The age of Kiev thus having been determined and officially recognised by UNESCO, in July 1979, the city council of Kiev began planning the event celebrating a 1500th anniversary. In December 1979, the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR adopted a resolution on the reconstruction and construction of social and cultural facilities, and restoration of historical and cultural monuments, to coincide with the celebrations. According to various versions of events that are difficult to verify, the leadership of the Soviet Union in Moscow was unhappy with the suggestion that the capital of one of its constituent republics was supposedly hundreds of years older that the Union's capital Moscow itself (first mentioned in documents in 1147; the city had celebrated its 800th anniversary in 1947). The back-and-forth negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, which according to Zghursky lasted two years in 1980 and 1981 and involved the exchange of "endless correspondence – memos, historical information, clarifications, etc.", revealed an ideological struggle rather than a scientific debate. Claims of some Kievan archaeologists that the earliest settlements at the site of modern Kiev might be as old as 3,000 years, proved to be too much of a stretch; the Muscovite
Politburo demanded evidence of Kiev as a
city (город), not just as a
settlement (поселение). Nevertheless, it could hardly be denied that evidence from written sources pointed to Kiev definitely existing as a city by the 9th century at the latest. In the end,
first secretary of the Ukrainian SSR
Volodymyr Shcherbytsky would have persuaded
USSR general secretary Leonid Brezhnev (himself also from Ukraine, and on good terms with Shcherbytsky) in a phone call to allow the plans for a 1500th anniversary to go ahead. Shcherbytsky commented: 'We will celebrate the 1500th anniversary during the lifetime of the current generation. And if the descendants decide that we were wrong, let them celebrate another anniversary.' Thus, in the run-up to the event, the Soviet authorities claimed that the year 1982 simultaneously coincided with the 60th anniversary of the formation of the
Soviet Union in 1922, as well as the alleged "1500th anniversary" of the legendary foundation of Kyiv by
Kyi, Shchek and Khoryv in AD 482. Various scholars and commentators found "482" an odd attribution, as no such date is mentioned in the
Primary Chronicle. Historian
Taras Kuzio said that 'the year 482 had no special significance'. There was speculation that the two anniversaries were merged for the sake of convenience by the Soviet regime, to emphasise the common origins of Ukraine and Russia, and step around their many conflicts. Archaeologist and historian
Petro Tolochko reasoned that the authorities seemed to be in a hurry to celebrate the 1500th anniversary, even though Kiev was in his view at most 1400 years old at that time. In 1981, historian
Omeljan Pritsak (
Harvard University) similarly wrote critically about the much-touted upcoming celebration, denying the claim that Kiev could have been founded in 482, as well as drawing attention to the ideological and political bias of the holiday. He suggested celebrating the
Christianization of Kievan Rus' instead. Moreover, Pritsak contended the celebration of the high-profile anniversary was also designed to distract Ukrainians from another tragic anniversary: the 50th anniversary of the
Holodomor, the deliberately caused famine in Ukraine in 1932–1933. == Event and legacy ==