather MAYER KAPLAN became disgusted with Communism. Revolutionary organizers ordered him to join the Czar’s army, await a signal, and participate in killing imperial officers. The plan may have involved troops stationed in Siberia. Mayer refused. He and my grandmother escaped to France, then reached the United States. In New York City, they joined my granduncle BEN KAPLAN, a leader of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.
MARCUS LESSIN, my paternal grandfather, in an account my father shared with me, held a pistol to a Russian general’s back, marched him out to a balcony, and told him to order his men to lay down their arms. But the general yelled, Traitors. Kill them. Marcus shot the general dead, fled, hid with his wife Rosa in an attic, and finally got space in steerage aboard a ship to New York. Ben Kaplan, an executive of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers, sponsored them.
After my father died, I repeated his account of Marcus killing the officer at Dad’s officer at Dad’s “se’udat havra’ah” [gathering of relatives]. Dad’s brother and sister challenged me and my mother, who had also heard Dad’s story about Grandfather Marcus. They insisted Dad had invented the story. Which account reflected what happened? What did my father remember, embellish, or inherit? What did his siblings know? What did each storyteller want descendants to understand? History passes through the minds, interests, loyalties, fears, and memories of its tellers.
As an anthropologist, peace advocate, presenter of Zecharia Sitchin’s Anunnaki interpretation, and champion of WE THE PEOPLE, I examine history as a struggle between DOMINATION and PARTNERSHIP.
Domination dogma concentrates wealth, commands obedience, conquers territory, and makes people serve rulers.
Partnership preference builds communities, shares knowledge, protects people’s needs, and balances giving and taking.
The Anunnaki framework I develop contrasts the domination consciousness associated with the Anunnaki Royals from the Planet Nibiru–Enlil/Yahweh and Marduk/Zeus with the cooperative consciousness associated with Princess Ninmah.
The competition between the domination mindset and the cooperative partnership mindset defines a dimension, Giving and Taking, that strives in each epoch to integrate its challenges.
Kyiv’s history offers, on the one hand, a thousand years of domination-obsessed rulers taking power, armies destroying communities and fortifying the hills on which they dwelt. On the other hand, ordinary citizens of Kyiv, traders, craftspeople, boatmen, and laborers, lived along the banks of the Dnieper River, producing, transporting, and exchanging goods, buying and selling their wares, and demanding a voice in their future.
BEFORE 882 CE: THE DNIEPER RIVER BROUGHT TRADERS, SETTLERS & FORTRESS BUILDERS TO KIEV
The Dnieper River carved a route through eastern Europe’s forests and plains toward the Black Sea. Above the Dnieper’s western bank, steep hills offered protection and commanding views of river traffic. Ravines, forests, and marshes separated the heights. Settlers occupied the hilltops, built timber walls, dug defensive earthworks, and established communities above the river. Below them, merchants unloaded cargo, repaired boats, exchanged goods, and negotiated passage. The river connected northern Europe to Constantinople and the markets of the Byzantine Empire. Other routes carried goods eastward toward the Caspian Sea and the Islamic world.
The city’s founding tradition names three brothers—KYI, SHCHEK, and KHORYV—and their sister LYBID. As the settlements grew, princes and military commanders occupied fortified heights.
Traders, craftspeople, boatmen, and laborers lived and worked along the river, producing, transporting, and exchanging goods. Princes and military officers, who lived on and commanded the hilltop fortifications, controlled access to trade routes, collected revenue, and lived atop the hills.
The city’s founding tradition names three brothers—KYI, SHCHEK, and KHORYV—and their sister LYBID. As the settlements grew, a social division emerged. Princes and military commanders occupied fortified heights. Traders, craftspeople, boatmen, and laborers worked along the river. The people below produced, transported, and exchanged goods. Those who commanded the fortifications lived atop the heights, controlled access to trade routes, and collected revenue.
882–1054: PRINCES MADE KYIV A CAPITAL OF TRADE, RELIGION & POWER
Around 882, Prince OLEG established control over Kyiv, making it a political center of the expanding realm historians call KYIVAN RUS. The city commanded river routes linking northern settlements with Constantinople. Its rulers collected tribute, negotiated alliances, conducted wars, and organized trade. Merchants moved furs, wax, honey, textiles, metalwork, and other goods across long distances.
