Education of Rus'. Formation of the state of ancient Rus', a brief history of the ancient Russian state
(story)
5th grade - § 37. In the city of the goddess Athena. Read, analyze documents, answer the questions in the paragraph.
Grade 6 – Take the test "Ancient Rus'"
Test work on the topic “Ancient Rus'”
Option 3.
Choose the correct answer
1. An ancient water trade route along whichIX- XIIcenturies there was trade between Northern Europe and Rus' with Byzantium -
1) the path “from the Varangians to the Arabs”
2) The Great Silk Road
3) The Great Volga Route
4) The path “from the Varangians to the Greeks”
2. The year is taken as the date of the baptism of Rus'
2) 945
4) 988
3. The first civil strife in Rus' arose
1) after the death of Svyatoslav
2) after the death of Vladimir the Saint
3) under Yaroslavich and Svyatopolk Izyaslavich
4) under the reign of Mstislav Vladimirovich
4.Russian princes considered the founder of their dynasty:
1) Askold
3) Dira
4) Cue
5. The people's assembly among the Eastern Slavs was called
1) veche
2) rope
3) circle
4) peace
3) Anthony
4) Hilarion
7. The oldest chronicle, which became the main historical source on the history of Ancient Rus' -
1) “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”
2) “Russian Truth”
3) “The Tale of Bygone Years”
4) “Svyatoslav’s Illustration”
1) Volga
2) Prykarpattya
3) Buga
4) Middle Dnieper
9. The first set of laws “Russian Truth” is associated with the name
1) Vladimir Monomakh
2) Yaroslav the Wise
3) Vladimir Svyatoslavich
4) Svyatoslav Igorevich
10. Which element is superfluous in the series “Dependent population of Ancient Rus'”?
1) stinks
2) purchase
3) serf
4) ryadovich
eleven. "And if a fireman is killed like a robber, and people are not looking for the killer, then the vire is paid by the rope where the murdered person was found.” Vira - This
1) payment in favor of the prince for the murder of a free person.
2) a fine to the relatives of the deceased
3) funds to find the killer
4) punishment of community members for the crime committed
12. What is the main feature of the political structure of Vladimir-Suzdal Rus'?
1) Involvement of foreigners in internal political affairs
2) Strong princely power
3) Contractual relations between the prince and the boyars
4) Unity of the princely family and absence of serious disputes
13. The archbishop was not only the head of the church, but also controlled the standards of weights and measures
1) in Chernigov
2) in Kyiv
3) in Novgorod
4) in Suzdal
14. Which principality bordered the kingdoms of Poland and Hungary?
1) Galicia-Volynskoye
2) Polotsk
3) Kyiv
4) Ryazanskoe
15. Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, Assumption Cathedral, Golden Gate - architectural monuments
1) Southwestern Rus'
2) Novgorod land
3) North-Eastern Rus'
4) Kievan Rus
Olga
1. X-X! centuries 3. X1-X2 centuries.
2. 1X-X centuries 4. 6-7 centuries
17. By what timethe first one appliesmention of Moscow?
1. 1X century 3. 12V
2. 14th century 4. X in
18 . According to the Tale of Bygone Years, Rurik in the second half of the 9th century ruled in:
1. Novgorod 3. Smolensk
2. Kyiv 4. Vladimir
19.Prince invited to Novgorod
1) judged
2) commanded the troops
3) controlled economic activities
4) was responsible for collecting taxes from the population
7th grade- Read §§ 9.10, know the basic concepts, answer the questions.
8th grade- § 16, § 17, compile a table “Directions of trips of Russian travelers”
Assignments for students in grades 5-8 during quarantine days 02/08 - 02/14
(Social science)
Grade 6 - The right to serve a person, § 17. Read, write down new concepts, answer questions.
8th grade -
Test on the history of the Middle Ages for grade 6
Option 2.
1. The empire that existed from 800 to 840 was created by:
a) Clovis
b) Pippin is short
c) Charlemagne
d) Urban 1
2.The uprising led by Jan Hus took place in
b) Poland
in Germany
d) France
3. The nickname “Spider” was received by:
a) Charlemagne
b) Louis IX
c) Charles VII
d) Louis XI
4. Parliament in France (States General) appeared in:
a) XI century b) XIV century c) XV century d) XIII century
5. The church tax was called:
a) tithe
b) indulgence
c) speculation
6. What is a guild?
a) the union of elders;
b) union of merchants;
c) an alliance of rulers.
7. City council building in a medieval city?
c) town hall
8. What is a fair?
a) large area;
b) annual auction;
c) place of tax collection.
2. Match:
|
date |
Event |
|
500g |
Division of the Christian Church into Western and Eastern |
|
863 |
The emergence of a state among the Franks |
|
1054 |
Creation of Slavic writing by Cyril and Methodius |
|
1096 -1291 |
Hundred Years' War |
|
1265 |
Convocation of the Estates General in France |
|
1302 |
The emergence of the English Parliament |
|
13337 -1453 |
Crusades |
3. Define the concepts:
2. Indulgence
3. Commune
4. Monarchy
4. Solve the following problem: were these people opponents or allies:
1. Inquisitors - Pope
2. Richelieu - French peasants
3. Jan Hus - Pope
2. Assignments for 8th grade students: study § 5, answer questions, know the map. Run the test.
Test on Russian history. 8th grade
1. In what month did the Patriotic War begin, in which the Russian army ultimately defeated Napoleon’s troops.
A. in June 1812 B. in July 1812 IN. in August 1812 G. in September 1812
2. Specify the date of the Battle of Borodino:
IN. September 1, 1812 G. December 25, 1812
3.
Indicate the location of the three-day “Battle of the Nations” in 1813, in which Napoleon’s troops were defeated:
A. near Berlin B. near Austerlitz IN. near Leipzig G. at Waterloo
4.
Select the name of the key point of defense of the left flank, which was commanded by N.I. Bagration in the Battle of Borodino:
A. Shevardinsky redoubt B. Raevsky battery (18 guns)
IN. earthen fortifications (flashes) near the village of Semenovskoye IN. Kurgan height
5.
Select the names associated with the partisan movement in Russia during the Patriotic War of 1812.
A. P.S. Nakhimov, V.A. Kornilov; B. D.V.Davydov, V.Kozhina;
IN. M.D. Skobelev, I.V. Gurko; G. A.V.Suvorov, F.F.Ushakov.
6.
Indicate the commander of the 3rd Russian Army at the beginning of the Patriotic War of 1812.
A. P.I.Bagration B. M.B.Barclay de Toly IN. M.I.Kutuzov G. A.P. Tormasov
7.
Match dates and events:
A. June 1815 1. formation of the Holy Alliance
entered Paris
A. c 1 d 2 b 4 a 3 B. d1 a 3 c 4 b 2 IN. a 4 b 3 c 2 d1 G. a 2 b 1 c 4 d 3
8.
Restore the chronological sequence of events in 1812.
1. Battle of Borodino; 2. connection of the 1st and 2nd Russian armies;
3. Tarutino maneuver; 4. crossing the Berezina
A. 1, 3, 2, 4 B. 2, 1, 3, 4 IN. 3, 2, 4,1 G. different answer
9.
Determine what the “Holy Alliance” was, created after the victory over Napoleon:
A. the unification of all supporters of reforms in Europe;
B. coalition of European monarchs;
IN. association of veterans of the war of 1812-1814;
G. association of Napoleon supporters.
10. Name the states that signed the Treaty of the Holy Alliance in 1815:
A. Russia, France, Spain; B. Russia, Austria, Prussia;
IN. Russia, Poland, Türkiye; G. Russia, England, Austria
11.
Read an excerpt from the report of the commander-in-chief of the Russian army. Indicate the name and date of the war during which the battle described took place:
“This day is one of the most famous in this bloody war, for the lost battle of Maloyaroslavets entailed the most disastrous consequences and would have opened the way for the enemy through our most grain-producing provinces.”
12. A village near Moscow, in which on September 1, 1812, M.I. Kutuzov, at a military council, decided to leave Moscow in order to preserve the army.
13. The name of the march-maneuver of Russian troops under the command of M.I. Kutuzov after leaving Moscow in the fall of 1812.
14. Determine which historical figure we are talking about:
Warlord. In the Battle of Borodino he commanded the troops of the left flank and took the main blow of Napoleon. At the height of the battle, he was seriously wounded and taken away from the battlefield. He died soon after.
15. A military formation created on a voluntary basis to assist the regular army.
Kievan Rus of the 9th-12th centuries is a huge feudal state stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea and from the Western Bug to the Volga. It was known to the whole world of that time: the kings of England, France, Hungary, Sweden were related to the Kyiv princes; the Byzantine emperor wrote a treatise “On the Rus coming to Constantinople”; Geographers from the countries of the Arab Caliphate asked captains and caravan bashes about distant Kyiv and entered into their books on world geography valuable information about the country of the Rus, about the routes to it and about its cities.
The era of Kievan Rus was a turning point for almost all the peoples of Eastern Europe. For many centuries, class society was geographically limited to a narrow coastal strip in the Black Sea region, where, after the mythological campaign of the Argonauts, Greek city-polises arose: Olbia, Chersonese, Bosporus, Tanais, Phanagoria and others. To the north of this strip stretched boundless steppes and endless forests, inhabited by hundreds of different tribes who lived at the stage of barbarian primitiveness. No wonder Cicero said that ancient cities are just “a patterned border on barbarian clothing.” If we use this metaphor, then the time of Kievan Rus, which emerged a thousand years after Cicero, turned out to be a time when barbaric Eastern Europe threw off its old clothes and donned new ones, where the “patterned border” of civilization became much wider.
Kievan Rus was preceded by a thousand years of slow life of scattered Slavic, Finno-Ugric and Latvian-Lithuanian tribes, who gradually and imperceptibly improved their economy and social structure in the vast expanses of the forest-steppe and forests of Eastern Europe.
In the 12th century, Kievan Rus reached such a high level of development that over time it laid the foundation for a dozen independent, sovereign feudal states similar to Western European kingdoms. The largest of them are the principalities of Vladimir, Ryazan, Kiev, Chernigov, Smolensk, Galicia-Volyn, Polotsk, and the feudal republics of Novgorod and Pskov. Already the enumeration of these new states of the 12th-14th centuries revives in our memory brilliant pages of the history of Russian culture: the Kiev chronicles and “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign”, Vladimir-Suzdal white-stone architecture with its carved patterns, Novgorod birch bark letters and treasures of the Sofia sacristy. The invasion of Batu and the Horde yoke bled Russian culture and violated the unity of the ancient Russian people, but the successes achieved during the era of Kievan Rus made it possible to maintain a healthy foundation of culture and overcome the consequences of the conquest.
The historical significance of Kievan Rus is clear from the fact that the chronicle of the life of the Kievan state, which was kept by several generations of chroniclers and completed by the famous Nestor, was copied in Russian cities for five centuries! During the difficult times of foreign rule, "The Tale of Bygone Years" was not only a memory of past power, but also an example of state unity, patriotic opposition to the thousand-mile strip of warlike steppe inhabitants.
At the end of the 15th century, when dozens of Russian principalities, overcoming feudal fragmentation, united around Moscow, the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III came up with a solemn ceremony of crowning the kingdom and ordered the production of the Monomakh cap, a new crown of the Russian kingdom, which was supposed to resurrect the memory of Kievan Rus, about the apogee of this state under the Kiev prince Vladimir Vsevolodich, the grandson of the Byzantine emperor Constantine Monomakh. Half a century later, the Tsar of All Rus' Ivan the Terrible once again recalled historical ties with Kievan Rus: the royal throne in the Assumption Cathedral of Moscow was placed under a carved tent, for which the sculptor made bas-reliefs depicting the deeds of the same Vladimir Monomakh. But, perhaps, the most important evidence of a living connection with Kievan Rus is Russian folk “antiques” - epics.
In the middle of the 19th century, in the distant north of Arkhangelsk, researchers discovered narrators of ancient epic chants, who knew from oral transmission both Vladimir Svyatoslavich (980-1015) and Vladimir Monomakh (1113-1125), whom they united in the generalized epic image of the “affectionate Prince Volodymyr” "Red Sun of Stolnokievsky". The heroic epics know those princes who defended the people from the Pecheneg and Polovtsian raids and “wiped a lot of sweat for the Russian land.” Many other princes, glorified by court chroniclers, did not survive in the people's memory. In the epics there is no name of Svyatoslav, whom the people of Kiev reproached for the fact that he was “looking for someone else’s land, but having taken advantage of his own”; there is no Yaroslav the Wise, the instigator of strife, who hired violent Varangians to fight with his own father; there is no Yuri Dolgoruky, who stormed Kyiv in the fight against his nephews, and there are no other princes who forgot all-Russian interests in the heat of bloody civil strife.
The historian B.D. Grekov, who created the first Marxist work on Kievan Rus, rightly called the epics an oral textbook of native history. This textbook not only tells about the past, but also selects the most important, progressive things, and glorifies those hero-symbols who signified the construction of a state, the defense of Rus' from an external enemy.
The peasants of Tsarist Russia, thousands of miles away from Kiev, knew about Kievan Rus and from generation to generation they passed on the solemn, hymn-like melodies of epics about Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, and the affairs of Rus' a thousand years ago.
The scientific study of Kievan Rus was not as harmonious and logical as the folk memory of those distant times. Historians of the 17th-18th centuries sought to connect the history of the Slavs with the destinies of other peoples who once lived in the southern half of Eastern Europe, but they had too little data to outline the history of the Scythians, Sarmatians and other peoples, casually mentioned by authors accessible to our first historiographers. As for the origin of the Slavs, here historians found themselves faced with a medieval idea drawn from the Bible: all nations descend from those “seventy-two languages” that were formed after God, angry with people, destroyed the “pillar of Babylon” and divided the people who built it into different peoples.
During the Bironovism, when it turned out to be very difficult to defend the Russian principle in anything, in St. Petersburg, among scientists invited from the German principalities, the idea was born of the Slavs borrowing statehood from the North German tribes. The Slavs of the 9th-10th centuries were recognized as “living in a bestial manner” (an expression from the chronicle), and the northern robber detachments of the Varangian-Normans, who were hired to serve various rulers and kept Northern Europe in fear, were declared the builders and creators of the state. Thus, under the pen of Siegfried Bayer, Gerard Miller and August Schloezer, the idea of Normanism was born, which is often called the Norman theory, although the entire sum of Normanistic statements over two centuries does not give the right not only to call Normanism a theory, but even a hypothesis, since there is no analysis of sources , nor a review of all known facts.
Normanism as an explanation of the origin of Russian statehood arose on the basis of a rather shameless a priori, a bias that used individual facts taken out of historical context and “forgot” about everything that contradicted the a priori idea. More than a hundred years ago, S. Gedeonov’s monumental study “Varyags and Rus'” was published, which showed the complete inconsistency and bias of the Norman theory, but Normanism continued to exist and flourish with the connivance of the Russian intelligentsia, prone to self-flagellation. The opponents of Normanism were completely equated with the Slavophiles, blaming them for all the mistakes of the Slavophiles and their naive understanding of reality.
In Bismarck's Germany, Normanism was the only direction recognized as truly scientific. Throughout the 20th century, Normanism increasingly revealed its political essence, being used as an anti-Russian, and then as an anti-Marxist doctrine. One fact is indicative: at the international congress of historians in Stockholm (the capital of the former land of the Varangians) in 1960, the leader of the Normanists, A. Stender-Petersen, stated in his speech that Normanism as a scientific construction died, since all its arguments were broken and refuted. However, instead of starting an objective study of the prehistory of Kievan Rus, the Danish scientist called... for the creation of neo-Normanism.
The main provisions of Normanism arose when both German and Russian science were still in their infancy, when historians had very vague ideas about the complex, centuries-long process of the birth of statehood. Neither the Slavic economic system nor the long evolution of social relations were known to scientists. The “export” of statehood from another country, carried out by two or three militant detachments, seemed then to be a natural form of the birth of a state.
