Eupaty Kolovrat’s revenge against Batu’s forces features prominently in “Tale of the Destruction of Riazan,” wherein the monk authors laud his bravery in confronting an army much larger than his improvised force and slaying senior Mongol personnel. The sequence reminded me of Olga’s revenge Derevlians from The Tale of Bygone Years. There are a number of key differences between the stories, though these converge on a vital commonality. For starters, Olga employs perfidy against the Derevlians, murdering unsuspecting Derevlians through live burial and burning bathhouses. By contrast, Eupaty engages the Mongols in a conventional battle. Both courses of action apparently startle their targets, though whereas the Derevlians seek mercy from Olga, Batu displays mercy toward Eupaty’s compatriots. Furthermore, while Olga ultimately triumphs against her enemies, Eupaty dies in battle. In both cases, revenge serves to highlight virtue: Olga’s acts reveal her cunning, while Eupaty’s reveal his courage. In this way, revenge appears as a valid means of realizing acceptable (if not righteous) urges.

What struck me as contradictory is how revenge represents an exception to the Orthodox monks’ typical treatment of violence. In other contemporary works, devout Christians such as Yaroslav, Theodosius, Boris, and Gleb do not partake in the violence ascribed to their pagan predecessors; the latter three even accept brutal acts against them as expressions of God’s will or a test of devotion. Even the preceding portion of “Tale of the Destruction of Riazan” advances the theme of Christians passively accepting God’s judgement of their sins. However, Eupaty is not portrayed poorly for abdicating these values in the context of avenging Riazan. I wonder how this narrow toleration of violence entered the early Russian imagination and how it would evolve over the following periods.