In 988, Prince Volodymyr adopted Byzantine Christianity and directed the Christianization of his realm. Religion became part of government. The clergy taught doctrine, conducted ceremonies, and strengthened the prince’s ties to Constantinople. Builders introduced monumental stone architecture. In 989, Volodymyr sponsored the CHURCH OF THE TITHES, Kyiv’s first major stone church. He dedicated a tenth of his revenues to its support. His son, YAROSLAV THE WISE, expanded the capital during the first half of the eleventh century. Workers constructed defensive ramparts reinforced with timber. Builders raised the GOLDEN GATE, creating a ceremonial entrance to the city.
SAINT SOPHIA CATHEDRAL rose within the fortified center. Its mosaics combined gold backgrounds, colored glass, religious figures, and Greek inscriptions. Craftsmen shaped materials, fired glass, laid brick, and assembled images that have survived for centuries. Kyiv became a center of government, religion, scholarship, trade, and craft production.
Wealth divided Kyiv’s people along Anunnaki status rankings. Princes occupied palaces. Bishops presided over churches. Merchants accumulated property. Artisans operated furnaces and workshops. Servants and dependent laborers lived in modest timber structures and earth-sheltered dwellings. The city’s buildings displayed the achievements of cooperation. Its social hierarchy reflected concentrated privilege.
Yaroslav promoted legal organization, learning, and dynastic alliances. The realm’s ruling families developed relationships with courts across Europe. But the inheritance system created rival claims to authority.
1054–1240: RIVAL PRINCES FOUGHT FOR KYIV—THEN MONGOL ARMIES DESTROYED IT
After Yaroslav’s death in 1054, competing branches of the ruling dynasty fought over territory and the right to govern Kyiv. The city’s wealth made it a prize. Rival princes assembled armies, negotiated alliances, seized fortifications, and displaced relatives. In 1169, Prince ANDREY BOGOLYUBSKY organized a coalition that captured and plundered Kyiv. In 1203, another assault devastated parts of the city. Dynastic warfare consumed resources and disrupted communities. Farmers supplied armies. Craftspeople repaired fortifications. Merchants faced interrupted trade. Families endured violence and displacement.
Then an army arrived from the east. In December 1240, Mongol forces under BATU KHAN attacked Kyiv. Siege weapons battered its defenses. Soldiers entered the city.
Buildings burned. Residents died beneath collapsing structures. The Church of the Tithes collapsed during the catastrophe. Saint Sophia survived, though the city suffered enormous losses. Kyiv lost much of its former political and commercial power. The struggle for domination had destroyed a city that generations of laborers, merchants, artists, and builders had created. Its survivors began rebuilding.
1240–1654: LITHUANIAN & POLISH RULERS GOVERNED KYIV AS MONASTERIES AND MERCHANTS SUSTAINED IT
Following the Mongol conquest, Kyiv remained inhabited, but its political importance declined. Power shifted among regional rulers. During the fourteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania gained control of Kyiv. In 1569, the Union of Lublin transferred the city to the Polish Crown within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Governors, nobles, military commanders, and religious institutions competed for influence. The old hilltop centers lost much of their former prominence. Commercial activity continued in PODIL, the district beside the river. Merchants traded. Craftspeople repaired tools and manufactured goods. Boatmen transported cargo. Religious communities maintained institutions.
Kyiv received Magdeburg municipal privileges in the late fifteenth century, granting a measure of urban self-government. The city’s religious and educational institutions also gained influence. The KYIV PECHERSK LAVRA, dating to the eleventh century, developed into a major Orthodox monastic center. Its underground passages, churches, burial chambers, and aboveground buildings attracted pilgrims and patrons.
In 1632, Metropolitan PETRO MOHYLA helped establish the KYIV-MOHYLA COLLEGIUM, a center of higher learning that grew from existing educational institutions. Teachers, students, clergy, and printers helped preserve and develop scholarship. The monasteries and schools demonstrated the power of organized learning. Their relationships with political and religious authorities also reflected the struggle over who could define acceptable belief.
Kyiv survived through its inhabitants’ labor and institutions.