Let us dwell on several contradictions between the facts and constructions of the Normanists.
1. Speaking about the creation of Kievan Rus by the Norman-Varangians, they usually cite as a parallel the founding of kingdoms by the Normans on the sea shores of Northern France, Lombardy, and Sicily. The Normans (Swedes, Danes, Norwegians) were excellent sailors and indeed conquered the coastal population, but one glance at the map of Europe is enough to realize the complete opposite of the situation in the ocean-Mediterranean lands and on the Great Russian Plain.
The northern squadrons took advantage of the surprise of a naval attack and short-term numerical superiority over the inhabitants of coastal cities.
In the east, the Varangians, in order to get to the Slavic lands, had to enter the Gulf of Finland, where their flotilla was visible from the shore (confirmed by the chronicle for 1240), and then they had a five-hundred-kilometer (!) journey along rivers and lakes against the flow of the Neva , Volkhova, Lovat. There could be no talk of any surprise.
Along the entire route, the Norman boats could be shot at by the local population from both banks. At the end of this path, the sailors faced two watersheds: the Baltic-Ladoga and the Baltic-Black Sea. It was necessary to put the ships on rollers and dry land, drag them to the crest of the watershed, and drag them 30–40 kilometers along the ground. The victorious sailors here became helpless and defenseless. Only after dragging their boats to Smolensk did they find themselves on a direct route to Kyiv (about 500 kilometers remained), but even here, on the Dnieper, they were easily identifiable and vulnerable.
Nestor the chronicler. Sculpture by M. Antokolsky
The Varangians appeared in Eastern Europe when the Kievan state had already taken shape, and for their trade expeditions to the East they used a long roundabout route through Meta, Sheksna and the Upper Volga, which skirted the possessions of Kievan Rus from the northeast. Hoards of coins and burial mounds of Varangians are known along this peripheral route.
2. The sphere of real penetration of Varangian-Swedish detachments into the Slavic-Finnish lands is limited to three northern lakes: Peipus, Ilmen and Belozero.
Clashes with the local population occurred with varying degrees of success: either the “Varangian finders” “coming from overseas” managed to take tribute from the Slavs and Chuds, or the local tribes “expelled the Varangians overseas and did not give them tribute.” For the only time in the entire Middle Ages, the leader of the Varangian detachment, together with the northern Slavs, managed to fraudulently, pretending to be the owner of a merchant caravan, seize power in Kyiv for some time, killing the legitimate prince. This leader, Oleg, declared the creator and builder of the state of Rus' (his warriors began to be called “Rus” only after they arrived in Russian Kiev), is reliably known to us only from the campaign against Byzantium in 907 and the additional treaty of 911. In addition to the Varangians, the successful campaign included troops from nine Slavic tribes and two Finno-Ugric tribes (Mari and Estonians).
Oleg’s behavior after taking the indemnity from the Greeks is extremely strange and does not fit in any way with the appearance of the builder of a power - he simply disappeared from the Russian horizon: immediately after the campaign, “Oleg went to Novugorod and from there to Ladoga. The friends say that I am going to him across the sea and will bite him in the foot of the serpent, and from that you will die.” Two hundred years later, Oleg’s grave was shown either near Kiev or in Ladoga. This imaginary founder of the state did not leave any descendants in Rus'.
3. The Varangians were used in Rus' in the 10th-11th centuries as a mercenary military force. Prince Igor in 942 “sent Varangians across the sea, inviting them to go to war against the Greeks.” The Varangians were hired by Svyatoslav and his son Vladimir. When the mercenaries made too arrogant demands to Vladimir in 980, the prince sent them outside of Rus', warning the Byzantine emperor: do not keep the Varangians in your city, so that they do not cause you trouble, as was the case here. But disperse them, and “don’t let a single one in” here (to Rus').
The Varangians were hired for dirty murders: the Varangians stabbed to death Prince Yaropolk in the city of Rodna; The Varangians killed Prince Gleb. The Russian Truth was directed against the outrages of the mercenary Varangians in Novgorod, putting the offending Varangian in a disadvantageous position compared to the offended Novgorodian: the court took the Novgorodian at his word, and the foreigner had to present two witnesses.
4. If we recognize the Varangians as the creators of statehood for the Slavs “living in a beastly way,” it will be extremely difficult to explain the fact that the state language of Rus' was not Swedish, but Russian. Treaties with Byzantium in the 10th century were concluded by the embassy of the Kiev prince, and although the embassy included Varangians of Russian service, they were written only in two languages - Greek and Russian, without any traces of Swedish terminology. Moreover, in Swedish medieval documents, the collection of tribute was designated by the word “poludye” (poluta), borrowed by the Varangians from the Russian language, which undoubtedly indicates the primacy of such an early state action among the Slavs as the collection of polyudye.
By the way, about the “bestial way of life” of the Slavs. The chronicler Nestor, who lived in the era of Monomakh, applied these words not to his contemporaries, but to the Slavs of a much earlier time (before the invasion of the Khazars in the 7th century), and he did not speak about all the Slavs, but only about the forest tribes, who actually preserved many primitive the devil in your life. The chronicler contrasted these foresters with “wise and meaningful glades”, who were the real creators of their state.
5. When checking the biased arguments selected by the Normanists, one should pay attention to the fact that bias appeared in our very sources, going back to Nestor’s “Tale of Bygone Years.”
As A. A. Shakhmatov, an excellent expert on Russian chronicles, proved in his time, Nestor’s historical work (around 1113) underwent two revisions, and both times the revision was carried out by a hand hostile to Nestor. In order to correctly understand the spirit of these alterations, we should familiarize ourselves with the situation in Kyiv at the turn of the 11th-12th centuries.
In 1093, Grand Duke Vsevolod, the youngest son of Yaroslav the Wise, died. The last years of his reign, Russia was actually ruled by the son of the sick Vsevolod, Vladimir Monomakh. A good commander, a reasonable ruler, an educated writer, Monomakh hoped to keep the Kiev throne in his hands after the death of his father, but the Kiev boyars, dissatisfied with Vladimir’s reliance on their tiuns and military servants, invited a representative of the senior branch of the Yaroslavichs - Prince Svyatopolk Izyaslavich. A twenty-year rivalry between two cousins, Svyatopolk and Vladimir, began. Nestor was the court chronicler of Svyatopolk and wrote in the Kiev-Pechersk Monastery.
When Svyatopolk died in 1113, the Kiev boyars, in the midst of a popular uprising, invited (bypassing the princely dynastic seniority) Vladimir Monomakh to the grand-ducal table. Having become the Grand Duke of Kyiv by election, Monomakh took up the state chronicle of Nestor; it was removed from the Pechersky Monastery and transferred to the court monastery of Vladimir Monomakh - Vydubitsky, where Abbot Sylvester took up its alteration, leaving his entry in the chronicle under the year 1116.
Obviously, the rework did not satisfy Monomakh, and he entrusted, as Shakhmatov rightly believed, the final finishing of the history of Rus' to his eldest son Mstislav, which was completed around 1118.
The reworking of Nestor’s work was carried out in two directions: firstly, the current part of the chronicle, which described the affairs of Svyatopolk and the events of recent decades, was edited in the spirit of Monomakh, and secondly, the introductory historical part of the “Tale of Bygone Years” was thoroughly revised. Nestor was a Kyivian resident and based his research on issues related to the Slavic south, Kiev and the Polyana-Russian Dnieper region, delving into the 5th-6th centuries AD. Its last, most decisive editor was Prince Mstislav, the grandson of the English king, the son-in-law of the Swedish king, raised by the Novgorod boyars from adolescence (and who married a Novgorod boyar for his second marriage). For him, epic legends about the calling of princes were a familiar plot applied to the history of various northern kingdoms. For him, Novgorod and the Varangian North were a natural living environment, and the Kiev boyars, who did not recognize his father for twenty years, were a hostile force.
Remaking Russian history in his own way, Prince Mstislav artificially pushed Novgorod into first place, overshadowing Kiev, wrongfully moved the birth of Russian statehood far to the north and wove Varangian conquerors and Varangian organizers into the narrative. In bringing to Russian history the legend about the voluntary calling of the Varangians by the Slavic-Finnish tribes of the North (at the time when “clan after clan rose”) one cannot help but see an echo of the events of 1113, when Mstislav’s father Vladimir Monomakh was invited to Kiev from another land during the uprising and mutiny.
The Norman editor distorted a lot in Nestor’s text and introduced many crude insertions into his “Tale” that were dissonant with the original text. This is how a genealogical absurdity arose, and Prince Igor the Old (whom the author of the mid-11th century considered the ancestor of the Kiev dynasty) turned into the son of Rurik, brought as an infant to Kiev, where his “father” had never been. This is how a suspicious list of Slavic tribes appeared in the chronicle, allegedly conquered by Oleg, a list with a suspicious chronology. This is how the absurd identification of the Varangians with Russia arose, which meant nothing else except that if the Varangians found themselves in the capital of Rus', in Kiev, if they entered the Russian service, then they were considered Rus and included in the people of the Russian state.
At present, historical science cannot be content with phrases separately extracted from sources and with an arbitrary, biased interpretation of them. A broad system is needed, based, firstly, on a thorough analysis of all types of sources, and secondly, on a historical synthesis of all the data obtained. In addition, an incomparably larger chronological range of research is absolutely necessary: if for a primitive understanding of the process of the birth of statehood as the will of the warrior class one could be content with the chronologized part of the chronicle (which began the history of Russia from the 850-860s), then for Marxist-Leninist science it is necessary to become familiar with a long, thousand-year process of maturation of the primitive communal system and its natural transition to class (slave or feudal) relations, independent of the presence or absence of third-party predatory raids.
Origin and ancient destinies of the Slavs
In general form, the position of the Normanists comes down to two theses: firstly, Slavic statehood was created, in their opinion, not by the Slavs, but by European Varangians; secondly, the birth of Slavic statehood took place not in the Kiev forest-steppe South, but in the swampy and barren Novgorod North.
The fallacy of the first thesis is proven, first of all, by the analysis of written sources of the 11th-12th centuries and the identification of a clearly defined bias in one of the areas of editorial work on “The Tale of Bygone Years” (A. A. Shakhmatov). In addition, checking the degree of reliability of the pro-Varangian tendency can be carried out using the entire amount of materials outlining the long process of development of Slavic primitiveness, which led to the creation of Kievan Rus.
The second thesis about the more progressive development of the North compared to the South can easily be verified using the same amount of objective materials about the evolution of the economy, social relations, the relationship between the pace of social development in different environmental conditions and, finally, about the specific connections of different parts of the vast Slavic world with other peoples and states of antiquity.
For both tests, we equally need to know what territory was occupied by Slavic tribes in pre-state times, how and at what time the area of Slavic settlement changed. Having determined this, we will be able to attract abundant archaeological materials that will outline for us common features, local differences and the level of the most advanced regions, where Slavic statehood should have naturally arisen (and arose) first.
In a word, the first question, without the solution of which we cannot begin to analyze the process of transformation of a primitive society into a class one, is the question of the origin of the Slavs in its geographical, territorial aspect; where did the “First Slavs” live, what peoples were their neighbors, what were the natural conditions, what paths did the further settlement of the Slavic tribes take, and what new conditions did the Slavic colonists find themselves in?
The Slavic peoples belong to the ancient Indo-European unity, including such peoples as Germanic, Baltic (Lithuanian-Latvian), Romanesque, Greek, Celtic, Iranian, Indian ("Aryan") and others, spread in ancient times over a vast area from the Atlantic Ocean to Indian and from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Four to five thousand years ago, the Indo-Europeans had not yet occupied all of Europe and had not yet populated Hindustan; the approximate geometric center of the original Indo-European massif was the northeastern part of the Balkan Peninsula and Asia Minor. Those tribes from which the Proto-Slavs were formed through gradual consolidation lived almost on the edge of the Indo-European spaces, north of the mountain barrier that separates Southern Europe from Northern Europe and stretches from the Alps to the east, ending in the east with the Carpathians.
Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev (1686-1750)
When we talk about the origin of a particular people, we are faced with a number of assumptions, legends, and hypotheses. Distant in time, the slow process proceeded almost imperceptibly for us. But some questions still need to be asked: first, did the formation of the people take place through the reproduction and settlement of one tribe from some insignificant space, or did the people form through the bringing together of related neighboring tribes? The second question: what general (in this case, pan-European) events could stimulate the isolation of a number of tribes from the pan-Indo-European massif and their consolidation on a large scale?
The first question should be answered that the main formative force was the spontaneous integration of more or less related tribes. But, of course, there was also natural reproduction, filiation of tribes, and colonization of new spaces. The filiation of tribes compacted the ethnic massif, filled the gaps between the old “mother” tribes and, of course, contributed to the strengthening of this massif, but it was not the reproduction of one single tribe that created the people.
Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky (1841-1911)
With regard to pan-European events, the situation was like this: at the turn of the 3rd-2nd millennia BC, in the northern half of Europe (from the Rhine to the Dnieper), pastoralism intensified, and property and social inequality quickly emerged. Cattle become a symbol of wealth (in the old Russian language “skotnitsa” means treasury), and the ease of alienation of herds leads to wars and inequality between tribes and their leaders. Primitive equality was violated.
The discovery of copper and bronze led to intertribal trade, which intensified internal processes of differentiation. Archaeologically, this era is designated the “globular amphorae culture,” which differs sharply from previous, more primitive cultures. The struggle for herds and pastures that began everywhere led to the widespread settlement of shepherd tribes (the “Corded Ware Culture”) not only in Central, but also in Eastern Europe up to the Middle Volga.
All this happened to the tribes who were the ancestors of the Balts, Slavs and Germans. Resettlement was carried out by separate, independently acting tribes. This can be judged by the extraordinary diversity and striping of pastoral terminology in Eastern Europe.
At the time of settlement - the first half of the 2nd millennium - there was no Slavic, Germanic, or Baltic community; all the tribes mixed and changed neighbors in the process of slow movement.
Religious building (Bronze Age)
Around the 15th century BC, settlement ceased. The entire zone of European deciduous forests and forest-steppes was occupied by these Indo-European tribes, different in their place of previous residence.
A new, already settled life began, and gradually agriculture began to take first place in the economy. In the new geographical situation, new neighbors began to establish connections, level out the characteristics of tribal dialects and create for the first time in a large space new, related languages: in the western part it was called Germanic, in the middle part - Slavic, and in the northeastern part - Latvian-Lithuanian. The names of the peoples appeared later and are not associated with this era of primary consolidation of related tribes around three different centers: western (Germanic), eastern (Baltic) and middle (Slavic).
In the scientific search for the ancient destinies of the Slavs, the first place belongs to linguistics. Linguists have determined, firstly, that the dissociation of the Proto-Slavic tribes from their related neighboring Indo-European tribes occurred approximately 4000-3500 years ago, at the beginning or in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. Secondly, according to language data, linguists have established that the neighbors of the Slavs from the Indo-European peoples were the Germans, Baltic, Iranians, Daco-Thracians, Illyrians, Italics and Celts. The third statement of linguists is very important: judging by the designations of landscape elements common to all Slavic peoples, the Proto-Slavs lived in the zone of deciduous forests and forest-steppe, where there were glades, lakes, swamps, but there was no sea; where there were hills, ravines, watersheds, but no high mountains. However, natural areas that meet these linguistic definitions are distributed more widely in Europe than the Slavic ancestral home might be assumed; the Proto-Slavs occupied only part of this space, which was reflected in their ancient dialects.
Scientists had two options for defining the ancestral home: some researchers believed that the primary region of the Proto-Slavs was the forest-steppe and forests of the Middle Dnieper region with Kiev at the head, while others believed that the ancestral home was located to the west, on the Vistula, and reached the Oder; this variant can conditionally be called the Vistula-Oder one. Both options fully satisfied the requirements of linguists. It was necessary to look for additional data to choose between the two proposed hypotheses.
