Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor.
The main problem that worried the Catholic world in the first half of the thirteenth century was the relationship of the Roman See with the German Emperor Frederick II and the Portuguese King Sansho II.
This was the main topic of discussion at the First Council of Lyons, which took place in 1245.
It was important for Ukrainians because it was the first time that the Russian Archbishop Petro Akerovych was present.
He was less concerned with heated discussions about the content of the curses against the named rulers; the invited guest tried to educate the distinguished audience about the enormous threat posed to European civilization by the Eastern Horde.
From the Great Chronicle of Matthias of Paris, translated by Ivan Paslavsky, we learn about the information that Akerowicz first submitted to a special papal commission in November 1244 and then repeated at the Council in June of the following year.
And they are in many ways reminiscent of the events of today, when it comes to the Russian-Ukrainian war and the West’s attitude toward it.
In particular, the Russian envoy said that the Tatars “have already lured many people from all nations and religions to their side. They intend, however, to conquer the whole world, for they believe that by divine providence they are destined to ravage the whole world for 39 years, and they justify this by saying that just as God’s punishment once purified the world by the flood, so now the world will be purified by the total atonement of people that they are to make.”
Aren’t these the thoughts of Russian aggressors when they come to Ukrainian territory under the auspices of their church to “denationalize” and “demilitarize” it?
But then Petro Akerowicz went on to say something about the Horde that should have sharpened the attention of European Catholics: “They believe and assert that they will have another bloody clash with the Romans, by which they mean all the people of the Latin world; they fear miracles and that the prophecy of future retribution may change. If they win, they claim, they will successfully rule the whole world.”
Doesn’t the whole world hear threats of missile attacks on European capitals, as well as on Washington, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, from Russian TV channels every day?
However, the news of the danger to European civilization was then sidelined, as the representative of the Ukrainian Galicia-Volhynia state also mentioned this information: “They fully fulfill their treaties with those [peoples] who voluntarily submit to them and serve them; from them they choose selected warriors, whom they always put in front in battles.
Similarly, they select various artisans and craftsmen [from them].
But they do not spare those who rebel against them and hate their yoke, as well as those who are yet to be attacked.
Ambassadors are received in the Greek way, listened to, and dismissed [in peace].”
And this last phrase apparently became a kind of saving grace for the already cowardly West: instead of organizing immediate preparations to meet the future aggression of the eastern horde, Pope Innocent IV sent his envoy Giovanni Carpino to its capital with a proposal to the Khagan to convert his subordinate Tatars to Christianity and leave Europe alone.
After Petro Akerovych’s testimony about the Tatar danger, the First Council of Lyons decided in its articles to provide assistance to Rus-Ukraine, as evidenced by the 16th record of its resolutions.
However, no real steps were taken in this regard, as Europe hoped for a positive response from the Golden Horde.
It came only a year later, in which Kagan Güyük announced his refusal to accept Christianity and demanded that Europe submit to him “as the ruler of all the peoples of the world.”
Because allegedly, as the letter said, “by the power of God, all the lands, from where the sun rises to where it sets, are given to us.”
The rejection of this ultimatum meant that both the Pope and the European monarchs became enemies of the Golden Horde with all the consequences.
Cowardly Europe again tried to pacify the eastern horde: the following year, another pope’s envoy, Ascelinus of Lombard, met with one of its lords in Baiju near the Caspian Sea.
As a result, two Tatar ambassadors, Ayber and Sergis, sent ultimatum letters to Innocent IV.
When they arrived in Europe in 1248, they were completely shocked: The horde lords insisted that the Pope come to the capital of Karakoram to bow to the Khagan.
All Innocent IV could do was to ask the nomads to stop the killing of Christians in Eastern Europe.
Hoping for a Crusade against the horde promised at the First Council of Lyons, Prince Danylo Halytsky, after the Tatar khan confirmed his rights, began extensive defense construction on his territory, which was supposed to stop the horde’s march “to the last sea,” as it had programmed itself for the final conquest of the world.
However, Europe did not organize to defend its frontiers in the east, leaving the Rus’ state to its fate.
It only did so by recognizing Danylo Halytsky as the king of Rus.
So the latter, under the supervision of a Tatar inspector, was forced to destroy the defensive fortifications in front of the huge mass of the horde, because he could not resist it on the plain.
The horde made a last-ditch effort to break through the Carpathian passes, but was finally exhausted in local clashes with the resourceful local population, which skillfully used natural mountain obstacles that steppe nomads were not used to overcoming.
Thus, the bloodless horde turned back to the Caspian steppes with the remnants of its military potential, which for some time was able to collect tribute from the subdued Russian lands – after the victory of the Russo-Lithuanian armed forces at the Blue Waters in 1362, this regular duty was already applicable only to the Moscow principality.
By the way, it would pay various tributes to the Crimean horde until the reign of Peter the Great.