1654–1811: KYIV ENTERED MOSCOW’S ORBIT AND BECAME A CITY OF IMPERIAL TRADE
The seventeenth century brought Cossack uprisings, wars, and shifting alliances. BOHDAN KHMELNYTSKY’s uprising in 1648 challenged Polish-Lithuanian authority. In 1654, the Cossack leadership agreed with the Tsardom of Russia at Pereiaslav. Subsequent wars and treaties strengthened Moscow’s control over Kyiv. The 1667 Truce of Andrusovo placed the city under Russian control, and the 1686 Eternal Peace confirmed it.
As the Russian Empire expanded, Kyiv became a center of administration, religion, the military, and commerce. The city connected imperial markets with Ukrainian agricultural regions. One of its commercial institutions was the KONTRAKTOVY FAIR, where merchants and property owners assembled to negotiate contracts and exchange goods. During fair season, wagons crowded the Podil streets. Traders bargained over grain, livestock, manufactured goods, land, and financial obligations. Farmers, teamsters, warehouse workers, boatmen, merchants, and financiers made the exchange possible. Imperial officials collected taxes and regulated commerce. Landowners controlled estates. Laborers carried goods and maintained roads. Trade connected communities while imperial authority enforced class distinctions.
1811–1917: FIRE REBUILT KIEV; THE CZARS RULED; WORKERS & REVOLUTIONARIES CHALLENGED POWER
In July 1811, a massive fire swept through PODIL, destroying much of Kyiv’s commercial district. Flames consumed wooden buildings, workshops, homes, and shops. Residents lost possessions and livelihoods. But reconstruction changed the city’s design. Planners replaced winding streets with a more regular grid. Builders erected new commercial structures and residences. In 1834, the imperial government established the UNIVERSITY OF SAINT VOLODYMYR, creating a major institution for scholarship and professional training. In 1853, the Nicholas Chain Bridge opened across the Dnieper, strengthening transportation connections.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, railways connected Kyiv with major imperial markets. Banks financed commerce. Sugar production and agricultural trade expanded. Khrushchatyk became the city’s principal commercial avenue. Hotels, banks, shops, theaters, and apartment buildings rose along the street. Trams carried passengers. The city acquired the institutions and infrastructure of an expanding industrial economy. The Russian government promoted its language and authority. Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, and activists defended their language and cultural institutions.
Jewish residents built businesses, supported religious and educational communities, and participated in the city’s economy. Imperial restrictions and antisemitic violence threatened their security. Kyiv experienced a major anti-Jewish pogrom in 1881 and another in 1905.
Workers faced long hours, low wages, dangerous conditions, and limited political rights. Revolutionary organizations challenged the monarchy. Social Democrats, Socialist Revolutionaries, labor organizers, and Ukrainian political movements proposed competing futures. Some demanded constitutional government. Others advocated socialism, national self-determination, or revolutionary overthrow. The 1905 Revolution brought demonstrations, strikes, political organizing, and repression. This was the world from which my grandparents’ stories emerged.
MAYER KAPLAN, my maternal grandfather, distributed anti-czarist literature in Moscow, but he refused to follow his handler’s order to enter the imperial army, go with it to Siberia, and, when the Bolsheviks gave the order, kill the Czarist officers. Instead, he and his wife, Esphere, migrated to France, and then to the U.S.
MARCUS LESSIN, my paternal grandfather, as I related in the introduction to this post, in the account my father shared with me, held a pistol to a Russian general’s back, marched him out to a balcony, and told him to order his men to lay down their arms. But the general yelled, Kill them. Marcus shot the general dead, fled, hid with his wife Rosa in an attic, and finally got a space in steerage aboard a ship to New York, sponsored by his relative Ben Kaplan, an executive of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers there. America.
The experiences of both my maternal and paternal grandparents show the choices people confronted under imperial rule. Some joined revolutionary movements. Some resisted through labor organization. Some emigrated. Others sought wealth and opportunity within the economic system they entered. All my grandparents carried their experiences across the Atlantic.