Polish archaeologist Stefan Nosek, a supporter of the Vistula-Oder variant (an “autochthonist” who believed that the Slavs were autochthonous on the territory of Poland), proposed turning to archaeological materials from the time when the Proto-Slavs, according to linguists, first split off from their Indo-European neighbors. It was a completely reasonable proposal. The attention of archaeologists was attracted by the so-called Trzyniec culture of the 15th-12th centuries BC, which was well known in Poland between the Vistula and Oder. Nosek wrote an article with the loud title “The Triumph of the Autochthonists.”
It seemed that the choice between two equal (according to linguistics) hypotheses was made on the basis of such objective material as archaeological material. But it soon became clear, thanks to the work of another Polish archaeologist, Alexander Gardawsky, and the work of a number of Ukrainian archaeologists, that the Trzyniec culture was not at all confined to the boundaries of only one western, Vistula-Oder, variant, but extended to the space east of the Vistula, right up to the Dnieper, passing partially and to its left bank. Thus, turning to archaeological materials that had been sufficiently studied resolved the dispute in favor of combining both options.
The ancestral home of the Slavs in the heyday of the Bronze Age should be located in a wide strip of Central and Eastern Europe. This strip, stretching from north to south for about 400 kilometers, and from west to east about one and a half thousand kilometers, was located like this: its western half was supported from the south by European mountains (Sudetes, Tatras, Carpathians), and in the north it reached almost to the Baltic Sea. The eastern half of the Proto-Slavic land was limited from the north by Pripyat, from the south by the upper reaches of the Dniester and Southern Bug and the Ros basin. The eastern borders are less clear: the Trzyniec culture here covered the Middle Dnieper and the lower reaches of the Desna and Seim.
The Slavs lived in small villages located in two orders. The economy was conducted on the basis of four branches: agriculture, cattle breeding, fishing and hunting. Tools - axes, knives, sickles - were also made of stone. Bronze was used mainly for decorations, and from household equipment only for chisels needed in wooden construction.
The funeral rite was associated with the idea of transmigration of souls: the bodies of the dead were given a fetal position, as if preparing the deceased for a second birth. Social differences are not visible.
The richest region (it is sometimes distinguished as a special, Komarov culture) was the lands in the Carpathian region, where there were deposits of salt, which was highly valued in the primitive era. The archaeological monuments of the Trzyniec-Komarovka culture form several separate clusters, which may have been the lands of alliances of neighboring Slavic tribes.
Beads made from the diaphysis of the long bones of the arctic fox and pendants from a mollusk shell. Paleolithic. Found in the village. Kostenki, Voronezh region. in 2000. The oldest evidence of the ornamental art of the Paleolithic of Eastern Europe
Slavic tribal unions are known to us from Nestor; those “tribes” that he mentions in his “Tale,” as shown by Soviet scientists (P.N. Tretyakov), are not primary tribes, but unions of several nameless tribes: Polyans, Radimichi, Vistula, etc.
It should be noted that the spelling of the names of these tribal unions differs sharply on a geographical basis: all tribal unions within the ancestral homeland outlined above are designated either by names like “Polyane”, “Mazovshan”, or by archaic names like “Croats”, “North”. There are no patronymic names on the territory of the ancestral home.
The Slavs began resettling from their ancestral homeland at the turn of our era (and maybe even earlier?). And now, in the new regions colonized by the Slavs, a different, new form of names with a patronymic basis is found: “Radimichi” (“descending from Radim”, “subject to Radim”), “Vyatichi”, “Bodrichi”, etc.
Miniature for “The Tale of Boris and Gleb” from Sylvester’s collection of the 14th century. “Svyatopolk concealed the death of his father.” It conveys an ancient funeral custom - transporting the body of the deceased, wrapped in a shroud, in a sleigh to the burial place
In colonized areas, the original form in “...ana”, “...yana” is sometimes found, which may be associated with the names of small primary tribes involved in the process of colonization, but, as already mentioned, throughout the vast territory of the Slavic ancestral home (and only on it !) There is no patronymic form, which fully confirms the correctness of identifying the ancestral home with the area of the Trzyniec culture of the 15th-12th centuries BC.
Over the course of the 2nd-1st millennia BC, the ethnic picture of Europe changed not only in connection with the colonization of the Slavs or Celts (moving from west to southeast), but also in connection with the creation of new centers of gravity. In relation to the mass of Slavic tribes (before colonization to the northeast), one should take into account the formation of two centers of gravity: one of them corresponded to the main territory of the former “globular amphorae culture” and covered part of the Slavic, part of the Germanic and part of the Celtic tribes, and the other was located outside the Slavic ancestral home , in the Scythian Black Sea region, and brought into its sphere of influence only the southeastern part of the Slavs living in the fertile forest-steppe.
South Baltic in its geographical location, the new multi-tribal community is reflected archaeologically in the so-called Lusatian culture. Its core consisted of the Western Slavic tribes (the territory of modern Poland), but it also included the neighboring Celts, who were obviously the hegemons in this large combination of tribes, and some part of the Germanic tribes along the Elbe.
It is quite possible that it was this community that at that time received the name “Veneti” or “Venedi”, which initially denoted a conglomerate of multilingual tribes who lived an intense common historical life, and later (around the turn of our era), when the Celtic and Germanic outlying tribes Lusatian culture came into greater contact with their main relatives, the name “Veneti - Veneds” was retained by the West Slavic tribes. Ancient writers (Pliny, Tacitus) named Slavic tribes after the Wends.
Let's take a closer look at what was happening in the eastern half of the Slavic world. Even before the appearance of the Iranian Scythians in the steppes of Eastern Europe, here, on the edge of the steppe, in a forest-steppe zone convenient for agriculture, protected from the steppe inhabitants by islands of forests, on the old territory of the Trzynets proto-Slavic culture, the local Slavic population was progressively developing. At the turn of the 2nd-1st millennia BC, plow farming appeared, which sharply raised the entire economic system and made it possible by the 6th-5th centuries BC to move to the systematic export of grain to Greece through the Black Sea port of Olbia, which the Greeks called the market place of the Borysthenites (Dnieper).
Slavic weapons of the Zarubintsy culture (around the turn of our era)
The archaeological correspondence to the Middle Dnieper Slavs during the era of this rise is the so-called Chernoles culture at the turn of the Bronze and Iron Ages. Its Slavic character follows indisputably from the works of the famous Soviet linguist O. N. Trubachev: the map of archaic Slavic river names compiled by Trubachev coincides in all details with the area of the Black Forest culture.
The second and extremely important element of progress was the discovery of iron. If in the Bronze Age tribes that did not have deposits of copper and tin were forced to bring metal from afar, then with the discovery of iron they became extremely rich, since then they used swamp and lake ore, which was available in abundance in all Slavic lands with their numerous swamps, rivers and lakes. Essentially, the Slavs moved into the Iron Age from the Stone Age.
The fracture was quite significant. It was also reflected in the ancient Slavic epic about the warrior blacksmiths forging a giant plow weighing 40 pounds and defeating the evil Serpent attacking the Slavs. The epic image of the Serpent meant the Cimmerian nomads of the 10th-8th centuries BC, who attacked the Slavic regions of the Middle Dnieper. The Cimmerians were warlike tribes that struck fear into various peoples and states from the Middle East to the lower Danube.
Defending against them, the Slavs became involved in the events of world history. Up to the present day, along the banks of the rivers flowing into the Dnieper, both the remains of ancient huge fortresses of pre-Scythian times have been preserved, in which the Slavs with their property and herds could defend themselves during the attacks of the Cimmerian “Snake”, and the remains of ancient ramparts that still bear a remarkable name "Serpentine Shafts".
Decorations
The dating of these shafts is unclear; they could be completed and re-emerge throughout that long time when plowmen had to defend themselves from steppe nomads both in ancient times and in the Middle Ages.
Epic legends have also been preserved about these ramparts, very archaic in form: their main character is not a warrior-hero, as in the later epic, but a blacksmith-hero, the one who forged a forty-pound plow and taught people to plow the land with a plow.
The magic blacksmith does not cut the Serpent with a sword, like a medieval hero, but with his blacksmith's tongs he captures him, harnesses him to a fairy-tale plow and plows giant furrows - the "Serpent Shafts", which stretch "all the way to Kiev."
The beginning of the 1st millennium BC should be considered the time when the Slavic tribes of the Middle Dnieper region began their historical existence, defended their independence, built the first fortresses, first encountered the hostile steppe cavalry of the Cimmerians and emerged from these defensive battles with honor. It is not without reason that the creation of the primary forms of the Slavic heroic epic, which survived until the beginning of the 20th century, can be dated to this time (the last detailed records were made by Ukrainian folklorists in 1927-1929).
By the time the Scythians arrived in the southern Russian steppes, by the 7th century BC, the Slavs of the Middle Dnieper region had already traveled a long historical path, reflected both in archaeological materials and in myths and heroic epics. Myths preserved in Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian fairy tales (and first recorded by the “father of history” Herodotus in the 5th century BC) tell about three kingdoms, of which one is Golden, about the Sun King (remember Vladimir the Red Sun), named of which all the people inhabiting these kingdoms are named.
The information reported by Herodotus about Scythia is extremely important for us. By Scythia, this attentive writer and traveler understood a huge and to a certain extent conventional space in Eastern Europe, which he defined as a square, each side of which was equal to 20 days of travel (approximately 700x700 kilometers); the southern side of the square rested on the Black Sea.
This space is inhabited by different tribes, speaking different languages, leading different economies and not subordinate to a single king or any hegemonic tribe. Actually, the Scythians, who gave the conventional name to the entire square, are described by Herodotus as steppe cattle breeders, wandering in wagons, alien to agriculture, and not knowing settled settlements. They are opposed by the inhabitants of the forest-steppe Middle Dnieper region - farmers who export grain to Olbia, who annually celebrate in the spring the festival of the sacred plow, given to people by the god of heaven. In relation to these “Dnieper-Borysphenites”, Herodotus makes a precious note, saying that the Greeks mistakenly classify them as Scythians, while they have a self-name - “chipped off”.
A stone hammer with the remains of a wooden handle secured with an iron nail. Late Neolithic
The three kingdoms of the Skolots on the Middle Dnieper and in the neighboring forest-steppe (all of them within the boundaries of the ancient Slavic ancestral home) correspond well to the three main groups identified by Ukrainian archaeologists among the antiquities of the Scythian time. Archaeological materials explain to us the mistake of Greek traders who transferred the common name of Scythians to the Slavic Slavs: in the material culture of the Slavic farmers (“Scythian ploughmen”) many Scythian features can be traced. The long proximity of this part of the Slavs with the Scythian-Sarmatian Iranian world also affected the language: in the East Slavic languages there are many words of Scythian origin: “axe” (in Slavic “axe”), “dog” (in Slavic “dog”), etc. P.
Horse nose in the form of a panther tormenting a human head. IV century BC e. (Scythian time). Found during excavations of the necropolis of the Tengin settlement (Ust-Labansky district of the Krasnodar Territory) in 2000.
The social system of the Middle Dnieper Slavs, one and a half thousand years before Kievan Rus, was on the threshold of statehood. This is evidenced not only by the mentions of the Sko-lot “kingdoms” and “kings” by Herodotus, but also by the equestrian features of the buried warriors and the huge “royal” mounds in the Kiev region, and the imported luxury of the Slavic nobility.
In all likelihood, the Slavs of the Middle Dnieper lived friendly with the royal Scythians of the Black Sea region, which made it possible to trade with coastal cities and borrow a number of everyday features from the Scythian nomads.
The Slavs can be proud that one of the corners of the Slavic world, the Middle Dnieper, was described by Herodotus, in all likelihood, from personal impressions: he not only saw the Borysthenites Slavs in Olbia, but knew exactly the extent of the land of the Borysthenites (11 days of sailing along the Dnieper) , knew the taste of water in the upper reaches of small rivers, knew the fauna of the forest-steppe, wrote down those legends about three brothers and three kingdoms that have survived to this day in magical heroic tales. He even wrote down the names of the mythical heroes-ancestors, who were also preserved in East Slavic folklore.
The Slavs of the Scythian time were not united, and it is impossible to find any single “archaeological uniform” for them. If the forest-steppe Slavic tribes of the Skolot-Dneprians received many features of the Scythian culture, then next to them, in the forest zone on the northern outskirts of the Slavic ancestral home, lived next to the Balts (Latvian-Lithuanian tribes) the Herodotus “neurs” (Milohrad archaeological culture), who were in many ways inferior to their southern neighbors “Scythian plowmen”. The contrast between the level of life of the “meaningful glades” and their forest neighbors, “living in an animalistic manner,” noted by Nestor, arose already in Scythian times.
In the 3rd century BC, the Scythian power in the steppes fell under the onslaught of the more primitive Iranian nomadic tribes of the Sarmatians. The Scythians found themselves cut in two by a stream of new nomads: some of them went south, to the Crimea, and some moved north, to the forest-steppe, where they were assimilated by the Slavs (maybe it was then that Scythian words penetrated the Slavic language?).
The new owners of the steppes - the Sarmatians - behaved completely differently than the Scythians: if the Slavs coexisted more or less peacefully with the Scythians for 500 years and we have no data on serious hostile actions, then the Sarmatians behaved aggressively. They cut trade routes, destroyed Greek cities, attacked the Slavs and pushed the zone of agricultural settlements to the north.
Archaeologically, the Slavs of the Sarmatian period are characterized by the so-called Zarubin culture of the 3rd century BC, a rather primitive, quite primitive culture. Geographically, it covers not only the Middle Dnieper region, but also more northern regions in the forest zone, colonized by the Slavs.
By the turn of our era, the Sarmatians were rampant throughout the entire thousand-mile expanse of the Black Sea steppes. It is possible that the Sarmatian raids and the captivity of the agricultural population were stimulated by the Roman Empire, which, in its widest conquest (from Scotland to Mesopotamia), needed huge contingents of slaves for a wide variety of purposes - from ploughmen to rowers in the fleet.
The “female-ruled” Sarmatians, so called because of the strong remnants of matriarchy among the Sarmatian nobility, also left their mark in Slavic folklore, like the Cimmerians: in fairy tales, stories about the Serpent, about snake wives and sisters, about Baba Yaga, who lived not in a forest hut on chicken legs, and in a dungeon near the sea, in the sultry seaside country of the hostile “Maiden Kingdom”, where severed “Russian little heads stick out on the stamens.”
The Sarmatian onslaught, which lasted for several centuries, led to the decline of the Slavic lands and the departure of the population from the forest-steppe to the north, into the forest zone. It was at this time that patronymic names of tribes such as Radimichi or Vyatichi began to appear in new places of settlement.
Here, in dense forests, protected from invasion by the impenetrable expanses of swamps, new Slavic tribal centers begin to emerge, leaving hundreds of cemeteries, where burials were performed according to the burning ritual described in detail by Nestor.
Immediately behind the wide strip of the Pripyat and Lower Desna swamps, to the north of them, completely inaccessible from the Sarmatian south in the land of the ancient Nevri, we see large newly built fortresses (like Goroshkov on the Dnieper, between the mouths of the Sozh and Berezina), which could have been the tribal centers of the Dregovichi - " bolotniks" ("drygva" - swamp).
The earliest information from ancient authors about the Vened Slavs dates back to the first centuries of our era. Unfortunately, they give us very little information about the Eastern Slavs, obscured from the view of ancient writers by the Sarmatians, who had already reached the Middle Danube, and by the forests in which the Slavs, who had settled from the borders of their ancient homeland, hid.
A new and very bright period in the history of the Slavs is associated both with the gradual overcoming of the results of the Sarmatian raids, and with new events in European history in the first centuries of our era. Much in the history of the Old World is connected at this time with the growing power of the Roman Empire. Rome had a strong influence on the Germanic tribes and part of the West Slavic on the Rhine, Elbe and Oder. Roman legions captured Greek cities in the Northern Black Sea region and used them as markets for the purchase of local bread and fish.
