What then is the relationship of Russian history to the
Kievan period in Hrushevsky7s opinion? Just as Gaul, once a Roman province
and now modern-day France, borrowed much of its sociopolitical organization,
laws, and culture from Rome, so too did Moscow with regard to Kiev.
But Moscow was not a continuation, or a second stage in the historical process
begun in Kiev. Despite its numerous Kievan borrowings, Moscow's roots, according
to Hrushevsky, were embedded in the geographical, political, and
ethnic conditions peculiar to the northeast