1917–1934: REVOLUTION TOPPLED THE CZAR; ARMIES FOUGHT FOR KIEV
In 1917, the Russian monarchy collapsed. Revolutionary organizations, soldiers, workers, and political leaders struggled to determine the empire’s future. In Kyiv, the UKRAINIAN CENTRAL RADA advanced the cause of Ukrainian self-government. The Ukrainian People’s Republic declared independence in January 1918. Bolshevik forces, Ukrainian national forces, German troops, Polish forces, and anti-Bolshevik armies fought over the city. Control changed repeatedly. Each army brought political demands, military occupation, and competing claims to legitimacy. Civilians endured shortages, violence, disrupted commerce, and uncertainty.
Bolshevik forces consolidated control in 1920. Ukraine became a Soviet republic and joined the Soviet Union in 1922. The Soviet government reorganized industry, agriculture, education, and political authority but the 1932–1933 famine, known as the HOLODOMOR, devastated Soviet Ukraine under Stalin’s policies of collectivization and grain procurement. In 1934, Kyiv replaced Kharkiv as the capital of Soviet Ukraine. Kyivy regained a central administrative role, now under Communist Party rule. A new state hierarchy commanded political life.
1934–1945: STALIN’S RULE, NAZI OCCUPATION & THE DESTRUCTION OF KIEV
Soviet authorities expanded industry and rebuilt government institutions. They pursued political purges, arrests, censorship, and the destruction of religious buildings.
Then Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. German troops occupied Kyiv on September 19, 1941. As Soviet forces withdrew, demolition charges left by Soviet security personnel exploded in the city center. Fires consumed much of KHRESHCHATYK. The city’s commercial heart burned. Days later, Nazi occupiers committed one of the largest massacres of Jews during the Holocaust. On September 29 and 30, 1941, German forces and their auxiliaries murdered nearly 34,000 Jews at BABYN YAR, a ravine outside the city center. The killing continued during the occupation. Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, Ukrainian nationalists, and other targeted people also died there. The massacre destroyed families, neighborhoods, and generations of Jewish cultural life.
The Kyiv Pechersk Lavra’s Dormition Cathedral was destroyed in November 1941. Soviet forces retook Kyiv in November 1943. By the end of the war, the city had suffered enormous losses in population, buildings, infrastructure, and cultural heritage.
1945–1991: SOVIET WORKERS REBUILT KYIV—AND CITIZENS DEMANDED INDEPENDENCE
After World War II, Soviet planners reconstructed KHRESHCHATYK. Workers cleared rubble, rebuilt roads, installed utilities, and erected monumental buildings. The reconstruction employed mobilized labor, including prisoners of war and other compelled workers. Broad avenues and imposing facades replaced much of the prewar streetscape. The city expanded as an industrial, scientific, educational, and administrative center. Factories produced machinery. Universities trained specialists. Engineers developed transportation and infrastructure. Families moved into new apartment districts. Kyiv’s residents created the labor and knowledge the modern city depended on. Yet the Communist Party remained the center of political decision-making. In 1986, the CHORNOBYL nuclear disaster exposed the dangers of secrecy and centralized decision-making. Kyiv lay roughly 100 kilometers south of the destroyed reactor. Public concern over the disaster, environmental damage, cultural rights, and political repression strengthened demands for reform.
As Soviet authority weakened, support for Ukrainian independence movements grew. On August 24, 1991, Ukraine’s parliament declared independence. On December 1, Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly endorsed independence in a national referendum. Kyiv became the capital of an independent Ukrainian state.
1991–2026: UKRAINIANS CLAIMED SELF-RULE AS WAR RETURNED TO KIEV
Independence transferred political authority from Moscow to Ukraine’s institutions. Citizens elected representatives, organized political parties, published newspapers, built businesses, and debated the country’s future. Economic transformation produced inequalities. Business magnates accumulated wealth and influence. Corruption weakened public confidence. Ukrainians organized mass demonstrations to demand political accountability. In 2004, the ORANGE REVOLUTION challenged a disputed presidential election. In 2013–2014, the EUROMAIDAN protests filled Kyiv’s Independence Square. Protesters demanded closer European integration and opposed government corruption and police violence. Deadly confrontations preceded President Viktor Yanukovych’s departure from power.