Black-lacquered canfar. Middle Don culture of the Scythian time. Mid 4th century BC e. Found in a burial mound in the village. Ternovoe, Voronezh region. in 1999
Rome's ties with the peoples of Eastern Europe especially strengthened under Emperor Marcus Ulpius Trajan (98-117 AD), when the Romans conquered all of Dacia and forced its population to speak "Roman", the Latin language. The empire became a direct neighbor of the Slavic lands, where, thanks to this proximity, export agriculture was revived again, and on a large scale.
We can judge the scope of Slavic exports from the 1st to 4th centuries, firstly, by the huge number of treasures of Roman coins in the agricultural Slavic forest-steppe. The influx of Roman silver increased sharply under Trajan, and the high level remained for several centuries. It is not for nothing that the author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” mentioning distant times of prosperity, called it “the Ages of Troyan.” The monetary treasures of the Slavic nobility of the 2nd-4th centuries were the equivalent of local bread received from the Romans, which is proven by the Slavs’ borrowing of the Roman measure of bulk solids: the Roman quadrantal (“quarter”) under the name “chetverik” for measuring grain survived in Russia until 1924.
Men's belt set with bird-shaped details and buckle, made using the triangular-new-dimpled carving technique. V century n. e. The design details are similar to the Central European and Middle Dnieper examples of the post-Hunnic period. Found near the village. Nikitin, Ryazan region. in 2000
In the “Trojan Ages” the Slavs of the Middle Dnieper region (the northern forest-steppe half of the so-called Chernyakhov archaeological culture) experienced a new and very noticeable rise. Crafts developed, a potter's wheel, iron smelters, and rotary millstones appeared. The Slavic nobility widely used imported luxury items: lacquered tableware, jewelry, and various household items. A situation was revived close to that which existed before the Sarmatian invasion, during the heyday of the neighboring Scythian power.
One of the shopping centers on the Dnieper was the site of the future Kyiv.
In connection with export agriculture, routes to the south, to the Black Sea, were restored. Roman road maps mention the Wends in the lower reaches of the Danube, and in the middle of the 3rd century military sea campaigns are often mentioned, in which, along with the Goths (the southern coastal part of the Chernyakhov culture), some “Scythians” also took part, in which, in all likelihood, it follows see the southeastern part of the Slavs.
Socially, the Dnieper Slavic tribes again reached the pre-state level at which they were in Scythian times. It is possible that in the 1st-4th centuries, before the invasion of the Huns (about 375), statehood had already arisen among the southern part of the Eastern Slavs, who occupied the same fertile forest-steppe spaces where the “kingdoms” of the Skolot farmers were once located. . This is supported by the wealth of the Slavic nobility, which was based on export agriculture, and the appearance of “ognishki” - large houses for servants, and the lack of fortification of villages in the presence of a national defensive line, and the beginning of military campaigns far beyond the borders of their land.
Long before Kievan Rus, in this part of the Slavic world, closest to the world's cultural centers, the level of social development twice reached the line of primitive and class society, and perhaps even crossed this line. For the first time, further development was interrupted by the Sarmatian invasion of the 3rd century BC, and the second time by the invasion of the Huns at the end of the 4th century AD.
Origin of Rus'
At the end of the 5th - first half of the 6th century AD, three interconnected events took place, which are directly related to Kievan Rus and are answers to the questions of the chronicler Nestor, posed by him in the title “The Tale of Bygone Years”:
“Where does the Russian land come from?
Who began to reign in Kiev?
And where did the Russian land come from?"
The most important event of the late 5th - mid-6th centuries was the beginning of the great settlement of the Slavs to the south, beyond the Danube, to the Balkan Peninsula, when Slavic squads conquered and settled almost half of the Byzantine Empire. Streams of colonists came from both the western half of the Slavs ("Slavens", a corruption of "sklavins"), and from the eastern ("Anty", the name given by their neighbors; obviously, "outskirts"). The movement of the Slavs, grandiose in scale, to the Danube and beyond the Danube redrew the entire ethnic and political map of early medieval Europe and, in addition, significantly modified the historical process in the main Slavic territory (ancestral homeland plus the zone of early northern colonization).
The second event, which fits within the framework of the first, was the founding of Kyiv on the Dnieper. The chronicle conveys an ancient legend about three brothers - Kiy, Shchek and Khorib - who built a city on the Dnieper in the land of glades in the name of their elder brother Kiy. This legend, which was immemorially ancient already in the time of Nestor (early 12th century), raised doubts among the chroniclers of Novgorod, which competed with Kiev in the 11th-12th centuries, and they placed the legend of Kiev in the chronicle under the year 854. Such a late date is completely untrue, since modern scientists have at their disposal indisputable evidence of a much earlier origin of the legend about the construction of Kyiv in the land of the glades. This evidence is the Armenian history of Zenob Gluck of the 8th century, in which the author included a legend that has nothing to do with the history of the Armenian people: three brothers - Kuar, Meltei and Khorevan - built a city in some country of Paluni. In the Armenian record, both the basis and details (hunting grounds, a city on a mountain, a pagan sanctuary) coincide with the chronicle. The question arises: how could a Slavic legend get into the pages of the Armenian chronicle in the 8th century? The answer is very simple: in the same 8th century (in 737), the Arab commander Mervan fought with the Khazars and he managed to reach the “Slavic River” (Don), where he captured 20 thousand Slavic families. The prisoners were taken to Transcaucasia and placed in the vicinity of Armenia. All this means that the legend about the founding of Kyiv by Kiy and his brothers in the land of the Polyans developed in the Polyanskaya, Slavic land itself sometime before 737.
The chronicler Nestor, who posed the question “who began first in Kiev before the princedom?” in the title of his work, did not know the Armenian manuscript with the ancient Slavic legend included in it and could not rely on it in his dispute with the Novgorodians, who deliberately wanted to belittle the antiquity of Kiev. There even appeared the idea, offensive to the people of Kiev, that Kiy was not a prince, but simply some kind of carrier across the river:
“That’s what they said - for transport to Kiev...” Nestor, an educated and versatile historian who knew both Greek historical literature and local Slavic legends dating back to the 5th-6th centuries AD, undertook a special search and established the princely dignity of Kiev, confirmed by his meeting with the emperor of Byzantium.
“If Who had been a carrier, he would not have gone to Tsesargrad. But behold, Whoy was a prince of his kind and who came to him to the Tsar, whom we did not know, but only about seven times, as they say, he received the great honor of eating from the Tsar , in whose presence the Tsars came. Going back, he came to Dunaevi and fell in love with the place and cut down a small town and wanted to sit down with his family and did not give him that living nearby. Even to this day he called Dunaevi “the settlement of Kievets.” "When I came to my city of Kiev, that life passed away; and his brother Shchek and Horiv and their sister Lybid passed away. And for these brothers, more and more, their lineage reigned in the Fields."
The conscientious historian, unfortunately, did not know the name of the Tsar, but did not invent it either. Such a situation, when the emperor of the largest world power invites a Slavic prince and gives him great honor, was possible no earlier than the end of the 5th century, when under Emperor Anastasia (491-518) the Slavs began to storm the Danube border of Byzantium. The situation would have been quite suitable for the era of Justinian (527-565), but Russian scribes knew this emperor well and could hardly call him unknown. It is possible that this is Emperor Anastasius.
Let us turn to reliable archaeological materials of that era. It was at this time, at the turn of the 5th-6th centuries, that an important event occurred in the life of the Dnieper heights. The earliest fortified point here was the so-called Castle Hill (“Kiselevka”), which dominated Podol; it is located near the ancient “Boricheva vzvoz” on the bank of the Kiyanki stream. The chronicle, as we remember, says that Kiy initially, before the construction of the city, sat “on the mountain.” Archaeologically, this “Mount Kiya” is defined as Zamkovaya, where there is also an ancient cultural layer dated by a coin of Emperor Anastasius.
The event was the construction of a small fortress on the high Starokievskaya Mountain, where Ras Trelly's St. Andrew's Cathedral now stands. This high mountain, dominating the entire Dnieper valley (from it Vyshgorod at the mouth of the Desna is clearly visible), became the historical center of Kyiv. Here, under Vladimir I, there were princely palaces, here was the cathedral of all Rus' - the Assumption "Tithe" Church of 996, trophy statues taken from Korsun - Chersonese after the victory over Byzantium were placed here.
We can understand the reason for the transfer of his residence by Prince Kiy at the turn of the 5th-6th centuries from a low flat hill near the Dnieper piers to a high inaccessible mountain and the transformation of a new small fortress into the capital of a huge state only in the light of the great settlement of the Slavs of the 5th-7th centuries, about which the chronicler said:
“For many times the Slovenians sat down along the Dunaevi, where there is now the Ugorsk land (Hungary) and Bolgarska...”
Not only the tribes of the southern outskirts of the wide Slavic world took part in the settlement of the Balkan Peninsula, but also more distant, deep tribes like the Serbs (who lived near modern Berlin) or the Dregovichi, who lived north of the Pripyat swamps in the vicinity of the Lithuanians.
If we look at the map of Eastern Europe, we immediately realize the important strategic role of Kyiv in the era of this massive, many-thousand-strong movement of the Slavs south to the rich Byzantine cities and rich cultivated lands. All the largest rivers of the Dnieper basin converged on Kyiv; upstream from Kyiv the Berezina, Sozh, the huge Pripyat and Desna, Teterev flowed into the Dnieper. The basin of these rivers covered the lands of the Drevlyans, Dregovichs, Krivichis, Radimichis and Northerners with a total area of about a quarter of a million square kilometers! And all this vast space, all the routes from it to the south, to the Black Sea, were locked with a fortress on Kyiv Mountain.
The remains of a woman's headdress, which included several three-bead and other temple rings on each side. II half of the XII century. Found during excavations of the Northern settlement of the Ryazan Kremlin in 2000.
The boats, canoes, and rafts of the Slavs, sailing in the 5th-6th centuries to the borders of Byzantium from half of the East Slavic lands, could not pass the Kyiv heights. Prince Kiy acted very wisely, erecting a new fortress on the mountain below the mouth of the deep Desna, he became the master of the Dnieper, without his will the Slavic squads could not penetrate to the south and, in all likelihood, paid him “myto”, a travel fee, and if they returned from long journey, they shared trophies with him. Prince Kiy could lead these campaigns to the south, accumulate the boats of the northern tribes on the Dnieper piers, and then with sufficient forces move down the Dnieper, where it was necessary to overcome the dangerous nomadic barriers of the Avars and Turkic-Bulgarians.
In one of the chronicles there is an addition to Nestor’s story about Kiy: The Polyansky prince had to wage wars with the Turkic-Bulgarians, and in one of the campaigns Kiy brought his squads to the Danube and allegedly even “went to Tsaryugrad by force with an army” (Nikon Chronicle).
The builder of the fortress on the Dnieper became one of the leaders of the pan-Slavic movement to the Balkans. It is not surprising that the “unknown Caesar” tried to please the powerful Slavic prince. The time of the Byzantine campaigns was the time of the formation and growth of Slavic tribal unions. Some of them, such as the Duleb union, fell under the blows of the Avar hordes in the 6th century; other alliances of Slavic tribes survived and strengthened in the confrontation with the steppe inhabitants. Such strengthened associations should apparently include the union of the Middle Dnieper tribes, which was expressed in the merger of two groups of Slavic tribes - the Rus (Rus basin) and the Polyans (Kyiv and Chernigov). This merger is reflected in the chronicle phrase: “Meadows, even now called Rus'.”
The name of the people “Rus” or “Ros” appears in sources for the first time in the middle of the 6th century, at the very height of the great Slavic settlement. One of the authors (Jordan) recalls the “Russian men” (Rosomons) who were at enmity with the Gothic prince Germanaric in the 370s. Another, distant author, writing in Syria, listing the steppe nomads of the Black Sea region, mentioned the non-equestrian people "ROS", who lived somewhere in the northwest of the Amazons, that is, in the Middle Dnieper region (the legendary Amazons were placed near Meotida - the Sea of Azov).
Two forms of the name of the people (ROS and RUS) have existed since ancient times: the Byzantines used the ROS form, and the Arab-Persian authors of the 9th-11th centuries used the RUS form. In Russian medieval writing, both forms were used: “Russian land” and “Rosskaya Pravda”. Both forms have survived to this day: we say RUSSIA, but we call its inhabitants RUSSIAN.
Of great interest is the definition of the primary geographical meaning of the concept “Russian land”, since it is quite clear that a broad meaning in the sense of the totality of all East Slavic tribes from the Baltic to the Black Sea could appear only when this space was covered by some kind of unity.
Looking carefully at the geographical terminology of the chronicles of the 11th-13th centuries, we notice a curious duality there: the phrase “Russian land” is used either to designate all of Kievan Rus or the entire Old Russian people within the same wide limits, then to designate an incomparably smaller area in the forest-steppe, never which did not represent political unity in the 10th-12th centuries. So, for example, it often turned out that from Novgorod or Vladimir they “went to Rus',” that is, to Kyiv; that the Galician troops are fighting with the “Russians,” that is, with the Kyiv squads, that the Smolensk cities are not Russian, but the Chernigov cities are Russian, etc.
If we carefully map all the mentions of “Russian” and “non-Russian” regions, we will see that there was also an understanding of the words “Russian land” in a narrow, very limited sense: Kiev, Chernigov, the Ros and Porosye rivers, Pereyaslavl Russian, Severskaya land, Kursk. Since this forest area does not coincide with any principality of the 11th-13th centuries (the principalities of Kiev, Pereyaslavl, Chernigov, Seversky were located here), we have to consider these stable ideas of chroniclers of the 12th century from different cities to be a reflection of some earlier tradition that was still firmly preserved in the 12th century.
The search for the time when the “Russian land” in the narrow sense could reflect some kind of real unity leads us to a single historical period, the 6th-7th centuries, when it was within these limits that a certain archaeological culture spread, characterized by finger brooches, spiral temporal rings, details of kokoshniks and the presence of imported Byzantine items.
This is the culture of the Russian-Polyanian-Northern union of forest-steppe Slavic tribes, formed during the era of the Byzantine campaigns, during the era of the construction of Kyiv. It is not surprising that people heard about the ROS people in the 6th century in Syria, that the prince of this powerful union of tribes was given gifts by the Byzantine Caesar, that it was from this time that the Kiev chronicler of the Monomakh era began the history of Kievan Rus.
In subsequent times, both the Slavs, the inhabitants of this land, and those foreigners who found themselves in Kyiv or served the Kyiv prince were called “Rus”, “Rus”, “Rus”. The Varangians, who appeared in Kyiv 300 years after the first mention of the “people of ROS”, also began to be called Rus due to the fact that they ended up in Kiev (“from then on they were called Rus”).
The richest and most interesting finds of “Russian antiquities” of the 6th-7th centuries were made in the basin of the Ros and Rossava rivers. It is likely that the primary tribe of the Ro-Sov-Rus was located on the Ros and the name of this river is associated with the name of the tribe going back along the Jordan to at least the 4th century AD.
The primary land of the ROS people was, firstly, on the territory of the Slavic ancestral home, and secondly, on the site of one of the most significant Skolot “kingdoms” of the 6th-5th centuries BC. Thirdly, it was one of the centers of the Chernyakhov culture of the “Trojan centuries”. In the 6th century AD, the union of the inhabitants of Russia with Polyansky Kiev and Severyansky Posem (along the Seim River) became the core of the emerging state of Rus' with its center in Kyiv. As we see, the dispute about the birthplace of Russian statehood - in the Novgorod north or in the Kiev south - is unconditionally and quite objectively resolved in favor of the south, which long ago began its historical path and its communication with the regions of world civilizations.
EDUCATION OF THE STATE OF Rus'
Abundant material from diverse sources convinces us that East Slavic statehood matured in the south, in the rich and fertile forest-steppe zone of the Middle Dnieper region.
