[Review] Christian Raffensperger, Reimagining Europe: Kievan Rus’ in the Medieval World (= Harvard Historical Studies, 177), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2012, 329 pp.

This book by Christian Raff ensperger is written in a very comprehensive form and suitable for a wider audience rather than only for scholars of Russian History.The work is focused on the main idea that the medieval Rus' in the 11 th and 12 th centuries was an organic part of the total European political space.This idea is illustrated by the author through a wide range of material, his study refers to the matrimonial ties of the Russian princely dynasty with the ruling families of Europe, regarding the capital of the Kievan Rus' as a center of European trade.He analyzes the features of diff erence and similarity in the transformations of the Christian tradition in Scandinavia and Rus', his main interests being obviously focused on the genealogical ties and dynastic names that most safely refl ected the Russian-European contacts of the epoch.Such an approach seems rather effi cient.Quite doubtless in my opinion is the author's concept about the Rus' being incorporated in the cultural and political con-1 The results of the project Eastern and Western Europe in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: historical and cultural commonalities, regional peculiarities and the dynamics of interaction, carried out within the framework of The Basic Research Program of the National Research University "Higher School of Economics" (Moscow) in 2012, are presented in this work.