The Bolshevik Czar of Moscow, Lenin, frightened not only with unprecedented mass terror for the beginning of the democratic twentieth century, but he also began economic blackmail of Europe, which had been starving since the First World War, including cheap Ukrainian bread.
It was thanks to this that he managed to split the capitalist world when, after signing the Treaty of Genoa with agreement, the “powers that be,” like once-humbled princes, crawled to the Kremlin throne to have the bone torn from the mouths of the peoples enslaved by Moscow thrown to them.
Even overseas rulers could not resist the cheap raw materials from Moscow.
The taste of dumped Ukrainian bread tempted U.S. President Roosevelt even in the darkest days of 1933, when every grain could save hungry Ukrainian souls.
And the West went along with this regime, because for some reason it was only afraid of Hitler, with whom Stalin had previously shared Europe. Thus, with the help of the American Land-Lease and the Second Front, Moscow proclaimed itself the winner of World War II. It was only Churchill’s postwar Fulton speech that warned the capitalist world against the arcana that, in the tradition of their Horde predecessors, the newest Kremlin khans have learned to noose around the necks of naïve people.
It was not only the historical doom of the so-called communist regime that finally opened our eyes to its rottenness and inevitable decline, but also the firm hand of US President Ronald Reagan, who managed to turn the political and economic processes in the world around in such a way that the Kremlin khans now crawled to the West to beg for their future. The country, which is vast in territory, was happy to receive Bush’s “legs” to symbolize the end of the communist era.
However, Reagan’s successors were far from equal to him in terms of planetary thinking, because they did not have the same keen political sense and courage to make the necessary decisions. They were so touched by the victory of the supposedly democratic Yeltsin in Russia that they immediately offered the Russian Federation a place in the G8 and G20, and wanted to see it in NATO as well. They also agreed to give it Ukraine’s nuclear potential under security guarantees from Moscow.
Sadly, Ronald Reagan’s successors did not see the changes that had taken place in the horde’s mentality since the First Council of Lyons. Firstly, while then it seemed to be fulfilling its obligations, now it is the opposite, as Bismarck stated in the nineteenth century: agreements with it are not worth the paper they are signed on.
But it has changed since then. Lyon Cathedral and the West. If the 16th paragraph of the resolutions of the aforementioned assembly guaranteed the then Ukrainian state assistance against the horde, how was this realized? No way!
Didn’t this bad tradition work in 2014, when the West, as the guarantor of our territorial integrity and independent statehood, calmly watched as one of these “guarantors,” Moscow, torn away large areas of Ukraine. And no amount of statements by then-President Obama that he had done everything he could will convince anyone now of his determination at a crucial moment in human history.
There will be no excuse for Western leaders for their “wise” decision in the first days of Russia’s large-scale invasion to provide political protection to President Zelensky in exile, with a week-long wait for Ukraine’s complete surrender to follow. With plans, however, to provide Ukrainians with the means for guerrilla warfare against the Russian occupiers.
What about the West’s delay in providing timely and complete support for defensive operations, and the ongoing political bargaining over the supply of precision long-range weapons, primarily to protect Ukrainian skies and defeat sources of aggression in Russia? There is no need to talk about a six-month “war of mice and frogs”, as the ancient Greeks would confirm, in the US Congress over the allocation of 61 billion dollars to help Ukraine at a time when casualties among both our military and civilians are increasing!
Under such circumstances, the long-awaited decision of the NATO anniversary summit in Washington is limited to a reservation about Ukraine’s “irreversible” path to NATO, even though it is Ukraine that is fulfilling the functions of this military alliance with its own armed forces – defending the freedom and right to life of its citizens today, so that tomorrow such aggression does not affect the fate of other nations, including the countries that are currently members of this organization.
The NATO statement at the Washington summit, writes prominent Ukrainian American activist Askold Lozynski, was strong on Ukraine but lacked substance. What exactly does “irreversible” mean? They issued the following communication: “We fully support Ukraine’s right to choose its own security measures and decide its own future without external interference. Ukraine’s future is in NATO. Ukraine is becoming increasingly compatible and politically integrated with the Alliance. We welcome the concrete progress that Ukraine has made since the Vilnius Summit on the necessary democratic, economic and security reforms. As Ukraine continues this vital work, we will continue to support it on its irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership.”
So, once again, Ukraine was simply reminded of what it was promised at the First Council of Lyons in 1245. They are afraid to anger Moscow. of the heirs of the Golden Horde, looking them in the eye with a flattering look, as they once did to the Horde khans. And this inflames their passions for organizing new campaigns to the West, since their Cossacks have already marched through Berlin, marched on the Champs Elysees in Paris, and crossed the Alps with Suvorov…
Moreover, they can repeat all this, as they openly state! Unfortunately, this has not been understood in 32 countries, including on the shores of the Bosphorus, where the ideologues of the concept “Moscow is the Third Rome and there will be no Fourth Rome” have been looking for more than five hundred years.