Agriculture was known here thousands of years before Kievan Rus. The pace of historical development here in the south was much faster than in the distant forested and swampy north with its thin sandy soils. In the south, on the site of the future core of Kievan Rus, a thousand years before the founding of Kyiv, “kingdoms” of Borysphenite farmers arose, in which one should see the Proto-Slavs; in the “Trojan Ages” (II-IV centuries AD), export agriculture was revived here, leading to a very high level of social development.
Smolensk, Polotsk, Novgorod, Rostov north did not receive such a rich inheritance and developed much more slowly. Even in the 12th century, when the south and north had already become equal in many respects, the forest neighbors of the southerners still evoked in them the ironic characteristics of the “beastly” way of life of the northern forest tribes.
When analyzing unclear and sometimes contradictory historical sources, the historian must proceed from the axiom of uneven historical development, which in our case manifests itself clearly and in contrast. We are obliged to treat with great suspicion and distrust those sources that will present us with the North as the birthplace of Russian statehood, and we will have to find out the reasons for such obvious bias.
The second note that should be made when starting to consider the early statehood of Rus' concerns not geography, but chronology. Medieval chroniclers impermissibly compressed the entire process of the birth of a state into one or two decades, trying to fit a thousand years of creating the prerequisites (which they had no idea about) into the life of one hero - the creator of the state. This reflected both the ancient method of mythological thinking and the medieval habit of replacing the whole with its part, its symbol: in the drawings the city was replaced with the image of one tower, and the whole army with one horseman. The state was replaced by one prince.
The compression of historical time was reflected in the fact that the foundation of Kiev, which (as we have now established) should be attributed to the end of the 5th or the first half of the 6th century AD, was mistakenly placed by some chroniclers under the year 854, making Kiy a contemporary of Rurik and flattening the segment to zero time of 300-350 years. Such a mistake is tantamount to imagining Mayakovsky as a contemporary of Ivan the Terrible.
Of the Russian historians of the 11th-12th centuries, Nestor was closest to historical truth in depicting the early phases of the life of the state of Rus', but his work has come to us greatly distorted by his contemporaries precisely in this introductory part.
The first stage of the formation of Kievan Rus (based on the surviving fragments of Nestor’s “Tale of Bygone Years”, supported, as we have seen, by numerous materials of the 5th-7th centuries and retrospectively by sources of the 12th century) is depicted as the formation of a powerful union of Slavic tribes in the Middle Dnieper region in the 6th century AD , a union that took the name of one of the united tribes - the people ROS or RUS, known in the 6th century outside the Slavic world as the “people of heroes”.
As if as an epigraph to this first stage in the history of Russian statehood, the Kiev chronicler set two sharply contrasting stories about two tribal unions, about two different destinies. The Dulebs were attacked by the Avars in the 6th-7th centuries. The Avars “have tormented Duleby, the real Slavs and done violence to the wives of Duleb: if you wake up to go, don’t hide either a horse or an ox, but instead order 3, 4, 5 wives in the cart and tell the story ..." . The Dulebs fled to the Western Slavs, and fragments of their union ended up interspersed among the Czech and Polish tribes.
The tragic image of Slavic women carrying a cart with an Avar nobleman is contrasted with the majestic image of the Polyansky prince (“the glade, now called Rus'”), received with great honor in the palace of the Byzantine emperor in Constantinople.
The founding of Kiev in the land of Polyan-Rus is compared by another chronicler with the founding of Rome, Antioch and Alexandria, and the head of the Russo-Polyan union of Slavic tribes, the Grand Duke of Kiev, is equated with Romulus and Alexander the Great.
The historical path for the further development of the Slavic tribes of Eastern Europe was outlined and predetermined by the situation of the 6th-7th centuries, when the Russian union of tribes withstood the onslaught of nomadic warlike peoples and used its advantageous position on the Dnieper, which was the route to the south for several dozen northern tribes of the Dnieper basin. Kiev, which held the key to the Dnieper highway and was sheltered from steppe raids by the entire width of the forest-steppe strip ("and there was a forest and a great forest near the city"), became the natural center of the process of integration of East Slavic tribal unions, the process of the emergence of such socio-political values that were already beyond the framework of the most developed primitiveness.
The second stage in the historical life of Kievan Rus was the transformation of the Dnieper union of forest-steppe Slavic tribes into a “super-union”, which included within its borders several dozen individual small Slavic tribes (elusive to us), united in four large unions. We can see what a tribal union was like in the 9th century in the example of the Vyatichi: here, independently, from within, relations of domination and subordination were born, a hierarchy of power was created, a form of collecting tribute was established, such as polyudye, associated with foreign trade, and treasures were accumulated. Other unions of Slavic tribes that had “their own reigns” were approximately the same.
The process of class formation, which took place in each of the tribal unions, was ahead of the process of further integration, when under the authority of a single prince it was no longer the “principality” that united about a dozen primary tribes, but several such unions - principalities. The emerging new grandiose association was, in a literal, mathematical sense, an order of magnitude higher than each individual union of tribes like the Vyatichi.
Around the 8th - early 9th centuries, the second stage of development of Kievan Rus began, which was characterized by the subordination of a number of tribal unions to the power of Rus', to the power of the Kyiv prince. Not all unions of East Slavic tribes became part of Rus'; the southern streets and Tivertsy, the Croats in the Carpathian region, the Vyatichi, Radimichi and the powerful Krivichi were still independent.
“Behold, (only) the Slovenian language in Rus': Polyana, Drevlyans, Novgorodtsy, Polochans, Drgvichi, Sever, Buzhans, before riding along the Bug, and then Volynians” (“The Tale of Bygone Years”).
Although the chronicler defined this stage as a period of incomplete unification of the East Slavic tribes, when looking at the map of Eastern Europe we see a large territory that covered the entire historically significant forest-steppe and a wide strip of forested land running from Kiev north to the Western Dvina and Ilmen. In area (but not in population, of course) Rus' at that time was equal to the entire Byzantine Empire of 814 or the Carolingian Empire of the same time.
If within individual tribal unions there existed both a hierarchy of princely power (princes of tribes-volosts and the “prince of princes”), and polyudye, which, as we will see below; was an unusually complex and cumbersome state event, the creation of a union of unions raised all these elements to a higher level. Eastern travelers who saw Rus' in the first half of the 9th century with their own eyes describe it as a huge power, the eastern border of which reached the Don, and the northern border was thought to be somewhere at the edge of the “deserted deserts of the North.”
An indicator of the international position of Rus' in the first half of the 9th century is, firstly, that the head of the entire complex of Slavic tribal unions, who stood above the “princes of princes”, had a title equal to the imperial one - he was called “khagan”, like the kings of Khazaria or the head Avar Khaganate (839). Secondly, the eastern geographer, who wrote “The Book of Routes and States”, eloquently speaks about the scope of Rus'’s foreign trade (sales of Polyudye):
“As for the Russian merchants, and they are a type of Slavs, they export beaver fur and silver fox fur and swords from the most remote parts of the Slavic country to the Rum [Black, then called Russian] Sea, and collect tithes from them the king of Byzantium, and if they want, then they go along the Tanais (?), the river of the Slavs and pass through the strait of the capital of the Khazars and their ruler collects tithes from them.”
Merchants from individual tribal unions, advantageously located on the routes leading to the Lower Volga, could also reach the capital of Khazaria. The Slavs (Vyatichi and others) were full-fledged counterparties of the Khazars in their capital itself. About the Rus, that is, about representatives of the Kiev state, it is said that they went south, far beyond the borders of Khazaria, crossing the Caspian Sea 500 farsangs long: “Then they go to the Dzhurdzhan Sea and land on any shore ... (and sell everything , what they bring with them, and all this ends up in Ray). Sometimes they bring their goods on camels from Jurjan to Baghdad, where Slavic slaves serve as translators for them. And they pass themselves off as Christians..." (Text by Ibn al- Fakiha.)
At first glance, the journey of Russian merchants “from the distant ends of Slavonia” to the very center of the Muslim world – Baghdad – may seem incredible. But the remote lands of Polotsk already belonged to Rus'; this is confirmed, as we have seen, by the list of tribal unions. The journey by sea and the long expedition from the southern shore of the Caspian Sea to Baghdad are documented by an eyewitness account: Ibn Khordadbeg, whose work is quoted above, did not write from hearsay - he was the postmaster in Ray (the largest trading city), and the Jebel region was subordinate to him, through which the route Ray - Baghdad lay. The writer with his own eyes had to see the ruins of an ancient ziggurat in the vicinity of Baghdad with precise measurements of the ruins (“there is a remains of it between Asura and Babylon and there are 5433 Lakotas in height and width”), and the Old Slavic name for a camel (“having happened to a certain merchant, he lost his velbuda ") XI century.
Among the peoples of Europe (including the descendants of the Varangians - the Swedes), the name camel goes back to the Greek (kamhloz) or Latin (camelus) form. The Iranian peoples had a form of "ushtra". The Slavs call this hardy animal with their own Slavic word (“velbl’d”, “velblud”), which is perfectly etymologized: it is formed by the fusion of two roots meaning “multiple” (“magnificence, splendor”, etc.) and “walking”, "wandering"
The presence of a nasal sound indicates the antiquity of the formation of this word, meaning “walking a lot,” “wandering a lot.” In order to give a camel a name that expresses its endurance, its ability to overcome long distances, it was not enough to see humpbacked animals somewhere in the eastern bazaars - it was necessary to experience their “walking” properties. Obviously, on such caravan routes as the path from Ray to Baghdad (about 700 kilometers), a new word was born among the Slavic merchants.
The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Slavic “velblud” is only an interpretation of the Arabic name for camels “ibilun”. If this turned out to be true, it would serve as further reinforcement of evidence of the Russians’ familiarity with the caravan roads of the East.
Camel with a guide. 11th century fresco Kyiv. Saint Sophia Cathedral. North West Tower
The Russian nobility sold polyudia not only to the countries of the Middle East, but also to the Byzantine Black Sea possessions, as Ibn Khordadbeg briefly talks about, mentioning the “tithe” (trade duty) that the Rus pay to the emperor. It is possible that the blocking by Byzantium of the mouth of the Dnieper and that coast of the Black Sea, which was necessary for the Rus for coastal navigation to the Kerch Strait or to Constantinople, was the reason for the Russian campaign against the Byzantine possessions in Crimea, reflected in the “Life of Stephen of Sourozh”.
Researchers date the campaign of the “Novgorod prince” Bravlin to the end of the 8th or the first third of the 9th century. The Rus took Surozh (modern Sudak), and their prince was baptized; Perhaps the adoption of Christianity by some part of the Rus explains the mention of Ibn-Khordad-beg that the Rus pretend to be Christians and pay a poll tax in the countries of the Caliphate (like Christians).
Having appeared in the Black Sea, the armed flotillas of the Rus were not limited to the southeastern coast of Tauris, which lay on their usual route to Khazaria and the Caspian Sea, but also undertook sea voyages to the southern Anatolian coast of the Black Sea in the first half of the 9th century, as evidenced by the "Life" George of Amastrid."
The Black Sea, the “Sea of Rum” - Byzantium, became the “Russian Sea”, as our chronicler calls it. He called the Caspian Sea “Khvalisk”, that is, Khorezm, hinting at connections with Khorezm, which lies beyond the Caspian, from where it was possible “to reach the lot of Sims to the east,” that is, to the Arab lands of the Caliphate. The chronicler describes the Black Sea, directly connected with Kiev, as follows:
“And the Dnieper flows into the Pontic Sea (the ancient Pontus Euxine) with three waters to say the Russian sea.”
Information from the 8th – early 9th centuries about Russian flotillas in the Black Sea, despite its fragmentary nature, testifies to the great activity of the Russian state on its southern trade routes. The famous campaign of the Rus against Constantinople in 860 was not the first acquaintance of the Greeks with the Russians, as the Patriarch Photius of Constantinople rhetorically portrayed it, but the first powerful landing of the Rus at the walls of the “Second Rome”.
The purpose of the Russian squadron's campaign to the Bosphorus was the desire to approve a peace treaty with the emperor.
The second stage of the historical existence of Kievan Rus (VIII - mid-IX century) is characterized not only by a huge territorial coverage from the “deserted deserts of the North”, from the “remote parts of the Slavic world” to the border with the steppe, but also by previously unprecedented and important activity from the Russian Sea and the “Slavic rivers" to Byzantium, Anatolia, Transcaspia and Baghdad. The state of Rus' has already risen to a much greater height than the individual tribal unions that were contemporaneous and had “their own reigns.”
The internal life of Kievan Rus of this time can be illuminated in the absence of synchronous sources only after familiarization with the subsequent period using a retrospective search for the origins of those phenomena that arose in the second stage, and were documented only for subsequent times.
The third stage of development of Kievan Rus is not associated with any new quality. What arose in the second stage continued and developed: the number of East Slavic tribal unions that were part of Rus' increased, the international trade relations of Rus' continued and somewhat expanded, and the confrontation with the steppe nomads continued.
The third stage of the life of Kievan Rus is determined by the fact that established regular connections with the fabulous countries of the East, information about which in one form or another reached the most distant ends of the Slavs (tribute was collected from Polotsk or Slovenian warriors who had just returned from a thousand-mile expedition to the overseas southern lands), became known to those northern neighbors of the Slavs, about whom the eastern geographers of the 9th century did not even know that they existed. The author of “Regions of the World” thought that the warm Gulf Stream washed the lands of the Slavs, and not the Scandinavians and Lapps.
From the “deserted deserts of the North”, “finders”-Varangians began to appear in the south-eastern Baltic, attracted by rumors that from the Okovsky forest (Valdai Upland) “the Volga would flow to the east and flow seventy zherels into the Khvaliskoe Sea”, which exists somewhere - then far beyond the forests is Russia, making annual trade expeditions both to Byzantium and to the countries of the Khvalyn Sea, from where a flow of eastern silver coins went north.
Regarding the lively ties between Rus' and the East, reflected in numerous numismatic finds, V.L. Yanin writes: “The nature of the movement of eastern coins through the territory of Eastern Europe appears as follows. European-Arab trade emerges at the end of the 8th century as the trade of Eastern Europe ( that is, Rus', the Slavs and Volozhskaya Bulgaria. - B.R.) with the countries of the Caliphate...
The myth about the originality of the organizing participation of the Scandinavians in European-Arab trade does not find any justification in the sources." All of the above applies to our second stage.
Norman sailors paved a sea route around Europe, plundering the coasts of France, England, Spain, Sicily and reaching Constantinople; Western peoples have developed a special prayer: “Lord!
Deliver us from the Normans!" For the Scandinavians, accustomed to the sea, it was not particularly difficult to organize flotillas of hundreds of ships that terrorized the population of rich coastal cities, using the effect of surprise. The Normans did not penetrate into the interior of the continent.
All East Slavic lands were far from the sea, and the penetration of Baltic sailors into Smolensk or Kyiv was fraught with enormous difficulties: it was necessary to sail up the rivers, against the current, and the flotilla could be fired on from both banks. The greatest difficulties were presented by the watersheds, through which it was necessary to cross overland, pulling the boats onto the ground and dragging them on straps over portages. The defenselessness of the Norman armada increased; There could be no talk of any menacing surprise.
It was enough for the Kyiv prince to set up his outpost on the portages and branching routes (for example, on the site of Novgorod, Rusa or Smolensk) in order to block the path to the south of the “land sailors”. This was a significant difference between Eastern Europe and Western Europe. The infiltration of the Varangians into the East Slavic lands began much later than to the shores of the European seas. In search of routes to the East, the Normans did not always use the so-called route “from the Varangians to the Greeks,” but, skirting the distant possessions of Rus' from the northeast, they penetrated the Volga and along the Volga they went south to the Caspian Sea.
