Kyiv is much older than it was attributed to in the USSR (and it would be worth reviewing this and publishing the real numbers officially), but I know that you, my beloved city, will live many times longer!
Suddenly you didn’t know:
In 1982, the Soviet authorities held a magnificent celebration of “1500 years of Kyiv” — but in fact, archaeologists, led by Rybakov — a Russian comrade of our Boris Paton and the ideologist of the Soviet version of Kyivan Rus — knew that Kyiv was much older.
But officially recognizing this meant
1) recognizing that Kyiv is much older than Moscow
2) emphasizing the separateness of Ukrainian history from Russian.
