The Tale of Igor's Campaign
Old East Slavic heroic poem
The Tale of Igor's Campaign (Old East Slavic: Слово о пълкѹ Игоревѣ, romanized: Slovo o pŭlku Igorevě) is an anonymous epic poem written in the Old East Slavic language. The poem gives an account of a failed raid of Igor Svyatoslavich (d. 1202) against the Polovtsians of the Don River region. While some have disputed the authenticity of the poem, the current scholarly consensus is that the poem is authentic and dates to the Middle Ages (late 12th century).
The Tale of Igor's Campaign was adapted by Alexander Borodin as an opera and became one of the great classics of Russian theatre. Entitled Prince Igor, it was first performed in 1890.
Content
The story describes a failed raid made in the year 1185 by Igor Svyatoslavich, Prince of Novgorod-Seversk, on the Polovtsians—the name given to the nomadic Cumans in Rus' sources—living along the lower Don. Other Rus' historical figures are mentioned, including skald Boyan (The Bard), the princes Vseslav of Polotsk, Yaroslav Osmomysl of Halych, and Vsevolod the Big Nest of Suzdal. The author appeals to the warring Rus' princes and pleads for unity in the face of the constant threat from the Turkic East. Igor's campaign is recorded in the Kievan Chronicle (c.
“The Tale of Igor's Campaign” enters the record as old East Slavic heroic poem. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Tale, Igor's and Campaign can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“The Tale of Igor's Campaign” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Tale, Igor's and Campaign provides the most credible route into that argument.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q47504. VIAF identifies the subject as 182658803. The Library of Congress control number is n80076147. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1202, 1890 and 1185.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Tale of Igor's Campaign” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.