The path “from the Varangians to the Greeks,” supposedly going from the Baltic to Ladoga, from Ladoga to Ilmen, and then along the Dnieper to the Black Sea, is a conjecture of the Normanists, who so convinced all learned people of the 19th and 20th centuries that they were right that this description has become textbook. Let us turn to the only source where this phrase is used - to the Tale of Bygone Years. At the beginning there is a general heading indicating that the author is going to describe a circular route through Rus' and around the entire European continent. He begins the very description of the path with the path “from Grek” to the north, up the Dnieper:
“There was a path from the Varangians to the Greeks and from the Greeks along the Dnieper and the top of the Dnieper to Lovat and along the Lovat to enter the great lake Ilmer, from the same lake the Volkhov will flow and flow into the great lake Nevo (Ladoga) and that lake will enter the mouth ( Neva River) in the Varyazhskoe (Baltic) Sea..."
Here the path from Byzantium through all of Rus' to the north, to the Swedes, is described in detail and with knowledge of the matter. This is the path "from the Greeks to the Varangians." The chronicler outlined it in only one direction - from south to north. This does not mean that no one ever passed this way in the opposite direction: up the Neva, up the Volkhov, up the Lovat and then along the Dnieper, but the Russian scribe outlined the path of connections between the southern lands and the Scandinavian North, and not the path of the Varangians.
The path “from the Varangians to the Greeks” is also indicated by the chronicler in the subsequent text, and it is very interesting for us:
“Go along the same sea (Varangian) all the way to Rome, and from Rome come along the same sea to Tsaryagrad, and from Tsaryagrad come to the Pont-Sea, where the Dnieper River flows.”
The actual route “from the Varangians to the Greeks”, it turns out, had nothing to do with Rus' and the Slavic lands. It reflected the real routes of the Normans from the Baltic and the North Sea (both of them could be united under the name of the Varangian Sea) around Europe to the Mediterranean Sea, to Rome and the Norman possessions in Sicily and Naples, then to the east “along the same sea” - to Constantinople, and then to the Black Sea. The circle is closed.
The Russian chronicler knew the geography and history of the Normans much better than the later Normanists.
The first information about the contact of the Normans with the Slavs is placed in the chronicle under the year 859 (the date is arbitrary).
“Imahu received tribute from the Varangians, coming from overseas to Chudi and Slovenekh and Mary and Vesi and Krivichi.”
The list of regions that were attacked by the Varangians speaks, firstly, about the tribes that lived either on the sea coast (Chud - Estonians), or near the sea, on large rivers, and secondly, about the roundabout route that skirted the possessions of Rus' from northeast, mentioned above (Ves and Merya).
The Slavic and Finnish tribes rebuffed the “finders”-Varangians: “In the summer of 862. Our Varangians drove us overseas and did not give them tribute and began to rule over themselves...”
Further in the “Tale of Bygone Years” and other ancient chronicles there is a confusion of fragments of different directions. Some fragments were taken from the Novgorod chronicle, others from the Kyiv chronicle (heavily bled dry during editing), and others were added during editing to replace those removed. The aspirations and tendencies of different chroniclers were not only different, but often directly opposite.
It was from this confusion that, without any critical examination, individual phrases were extracted by the creators of the Norman theory, arrogant Germans of the 18th century, who came to bearish Russia to introduce it to European culture. 3. Bayer, G. Miller, A. Schletser caught phrases in the chronicle text about the “bestial way of life” of the ancient Slavs, arbitrarily attributing them to the chronicler’s contemporaries (although in fact the contrasting description of the “wise and meaningful” glades and their forest neighbors should be dated back to the first centuries of our era) and were very pleased with the legend about the calling of the Varangians by the northern tribes, which allowed them to claim that statehood was brought to the wild Slavs by the Norman-Varangians. Throughout its subsequent two-hundred-year journey, Normanism increasingly turned into a simple anti-Russian, and later anti-Soviet, political doctrine, which its propagandists carefully protected from contact with science and critical analysis.
The founder of anti-Normanism was M. V. Lomonosov; his followers, step by step, destroyed the pile of conjectures with the help of which the Normans sought to maintain and strengthen their positions. Many facts (especially archaeological) have appeared showing the minor and secondary role of the Varangians in the process of creating the state of Rus'.
Let us return to those sources from which the first supporting provisions of the Normanists were borrowed. To do this, we should first of all delve into the historical situation in which the chronicle concepts of Russian history were created when writing the introductory chapters to the chronicles in the era of Yaroslav the Wise and Vladimir Monomakh. For the Russian people of that time, the meaning of the legend about the calling of the Varangians was not so much in the Varangians themselves, but in the political rivalry between ancient Kiev and the new city of Novgorod, which was catching up with Kyiv in its development.
Thanks to its most advantageous geographical position, Novgorod very quickly grew almost to the level of the second city of Rus' after Kyiv. But his political position was incomplete. In primitive antiquity there was no “own reign” here; The city and its enormously expanding region were considered in the 11th century as the domain of the Kyiv prince, where he usually imprisoned his eldest son. Novgorod was, as it were, a collective castle of the numerous northern boyars, for whom distant Kyiv was only a tribute collector and an obstacle on the way to Byzantium.
The Novgorodians agreed in 1015 to help their prince Yaroslav in his campaign against Kyiv and used this to obtain letters that protected Novgorod from the atrocities of the Varangians hired by the prince. Kyiv was conquered by Yaroslav with his Novgorod-Varangian army: “there were thousands of Varangians, and 3000 Novgorodians.”
This victory, firstly, laid the foundation for the separatist aspirations of the Novgorod boyars, and secondly, it placed Novgorod (in the eyes of the Novgorodians themselves) as if ahead of the defeated Kyiv. From here there was only one step until the Novgorodians recognized the state priority of Novgorod in their historical research. A. A. Shakhmatov identified the Novgorod chronicle of 1050, which, according to a number of features, can be considered the chronicle of the Novgorod mayor Ostromir.
The author of the Ostromir Chronicle begins his presentation of Russian history with the construction of Kiev and immediately equates his local northern history chronologically with this all-Russian event, saying that the Slovenians, Krivichi and other tribes paid tribute “at the same time.” Having talked about the expulsion of the Varangians, “who committed violence,” overseas, the author further describes the wars between the tribes.
“The Slovenians named their own volost. (And they set up a city and a na-rekosha and Novgorod and planted the elder of Gosto-mysl.) And Krivichi - theirs, and Merya - theirs, and Chud - their [volost]. And they rose up to fight for themselves and quickly Between them there is a great army and strife, and they have risen from city to city and there is no truth in them. And they decided to “let us look for a prince who would rule us and rule by right.” I went overseas to the Varangians and decided: “ Our land is large and abundant, but there is no decoration in it. May you come to us as a prince, live and rule over us."
The following describes the arrival of Rurik, Sineus and Tru-vor to the listed northern tribes: Rurik reigned among the Slovenes, Truvor reigned among the Krivichi (near Pskov in Izborsk), and Sineus reigned among the Vesi on Beloozero; According to this legend, Merya was left without a prince.
Historians have long drawn attention to the anecdotal nature of the “brothers” of Rurik, who himself, however, was a historical figure, and the “brothers” turned out to be a Russian translation of Swedish words. It is said about Rurik that he came “with his family” (“sine use” - “his relatives” - Sineus) and his faithful squad (“tru war” - “faithful squad” - Truvor).
“Sineus” – sine hus – “one’s own kind.”
“Truvor” – thru waring – “faithful squad”.
In other words, the chronicle included a retelling of some Scandinavian legend about the activities of Rurik (the author of the chronicle, a Novgorodian who did not know Swedish well, mistook the mention in the oral saga of the traditional circle of the king for the names of his brothers. The reliability of the legend in general and in particular its geographical part, like we see, it is not large.In Izborsk, a small town near Pskov, and in distant Beloozero there were, obviously, not mythical princes, but simply tribute collectors.
Legends about three brothers called to reign in a foreign country were very common in Northern Europe in the Middle Ages. There are legends about the “voluntary” conscription of the Normans to Ireland and England. Three brothers arrived in Ireland for peaceful purposes under the pretext of trade (like Oleg in Kyiv). The Irish meeting kept the brothers with them.
Bronze head of a needle, the so-called “ring-shaped” fibula. Item of Scandinavian origin. End of the 1st millennium AD e. Found in the Khvoinonsky district of the Novgorod region in 2000.
Widukind of Corvey in his “Saxon Chronicle” (967) talks about the Britons’ embassy to the Saxons, who said that “they offer to take possession of their vast and great country, replete with all sorts of goods” (remember the chronicle: “our land is great and abundant...”). The Saxons sent three ships with three princes. In all cases, foreigners arrived with their relatives ("sineuses") and loyal squads ("tru-vars").
The closeness of the chronicle legend about the calling of the Varangians to Northern European court folklore is beyond doubt. And the court of Prince Mstislav, as we will see below, was closely related to the one that Vidukind wrote about.
Was there a calling for the princes or, more precisely, for Prince Rurik? The answers can only be speculative. Norman raids on the northern lands at the end of the 9th and 10th centuries are beyond doubt. A proud Novgorod patriot could portray the real raids of the “nakhodniki” as a voluntary calling of the Varangians by the northern inhabitants to establish order. Such coverage of the Varangian campaigns for tribute was less offensive to the pride of the Novgorodians than the recognition of their helplessness. The invited prince had to “rule by right,” that is, it was thought in the spirit of the events of 1015 that he, like Yaroslav the Wise, would protect his subjects with some kind of charter.
It could have been different: wanting to protect themselves from unregulated Varangian exactions, the population of the northern lands could invite one of the kings as a prince, so that he would protect them from other Varangian detachments. Rurik, in whom some researchers see the Rurik of Jutland, would be a suitable figure for this purpose, since he came from the most remote corner of the Western Baltic and was a stranger to the Varangians from southern Sweden, located closer to the Chuds and the Eastern Slavs.
Science has not sufficiently developed the question of the connection between the chronicle Varangians and the Western, Baltic Slavs.
Archaeologically, connections between the Baltic Slavs and Novgorod can be traced back to the 11th century. Written sources from the 11th century speak of trade between the Western Baltic and Novgorod. It can be assumed that if the calling of a foreign prince actually took place as one of the episodes of the anti-Varangian struggle, then such a prince could be Rurik of Jutland, whose original place of reign was located next to the Baltic Slavs. The stated considerations are not sufficiently substantiated to build any hypothesis on them.
Let us continue our consideration of the chronicle of 1050, which for the first time in Russian literature introduced the legend of the calling of the Varangians:
“And from those Varangians, the finder of those, was nicknamed the Varangians; and the essence of the Novgorod people was from the Varangian family to the last day.”
This ordinary phrase, which explains the presence of Swedes among the citizens of Novgorod (confirmed by various versions of the Russian Truth), was changed by other chroniclers, as we will see later, and was used by the Normanists.
“And they [the Varangians] had a prince named Olg, a wise and brave man...” [then Oleg’s robbery of the capital of Rus', Kiev, is described] “and he and his men were Varangians, Slovenians, and from then on they became known as Russia.”
According to the completely clear meaning of the phrase, Oleg’s army, which, as Yaroslav the Wise later did, consisted of Varangians and Slovenes, after capturing Kiev, began to be called Russia. “Ottole,” that is, from the time when Oleg turned out to be the temporary prince of Rus', his warriors began to be called Russia, Russians.
Of absolutely exceptional interest for understanding the attitude of the Varangians to the North Russian political system is the message about tribute to the Varangians:
“And from Novgorod 300 hryvnias are divided for the summer of peace, which they still give.”
The tribute paid "by dividing the world" is a payoff from raids, but not the duty of subjects. The Kyiv princes later paid a similar tribute to the Polovtsians in order to protect themselves from unexpected attacks. Byzantium in the 10th century bought off such a “tribute” from the Rus. The mentioned “tribute” of Novgorod to the Varangians was paid until the death of Yaroslav the Wise in 1054 (the chronicler, writing around 1050, spoke of “even now giving”).
The payment of this tribute can in no way be interpreted as political domination of the Normans in Novgorod. On the contrary, it presupposes the presence of local authorities in the city, which can collect a significant amount (at 11th-century prices, sufficient to purchase 500 longships) and pay it to such an external force as the Varangians, for the sake of the peace of the country. Those receiving ransom (in this case, the Varangians) always look more primitive than those paying off raids.
Oleg, after the victorious campaign against Constantinople (911), returned not to Kyiv, but to Novgorod “and from there to Ladoga - There is his grave in Ladoza.” Other chronicles speak differently about Oleg’s burial place: “the friends say [that is, they sing in legends], as if I am going over the sea and will bite a serpent in his foot, and from that I will die.”
The disagreements over where the founder of the Russian state died (as the Normanists characterize Oleg) are curious: the Russian people of the mid-11th century did not know exactly where he died - in Ladoga or in his homeland overseas. Seven decades later, another unexpected answer will appear: Oleg’s grave will be on the outskirts of Kyiv.
All the data in the Novgorod Ostromir Chronicle are such that they do not allow us to draw a conclusion about the organizing role of the Normans not only for the long-established Kievan Rus, but even for that federation of northern tribes that experienced the brunt of the Varangian raids. Even the legend about the calling of Prince Rurik looks here as a manifestation of the state wisdom of the Novgorodians themselves.
Let us consider the historical situation of another era, when Nestor’s detailed and significant work was rewritten twice, first with the participation of abbot Sylvester Vydubitsky, and then by an unknown writer who was a confidant of Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich Monomashich. This writer told the story in the first person about his visit to Ladoga in 1114 (there he showed archaeological interest in ancient beads washed out of the soil by water). Let's call him Ladojanin. According to A. A. Shakhmatov, he redid Nestor’s vault in 1118 (the so-called third edition of the “Tale of Bygone Years”).
Vladimir Monomakh, a talented statesman and commander, ended up on the Kiev grand-ducal table not by right of dynastic seniority - he was the son of the youngest of the Yaroslavichs (Vsevolod), and representatives of the senior branches were also alive. Monomakh's relationship with the rich and powerful Kyiv boyars was complex. The last years of Vsevolod Yaroslavich’s life, Vladimir was with his sick father and actually ruled the state. After the death of Vsevolod in 1093, the boyars, dissatisfied with Vladimir, transferred the Kiev table to the mediocre Svyatopolk (by seniority), and Monomakh unsuccessfully sought the throne for twenty years. Only in 1113 (after the death of Svyatopolk) at the very height of the popular uprising, the boyars extended an invitation to Vladimir, who was then reigning in Pereyaslavl Russky (now Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky), calling him to the Kiev throne. Monomakh agreed, arrived in Kyiv and immediately supplemented the Russian Pravda with a special “Charter” that alleviated the situation of ordinary citizens.
As a true statesman, Monomakh, acting among rival princes, always cared about asserting his rights and correctly covering his affairs. Without undue modesty, he personally wrote the famous “Teaching,” which is partly a memoir (where, as in all memoirs, the author takes care of favorable coverage of his activities), partly a summary for the chronicler, which lists 83 campaigns of Vladimir in different parts of Europe.
His attention to the chronicle, to how his deeds, his laws, his campaigns would be shown in books to his contemporaries and descendants, was manifested in the fact that he became familiar with the chronicle of Nestor (who wrote under his predecessor) and transferred the manuscript from the Pechersky Monastery to Vydubitsky, founded by his father. The abbot of this monastery, Sylvester, changed something in the book he received (1116), but this obviously did not satisfy the high customer. The new rework was entrusted to Ladozhanin.
In the Novgorod "Ostromir Chronicle" Monomakh was impressed by three ideas: the first - the legitimacy of the prince invited (which he himself was); second - the prince appears as a calmer of unrest, reminiscent of the Kyiv situation of 1113 ("... the army is great and strife and risen hail upon hail...", chronicle of 1050); third - the invited prince eliminates lawlessness (“... and there is no truth in them...”) and must “rule by right.” By this time Monomakh had already published his new “Charter”.
The consonance of the chronicle of 1050 with the state of affairs under Monomakh is quite complete. There is no talk here about the Varangians as such; The meaning of the undoubted analogy, as we see, is completely different. However, the amendments to the Nestor manuscript (1113) made by Ladojanin are clearly pro-Varangian in nature. Here we must mention Monomakh’s son Mstislav, with whose name A. A. Shakhmatov associated the editorial office of 1118, which was created under his supervision.