In 2014, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea, and war began in eastern Ukraine. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian forces advanced toward Kyiv. Ukrainian military units, territorial defenders, emergency workers, volunteers, and residents organized the city’s defense. The assault on the capital failed to capture it. Russian missile and drone attacks continued to threaten civilians and infrastructure during the ensuing war. Residents repaired damaged buildings, restored electricity, provided medical care, sheltered displaced families, and sustained community services.
Once again, Kyiv’s history displayed the conflict between domination and cooperation. Military conquest sought control over territory and political decisions. Civilian cooperation helped communities survive.
KYIV’S THOUSAND-YEAR LESSON: WHO CONTROLS THE CITY—RULERS OR THE PEOPLE WHO BUILD IT?
Kyiv began as settlements above a river.
Merchants established routes. Princes built fortresses. Craftspeople raised churches. Monks founded schools. Armies destroyed neighborhoods. Residents rebuilt them.
Lithuanian, Polish, Russian imperial, Soviet, and independent Ukrainian governments exercised authority over the city during different centuries.
The political systems changed. The struggle over power endured. DOMINATION concentrated authority through conquest, hereditary privilege, religious control, state coercion, and military force. PARTNERSHIP appeared in trade networks, mutual assistance, education, organized labor, civic movements, and collective reconstruction. Neither orientation belonged exclusively to one nationality, religion, class, or political party. People in every society chose how to use power.
My grandparents’ stories return me to that question. Mayer allegedly rejected orders to kill officers of the Czar. Marcus allegedly killed an officer and fled. Both stories end in America. One leads toward the garment workers’ movement. The other leads toward accumulated wealth. Their descendants disagree about what happened. The city they left still struggles over sovereignty, security, and the distribution of power.
Perhaps my sister’s investigations will uncover records that clarify our family’s history. Until then, I can compare the stories, investigate their setting, and examine what they reveal about the people who told them. History lives in documents, buildings, graves, laws, and the memories people pass to their children. Kyiv preserves all of them; its people continue writing the next chapter.
VIDEO & SOURCE NOTE
This article’s chronological and architectural narrative draws primarily on the documentary The Entire History of Kyiv in 23 Minutes, published by Живые Руины (2026). The account has been rewritten from the supplied English machine-translated captions, with additional historical context concerning imperial government, Jewish communities, revolutionary movements, Soviet rule, the Holocaust, Ukrainian independence, and Russia’s invasion. The family accounts concerning Mayer, Marcus, and Ben Kaplan come from the author’s recollections and family testimony.
SELECTED HISTORICAL REFERENCES
- Serhiy Bilenky, Imperial Urbanism in the Borderlands: Kyiv, 1800–1905 (2018).
- Michael F. Hamm, Kiev: A Portrait, 1800–1917 (1993).
- Historical Dictionary of Ukraine, entries concerning Kyiv and Ukrainian history.
- Babyn Yar historical and memorial archives.
KEYWORDS
Kiev history, Kyiv history, Ukrainian history, Kyivan Rus, Dnieper River, Kievan princes, Vladimir the Great, Yaroslav the Wise, Saint Sophia Cathedral, Mongol conquest, Lithuanian rule, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russian Empire, Czarist Russia, Jewish Kiev, Jewish emigration, Russian Revolution, Ukrainian independence, Soviet Ukraine, Joseph Stalin, Babyn Yar, Holocaust, Khreshchatyk, Ukrainian resistance, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mayer, Marcus, Ben Kaplan, International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, family history, oral history, historical memory, Anunnaki, Zecharia Sitchin, Ninmah, Enlil, Marduk, domination consciousness, partnership consciousness, cooperation, self-government, Sasha Alex Lessin
HASHTAGS
#KievHistory, #KyivHistory, #UkraineHistory, #KyivanRus, #DnieperRiver, #RussianEmpire, #CzaristRussia, #JewishHistory, #JewishImmigration, #FamilyHistory, #OralHistory, #HistoricalMemory, #RussianRevolution, #UkrainianIndependence, #BabynYar, #HolocaustHistory, #Khreshchatyk, #UkraineWar, #UkrainianResistance, #WorkersHistory, #LaborHistory, #ILGWU, #Anunnaki, #ZechariaSitchin, #Ninmah, #DominationVsPartnership, #PartnershipConsciousness, #WeThePeople, #SashaAlexLessin, #EnkiSpeaks
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