Here's what one can deduce from the Old Ukrainian
Chronicles.
(1) The Rumanians were not a politically significant
factor to the rulers of the Kyivan state in its
imperial phase (compared to the Poles, Hungarians et
al.) Reconstruction of the primary Chronicle layers
indicates that the "Vlach" information was inserted
by Abbot Sylvester (ca.1116), almost certainly in
connection with the events of the Danubian campaign
of that year (when Rus' contingents attempted to
support the cause of a Byzantine pretender). The
"Vlachs" were thus important to Kyiv only in that
context.
(2) The Kyivan Chroniclers of the later 12th century
were not interested in the Vlachs at all. What is
even more telling, neither were the various people
who
contributed to the Galician-Volynian Chronicle in
the 13th and early 14th cs. There is not a single
mention of Vlachs in any connection.
(3) The geography of the "Vlachs" provided by Nestor
and Sylvester, even though it purports to go back
hundreds of years, is indicative primarily of the
situation as they saw it in ca. 1113/1116. At that
time, there were apparently very few Vlachs in the
territories controlled by the Hungarian monarchy,
and the few who were there were not in a position of
social let alone political dominance. Danubian
Bulgaria (back under the umbrella of the Byzantine
monarchy) was a different story. The Vlachs shared
effective dominance there with the Slavonized
Bulgarians. Which is why, as stated above, Sylvester
saw fit to mention them.
The Old Ukrainian chroniclers knew nothing about the
Vlach groups scattered further south of the Danube.
But in their view, the core of the people resided in
Italy (Voloshska Zemlya). They considered Vlachs to
be descendants of the Old Imperial Romans. Curiously
enough, they also seemed to believe that it was the
Slavs, not the Vlachs who had absorbed the previous
populations of the area now (1113/6) comprised in
Hungary and Byzantine Bulgaria.
Now obviously not everything in the historical
reconstructions of the Old Ukrainian Chroniclers
passes muster. But their perspective as to the
situation in the early 12th c. tends to support the
position that mass Rumanian colonization of their
current territory is a relatively late phenomenon.
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