All the tendencies of the inserts in “The Tale of Bygone Years” to the north, all the pro-Varangian elements in them and the constant desire to put Novgorod in first place, to push Kiev aside - all this becomes understandable when we get acquainted with the personality of Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich. The son of the Englishwoman Gita Garaldovna (daughter of the English king), married in his first marriage to the Swedish, Varangian, princess Christina (daughter of King Inga Stenkilson), and in his second marriage to the Novgorod hawthorn, daughter of the mayor Dmitry Zavidovich (her brother, Mstislav’s brother-in-law, was also a mayor), Mstislav, who married his daughter to the Swedish king Sigurd, had all his roots in Novgorod and the North of Europe.
As a twelve-year-old boy in 1088, the prince was sent by his grandfather to Novgorod, where from 1095 he reigned continuously until leaving for Kyiv to join his father in 1117. When in 1102 Monomakh’s rivalry with the Svyatopolk of Kiev led to the fact that Monomakh had to recall Mstislav from Novgorod, the Novgorodians sent an embassy to Kiev, which declared to the Grand Duke Svyatopolk, who wanted to plant his son in Novgorod: “We, prince, sent We said this to you: we don’t want Svyatopolk or his son.” This was followed by a direct threat: “If you have your son as head, then send and, and this [Mstislav] was given to us by Vsevolod [the son of Yaroslav the Wise] and we raised ourselves as a prince...”
Mstislav, “raised” by the Novgorodians, was directly related to chronicle writing. To Shakhmatov’s arguments we can also add an analysis of the miniatures of the Radziwill Chronicle. From the moment Mstislav arrived in Kyiv in 1117, this chronicle shows great attention to the affairs of Mstislav; the illustrator devotes miniatures to events from his life, a new architectural style appears in the drawings, continuing until Mstislav’s death in 1132. During this time, the artist uses symbolic figures of animals (Polovtsians - a snake; quarrels and quarrels - a dog; victory over a neighbor - a cat and a mouse, etc.).
Obviously, during the time of Mstislav, a special illustrated chronicle of Mstislav Vladimirovich was kept in Kyiv. Let us now see how all this affected the presentation of the initial episodes of Russian history in The Tale of Bygone Years.
We have no doubt that the circle of people involved in altering Nestor’s chronicle in a spirit pleasing to Monomakh was well aware of the Novgorod chronicle of 1050 (which was continued until 1079). The Novgorod Chronicle was used primarily because there was a legend unknown to the people of Kiev about the voluntary calling of princes, consonant with the calling of Monomakh to Kiev in 1113, and the election of Mstislav by the Novgorodians in 1102. Monomakh’s resentment towards the Kiev boyars, who for two decades did not allow him to “take away the gold table,” was reflected in the emergence of another tendency of the 1118 edition - to push Kiev into second place in the initial phase of the history of Russian statehood, replacing it with Novgorod, and to emphasize the role of those called up from -beyond the sea of Varangians. It was important for the editor to disavow Kyiv, Russian traditions.
Ladojanin introduced into the text of the chronicle the previously absent identification of the Varangians with Russia as primordial.
Facial image of Grand Duke Rurik. Title book.
1672
The author of the chronicle of 1050 clearly wrote that the newcomers from the north, the Varangian and Slovenian troops of Oleg, began to be called Russia only after they established themselves within Rus', in Kiev they conquered. The Ladojanin assured that there was a Varangian people “Rus”, like the Norwegians, English or Gotlanders. In fact, there were no such people in the North of Europe, and no search by scientists found them.
The only thing that can be assumed is that the author mistook the Frisians who lived west of Jutland for the Varangians.
Nestor pointed out the closeness of the bookish Old Church Slavonic language (in which Cyril and Methodius created writing) to the Russian language. The Ladozhanin introduced here his own speculation about the origin of the name “Rus” from the Varangians, a speculation generated by the incorrect interpretation of one place in Sylvester’s half-corrected manuscript.
The only explanation for such an unexpected identification of the Rus with the Varangians can be only one circumstance: in the hands of the editor was a treaty of Rus' with Byzantium of 911, extracted from the princely archive, beginning with the words: “We are from the Rus-skago family...” Next is a list of the names of the embassy members authorized to conclude contract The embassy also included undoubted Varangians:
Ingeld, Farlov, Ruald and others. However, the initial phrase of the treaty did not mean the national origin of the diplomats, but that legal party, that power on whose behalf the treaty was concluded with another power: “We are from the Russian clan [people] ... messages from Olga the Grand Duke of Russia and from everyone who is under the hand of his lordly and great princes and his great boyars to you, Lvov and Alexander and Konstantin...”
The legally necessary phrase “We are from the Russian family” is also present in the treaty of 944, where among the ambassadors there were many Slavs who had nothing to do with the Varangians: Uleb, Prasten, Voist, Sinko Borich and others. If Ladojanin knew the Varangian name book, then he could conclude that the “Russian clan” is the Varangian clan. But the fact is that in the entire text of the treaty the word “Russian” means Russian people in general, Russian princes, Russian cities, citizens of the state of Rus', and the word “clan” itself meant “people” in the broad sense of the word. The text of the agreement is an excellent illustration of the story that, having arrived in Kyiv, the Varangians “Ottole” began to be called Russia, becoming subjects of the state of Rus'. By the time the agreement was concluded with the emperors Leo and Alexander, three decades had passed since the appearance of the Varangians in Kyiv.
Sofia Second Chronicle in the list of the 16th century.
One caveat should be made - Ladojanin nowhere speaks of the power of the Varangians over the Slavs; he only claims that the Slavs got their name from the Varangians-Russ he invented. This is not so much a historical concept as incidental ethnonymic remarks, which were not strange in the 12th century for the environment where the Varangian Swedes were trading neighbors, and part of the princely court environment (the court of Princess Christina), and some of the city residents.
It was possible to assert on the basis of a single phrase (admittedly repeated as a refrain) “from the Varangians the Russian Land was nicknamed” that the Normans were the creators of Kievan Rus only when history had not yet become a science, but was on the same level with alchemy.
The appearance of the Normans on the edge of the “deserted deserts of the North” is reflected by another Russian source, which came to the attention of historians very late. These are records in the Nikon Chronicle of the 16th century about the years 867-875, which are absent in other chronicles known to us, including in the Tale of Bygone Years (in the editions that have reached us in 1116 and 1118). These records are mixed with extracts from Russian and Byzantine sources, slightly corrected in language, but still retain the old spelling, which differs from the spelling of the 16th century historians themselves who compiled the Nikon Chronicle.
Records of events in the 9th century
gathered together
came back
creation
Text about the events of the 16th century
meeting
returned
rise up
Additionally, information for the years 867-875 could be considered a fiction of Moscow historians of the 16th century, but this is warned against by the fragmentary nature of the records, the presence of small, insignificant details (for example, the death of the son of Prince Oskold) and the complete absence of any idea that could, from the point of view of the compilers, to give meaning to these records. Moreover, the records about Rurik contradicted in their anti-Varangian tone both neighboring articles drawn from the Tale of Bygone Years (1118), and the general dynastic tendency of the 16th century, which considered Rurik the direct ancestor of the Moscow Tsar. As for the assumption that these records are fictional, in this respect they sharply fall out of the style of the Grozny era. In the 16th century they came up with a lot, but they came up with whole compositions decorated with a “weaving of words.” From the point of view of the writers of the 16th century, individual scattered factual information was of no value.
The chronology in these additional records is very complex, confusing and different from the chronology of the Tale of Bygone Years. It is deciphered only after analyzing the Byzantine chronology of the 9th-10th centuries and comparing it with events precisely known to us.
It is of great interest that the records of the Nikon Chronicle fill in the gaps in the Tale of Bygone Years, where there are significant intervals between the events of the first dated years.
Let us consider all the first dated (dates are arbitrary) events of Russian history in both groups.
"The Tale of Bygone Years" (1118)
859
The Varangians take tribute from Chud, Sloven, Meri, Vesi and Krivichi. The northern tribes expelled the Varangians. Strife. Calling of the Varangians. Rurik settled in Ladoga (edition 1118), and two years later in Novgorod.
Rurik distributes cities to his husbands: Polotsk, Rostov, Beloozero. Two Rurik “boyars” – Askold and Dir – went to Kyiv and began to reign there.
866
Askold and Dir made a campaign against Constantinople.
Nikon Chronicle 867 (date is provisional)
“Vastasha Slovena, who killed the people of Novgorod and Merya and Krivichi against the Varangians and drove them overseas and did not give them tribute. She began to rule for herself and build cities. And there was no truth in them and generation after generation and hosts and captivity and bloodshed without ceasing. And therefore the gathering decided to themselves: “Who would be the prince in us and rule us? We will look for and remove such one either from us or from Kozar or from Polyany or from Dunaychev or from the Varangians." And there was a great rumor about this - we are this, we want something else. The same council, sent to the Varangians."
870
Arrival of Rurik in Novgorod.
872
"Oskold's son was quickly killed by the Bulgarians." “That same summer, the Novgorodians were offended, saying: “As if we should be a slave and suffer much evil in every possible way from Rurik and his family.” That same summer, Rurik killed Vadim the Brave and many other Novgorodians who beat up his companions.”
873
Rurik distributes the cities: Polotsk, Rostov, Beloozero. “That same summer, Askold and Dir Polochan fought and did a lot of evil.”
874
"Ide Askold and Dir in Greek..."
875
“Askold and Dir returned from Tsaryagrad in a small squad and were in Kiev, crying great...” “That same summer, Oskold and Dir beat up many Pechenegs.
The given fragmentary records, which do not form a compact whole in the Nikon Chronicle, but are diluted with a variety of extracts from the Chronograph of 1512 and other sources, are of undoubted interest in their totality. Those events that in the Tale of Bygone Years are very artificially grouped under one year 862 are given here broken down by year, filling the empty interval that exists in the Tale between 866 and 879.
The absolute dating of comparable events in these two sources does not coincide (and generally cannot be considered final), but the relative dating is respected. Thus, the “Tale” speaks of Rurik’s arrival initially not in Novgorod, but in Ladoga; This is written by a Ladoga resident who visited Ladoga four years before he edited the chronicle, obviously based on some local legends. Rurik ended up in Novgorod “in two years” (two years later - B.R.), which is reflected in the records of the Nikon Chronicle.
The main difference between The Tale of Bygone Years (2nd and 3rd editions) from Nikon’s records is the difference in points of view on events. Sylvester and Ladojanin presented the matter from the point of view of the Varangians: the Varangians took tribute, they were expelled; strife began - they were called; The Varangians settled in Russian cities and then conquered Kyiv.
The author of the records included in the Nikon Chronicle looks at events from the point of view of Kyiv and Kievan Rus as an already existing state. Somewhere in the extreme Slavic-Finnish north, “finders” appear - the Varangians. With their united forces, the northern tribes forced the Normans to go overseas, and then, after the strife, they began to think about their new state order, proposing to place a single prince at the head of the resulting union of tribes. Several options were discussed: the prince could be elected from among the united tribes (“or from us…”), but this, obviously, contained the cause of the conflicts, since the anti-Varangian union was formed from different and multilingual tribes.
Options for inviting the prince from outside are also named; in first place is the Khazar Khaganate, a powerful nomadic power of the Caspian steppes. In second place is the glade, that is, Kievan Rus. In third place are the “Du-Nai” - a mysterious but extremely interesting concept, geographically connected with the lower reaches and arms of the Danube, which until the end of the 14th century were considered (in historical memoirs) Russians. And in the very last place are the Varangians, to whom the embassy was sent. The calling of the Swedish king was explained, one must think, by the fact that the Varangians, even without an invitation, but with weapons, appeared in these northern places. The calling of the Varangian (we were talking about one prince) was obviously determined by the principle of farming out “dividing the world.”
We do not know what the reality was, but the trend here sharply diverges from that pursued by the chroniclers of Monomakh, who considered the Varangians the only contenders for a princely place in the alliance of northern tribes. This trend can be defined as pro-Kiev, since the first country where it was planned to send for the prince was the Kiev principality of the Polyans. The further text convinces of this, since all additional entries are devoted to the activities of the Kyiv princes Askold and Dir.
In “The Tale of Bygone Years,” Askold and Dir are presented to the reader as Varangians, Rurik’s boyars, who asked him to take time off for a campaign against Constantinople and allegedly simultaneously took possession of the Polyana land and Kiev. A. A. Shakhmatov has long shown that the version of the Varangian origin of Askold and Dir is incorrect and that these Kyiv princes of the 9th century should be considered the descendants of Kiy, the last representatives of the local Kyiv dynasty.
The Polish historian Jan Dlugosh (died in 1480), who knew Russian chronicles well, wrote about Askold and Dir:
“After the death of Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv, inheriting in a direct line, their sons and nephews dominated the Russians for many years, until the inheritance passed to two brothers Askold and Dir.”
The scientific analysis of the chronicles distorted by editing, carried out by Shakhmatov without involving the text of Dlugosh, and the extract of the Sandomierz historian from the Russian chronicle unknown to us, equally testify to one chronicle tradition of considering these princes killed by the Varangians to be the last links of the dynastic chain of the Kievichs. Askold was called by the Byzantine emperor Vasily I (867-886) “the proud Kagan of the northern Scythians.” The name of this “khagan” (a title equal to the imperial one) is given by the Ladoga citizen in the form “Askold”, and the Nikon Chronicle (in its unique records) – “Oskold” (“About Prince Rustem Oskold”).
As an unprovable assumption, one can express the idea that the name of this native prince, who reigned in the Middle Dnieper region, could have preserved the ancient Proto-Slavic form, dating back to the Herodotus Skolots, “named so after their king.” In toponymy, the name skolote has been preserved to this day in the names of two extreme rivers bordering the skolotes: Oskol on the very edge of the Proto-Slavic land and Vorskla, the border Proto-Slavic river that separated them from the nomads. In the 12th century, the name of the river was written “Vorskol”, which is very well etymologized (“vor” - “fence”) as “fence of chipped stones”. It would be very interesting if further analysis confirmed the connection of the name Oskold with archaic chips.
The identity of Prince Dir is unclear to us. It is felt that his name is artificially attached to Oskold, since when describing their supposedly joint actions, the grammatical form gives us the singular, and not the dual or plural, as it should be when describing the joint actions of two persons.
Kievan Rus of Prince Oskold (870s) is depicted as a state with complex foreign policy tasks.
Kievan Rus organizes campaigns against Byzantium. They are well known to us from both Russian and Byzantine sources (860-1043).
An important task of Kievan Rus was the defense of the wide thousand-mile steppe fanitsa from various warlike peoples: Turkic-Bulgars, Magyars, Pechenegs. And Nikon’s records report on the wars of Kyiv with these nomads. We know nothing from the Russian chronicles about the war with the Bulgarians, by which we should mean the “black Bulgarians” of the Russian chronicles, called internal Bulgarians by eastern authors. These Turkic-Bulgarians, nomads, occupied a huge space along the entire southern fanica of Rus'. According to the Persian Anonymous, they are "a brave, warlike, fearsome people... they possess sheep, weapons and military equipment."
The first mention in Nikon's records of the name Oskold is associated with this warlike people: “The son of Oskold was quickly killed by the Bulgarians.” The war with the Bulgarians, about which Russian sources are silent, could be questioned, but it is confirmed by the same Persian Anonymous: “Internal Bulgaria is in a state of war with all of Russia.”
The evidence of the Nikon recording of 872 was confirmed. Historians of the 16th century reported information that became known to science only at the very end of the 19th century.
In 875, Prince Oskold "killed many Pechenegs." At this time, the Pechenegs had already begun moving from the Azov region to the west, following the Magyars who had gone to the Carpathians. The wars of the Dnieper Slavs with nomads (in this case with the Bulgarians and Pechenegs) were a long-standing and important function of both the Russian Union of Tribes in the 6th-7th centuries and the state of Rus' in the 9th century.
The last quarter of the 9th century added another concern to the Kievan state: overseas “finders” – the Varangians – appeared in the far north of the Slavic world. Nikon’s records, despite their extreme laconicism, paint us with three groups of interesting events: firstly, the Novgorodians, under the leadership of Vadim the Brave, are actively fighting Rurik in their city, not wanting to be his slaves. The name of Vadim raises some doubts, but the fact of anti-Varangian speeches is credible, since it already had a precedent - the expulsion of the Varangians overseas.
The second group of events is the flight of the Novgorodians to Kyiv from Rurik. Kyiv gives refuge to emigrants.
The third group of events is the most interesting. Kievan Rus organizes resistance to the Varangians on the northern outskirts of its possessions. Under one year they put: Rurik sending his husband to Polotsk and the retaliatory action of Kyiv - “you fought Askold... Polotsk and did a lot of evil.” Probably, the war of Kyiv against the Krivichi, mentioned by V.N. Tatishchev in 875, is also connected with this (“Go (Oskold) and to Krivichi and defeat them”).
The Polochans had already been part of Rus', and the war with them after they accepted Rurik’s husband was dictated by Kyiv’s desire to regain its possessions on the Western Dvina. The war with the Krivichi union was due to the strategic importance of Smolensk, which stood on the spot where the portages from the Dnieper to Lovat began. It was a war for the Dnieper, so that the path “from the Greeks to the Varangians” did not become the path from the Varangians to the Greeks.
The strategic task of the Kyiv princes was to prevent, to the best of their ability, the penetration of overseas “finders” to the south, or, at least, to take their movement under the control of Kyiv, the long-time master of the Dnieper. It was possible to protect oneself from the invasion of Varangian troops only by setting up strong military outposts on the most important routes. The first such outpost in Rus' was Polotsk, which blocked the Dvina, before the arrival of Rurik; the second could be Smolensk, which blocked the very beginning of the Dnieper route. Such an outpost was, in all likelihood, the Gnezdovo settlement with a huge burial ground, which arose in the 9th century. The third outpost, blocking the approach to Smolensk and the Dnieper in the north, could be Rusa (Staraya Rusa) on the southern shore of Lake Ilmen (near the mouth of the Lovat, flowing from the Smolensk region). The very name of the city - Rusa - could be associated with primordial Russia. Rusa’s connection with the Kyiv prince, his personal domain, is clearly visible in the later agreements of Novgorod with the princes.
The fourth and most important outpost was, undoubtedly, Novgorod, built either by the Slovenes themselves during the war with the Varangians, or by the Kiev prince as a fortress that blocked the Varangians’ entrance to Ilmen, that is, to both trans-European routes: the Volga to the “lot of Simov” (to the Caliphate) and Dnieper to Byzantium. In its subsequent history, Novgorod was considered by Kiev for quite a long time as a junior city, a princely domain, the inheritance of the eldest sons of the Kyiv princes.
In all likelihood, an addition to the list of Slavic peoples within the state of Rus' (“these are the only Slovenian language in Rus'…”), made not in the form of the name of a tribal union (“Polyane”, “Dregovichi”, etc.), but by the name of the city - Novgorodians - appeared in the original text after the construction of the city, which became the center of a multi-tribal federation. This circle of events should also include the remark preserved in Sylvester’s version: “And from those Varangians (that is, from the time of the struggle with the Varangians) the Russian land was called Novgorod,” which can only mean: “From the time of those Varangians, Novgorod began to be called the Russian land.” , that is, it became part of Russia, about which an additional note was made in the list of tribal unions that were part of Russia.
The construction of Novgorod by the Varangians (edited in 1118) is excluded, since the Scandinavians had a different name for this city, completely unknown in Rus'. The only support for the Normans was Ladoga, where Oleg went after a successful campaign.
Nikon’s notes are valuable because, unlike the “Tale of Bygone Years,” distorted by the Normanists of the early 12th century, they depict Russia (in accordance with the surviving fragments of Nestor’s text) as a large, long-existing state that pursued an active foreign policy in relation to the steppe , and to rich Byzantium, and to the distant northern “nakhodniki”, who were forced to bypass the possessions of Russia, along the roundabout Volga route. At intermediate points between Lake Ladoga and Kiev there were such barriers as Novgorod, Rusa and Gnezdo-vo-Smolensk; Only individual trading bands or detachments of Varangians specially hired for the Kyiv service could pass through them.
In Smolensk and the Upper Volga, archaeologists find Varangian burials, but these Varangians on trade routes have nothing to do with the construction of the Russian state, which already existed and had already laid its routes far into the depths of Asia. One might think that it was these connections that attracted the Normans to the vastness of Eastern Europe.
The Varangians also appeared in Kyiv, but almost always as a mercenary army, violent, scandalous (we know this from the Most Ancient Russian Truth) and brutally cruel to the vanquished. Kyiv was reliably protected by land portages and its outposts from the unexpected invasion of large masses of Varangians, similar to the flotillas off the Western European shores. Only one king, Oleg, managed to deceive the vigilance of the townspeople and, passing off his detachment as a merchant caravan, seized power in Kyiv, exterminating the Kievich dynasty. Thanks to the fact that he became the head of a huge united army of almost all Slavic tribes (most of them had long been part of Rus'), Oleg managed to make successful campaigns against Constantinople, documented by the treaties of 907 and 911.
Oleg says goodbye to the remains of his beloved horse. Radziwill Chronicle. XV century
But in the Russian chronicle Oleg is present not so much as a historical figure, but as a literary hero, whose image is artificially cobbled together from memories and Varangian sagas about him.
The Varangian saga is visible both in the story of the successful deception of the Kievites, and in the description of a rare situation for Norman sailors, when ships are put on rollers and dragged along the ground, and with a fair wind they even raise the sails. The story about Oleg’s predicted death is also taken from the saga - “but you will receive death from your horse.”
Contemporaries explained the abundance of epic tales about the leader of a successful joint campaign as follows: “And Olga came to Kiev, bringing gold and silks [silks] and vegetables [fruits] and wine and all sorts of ornamental things. And Olga the Prophet was nicknamed - byahu for people's trash and nevegla-si ". In the Novgorod chronicle there is a direct reference to the epic tales about the successful Varangian: “Oleg went to Novugorod and from there to Ladoga. The friends say (they sing in the legends) that I’m going across the sea and I’ll peck a serpent in his leg and from there I’ll die. There is a grave him in Ladoz."
The lack of awareness of the Russian people about Oleg’s fate is amazing. Immediately after the campaign that enriched him, when the united army of Slavic tribes and Varangians took an indemnity from the Greeks, the “Grand Duke of Russia,” as it was written in the treaty of 911, disappears not only from the capital of Rus', but also from the Russian horizon in general. And he dies unknown where: either in Ladoga, where the Novgorodians mark his grave, or in Kyiv...
The epic about Oleg the Prophet was carefully collected by the editor of The Tale of Bygone Years in order to present the prince not only as a usurper finder, but also as a wise ruler who liberated the Slavic tribes from tribute to the Khazar Kaganate. The chronicler Ladoga (from the entourage of Prince Mstislav) even goes to the length of juggling, knowing the version about Oleg’s grave in Ladoga (being in Ladoga in 1114 and talking about historical topics with the mayor Pavel, he could not help but know it), he nevertheless remains silent about Ladoga or about Sweden, since this would fit poorly with his intended image of the creator of the Russian state, the builder of Russian cities. The editor introduces a whole legend into the chronicle, ending with the crying of the people of Kiev and the solemn burial of Oleg in Kyiv on Shchekovitsa. However, in Kyiv they knew another grave of some Oleg in a different place. In addition, from the princely archive, he enters into the chronicle the original text of the treaty with the Greeks (911).
As a result of Ladozhanin’s editorial and literary efforts, a new, special concept of the initial story is created, built on two heroes, two Varangians - Rurik and Oleg. The first led a number of northern Slavic-Finnish tribes (at their request) and established order for them, and the second took control of Southern Russia, abolished tribute to the Khazars and led a successful campaign in 907 or 911 against the Greeks, which enriched all its participants.
This simple and naively medieval concept, personifying history, was supposed to replace the widely written canvas of the conscientious Nestor.
However, although Ladojanin was an educated and well-read scribe, the history of early Rus', which he composed on the model of Northern European dynastic legends, turned out to be extremely artificial and sharply contradicted those fragments of Nestor’s description of Russian reality that survived in the chronicle after editing. Ladojanin writes about the construction of cities by the Varangians, and all the cities he mentioned (Kiev, Chernigov, Pereyaslavl, Lyubech, Smolensk, Polotsk, Izborsk, Pskov, Novgorod, Rostov, Beloozero, Suzdal) already existed earlier and are not Varangian, but Slavic or in rare cases Finnish (Suzdal) names.
The thousand-year course of history in the south, where the Scythians ("Great Scythia"), once memorable to chroniclers, lived, was replaced by the arrival of an overseas king with his fantastic brothers to the deserted swampy places of the North, which looked like "deserted deserts" in the eyes of eastern contemporaries. From here, from north to south, from the newly built Novgorod and distant Ladoga to ancient Kyiv, the impulses of primary statehood allegedly spread.
The creator of this unnatural concept did not need either genealogy or chronology. They could only hinder his idea of the instant birth of a state after the arrival of the Varangian ships.
The genealogy turned out to be, as has long been proven, primitively artificial: Rurik is the founder of the dynasty, Igor is his son, and Oleg is a relative, although the writer who stood closest in time to these figures (Iakov Mnich, who glorified Yaroslav the Wise), began a new dynasty of Kiev princes (after the Kieviches) with Igor the Old (died in 945), neglecting the short-term usurper Oleg and not considering it necessary to mention the “finder” Rurik, who did not reach Kiev.
Under the pen of the editor of 1118, Igor became the son of Rurik. The chronology of events and the reign of the princes of the 9th - early 10th centuries is extremely inaccurate and contradictory. Fortunately for science, the editing of the chronicle was carried out, although unceremoniously, but not consistently enough: more of Nestor’s detailed and interesting text survived than was necessary for the reader to perceive Ladojanin’s concept as the only version.
Looking closely from this point of view at the fragmentary records of the Nikon Chronicle, we see in them the antithesis of the pro-Varangian concept. The author of the primary records is undoubtedly a resident of Kiev, like Nestor. He knows the southern events (the struggle with the Pechenegs and the Turkic-Bulgarians), knows everything that is happening in Kiev, and, most importantly, he looks at the appearance of the “finders” on the Western Dvina and Ilmen through the eyes of a Kievite: the Kiev prince sends troops to Polotsk and on the Krivichi, in whose lands the Varangians appeared, the Kiev prince receives in the capital the Novgorod fugitives who fled from the violence perpetrated in Novgorod by Rurik. This is a completely different look at the first years of contact between the state of Rus' and the Varangians!
The question involuntarily arises: aren’t these Nikon’s notes a secondary retelling of fragments of Nestor’s text that have survived somewhere, removed at one time by one of the editors of 1116-1118? The form “du-naichi” (instead of “Danubians”) with a clearly Novgorod-Pskov clinking glass directly indicates the involvement of the northern copyist in this text, which was of interest to the Novgorodians in terms of content.
This idea is suggested not so much by the Kiev point of view of the author of the fragments (not every Kiev resident is Nestor), but by the presence, both here and here, both in the fragments and in undoubtedly Nestor’s text, of such a rare geographical definition as “Danubians” in relation to the population of the lower reaches of the Danube . According to Nestor, the Danubians “to this day” indicate the settlement of Kievets as the location of Kiya. In Nikon's documents, this word comes up when discussing the question of where to look for a prince - among the Khazars, among the Polans, or among the Danubians. In this context, the Danubians look like some kind of state association, equal in importance to Rus' (which has not yet included the Slovenes) or the Khazar Khaganate, but undoubtedly different from Bulgaria and the Bulgarians, about whom Nestor wrote a lot and in detail under their own name. The solution to the “Danubians” will become clear later, when we get acquainted with the routes of the Rus to Byzantium and with the crossroads near the mouth of the Danube.
Having recognized the concept of the editors of The Tale of Bygone Years as artificial and lightweight, we must answer the question: what is the real role of the Varangians in the early history of Rus'?
1. Varangian troops were attracted to the difficult Russian lands by information about the lively trade of Rus' with the countries of the East, which is proven by numismatic data. The Varangians in the second half of the 9th century began to raid and take tribute from the northern Slavic and Finnish tribes.
2. In the 870s, the Kyiv princes took a number of serious measures (campaigns against the Krivichi and Polotsk people) to counter the Varangians. Probably at the same time, strongholds such as Rusa and Novgorod were built in the north.
3. Oleg (Swedish? Norwegian?) was based in Ladoga, but for a short time took over the Kyiv table. His victorious campaign against Byzantium was carried out as a campaign of many tribes; after the campaign (certified by the text of the treaty of 911), Oleg disappeared from the horizon of the Russian people and died in an unknown place. Legends indicated his graves in a variety of places. The Varangians had nothing to do with the construction of Russian cities.
4. For a long time, Novgorod paid tribute to the Varangians - a ransom - in order to avoid new raids. Byzantium paid the same tribute to the Russians "dividing the world."
5. The presence of land barriers - portages on the river routes of Eastern Europe - did not allow the Varangians to use their advantage as seafarers (as was the case in Western Europe). The countermeasures of the Kyiv princes contributed to the turn of the main Varangian routes towards the Volga, and not towards the Dnieper. The path from the “Varyags to the Greeks” is a path around the European continent. The path from Kyiv to Novgorod and to the Baltic was called the path “from the Greek to the Varangians.”
6. The Kyiv princes (like the Byzantine emperors) widely used Varangian mercenary detachments, specially sending for them to the Northern Baltic states - “overseas”. Oskold was already gathering the Varangians (if you believe the text of the Tale of Bygone Years). Igor, having conceived a second campaign against Byzantium in 941, “sent the Varangians overseas, and I went to Grky.” At the same time as the Varangians, the Pechenegs were also hired. Varangian warriors carried out diplomatic assignments of the Kyiv princes and participated in the conclusion of treaties. The Varangians were hired both for war and for political assassinations: hired Varangians stabbed to death Prince Yaropolk in 980, the Varangians killed Prince Gleb in 1015.
7. Part of the Varangian nobility joined the Russian boyars. Some Varangians, like Sveneld, achieved high positions, but were extremely cruel to the Slavic population (Sveneld and the “martyrdom” of the streets). Cruelty, often senseless, was often manifested among the Varangian troops who fought under the Russian flag, and because of this they were identified with the Rus, with the population of that state
(Rus), whom they served.
Thus, the trade of the Rus with the countries of the Caspian coast was peaceful for a long time, and local writers said that the Rus go to any coast and trade there or ride camels to Baghdad. But at the very beginning of the 10th century (Oleg’s time), when one can assume an uncontrolled increase in the number of Varangians in the Kiev army, sources report monstrous atrocities of the “Rus” on the same Caspian coast. The real Rus-Slavs in the campaigns of this decade (903-913) obviously turned out to be greatly diluted by uncontrollable detachments of Varangians, mistaken by the local population for Russ.
The French chronicler from Normandy, Dudon of Quintinian, speaks about the cruelty of the Normans:
“In carrying out their expulsions and evictions, they [the Normans] first made sacrifices in honor of their god Thor. They sacrifice to him not cattle or any animal, not the gifts of the father of Bacchus or Ceres, but human blood... Therefore, the priest appoints people by lot for the sacrifice.
They [the sacrificed people] are stunned by one blow of the bull's yoke on the head. In a special technique, the brain of everyone on whom the lot has fallen is knocked out, dumped on the ground and, turning it over, the heart gland, that is, a vein, is found. Having extracted all the blood from it, they, according to their custom, anoint their heads with it and quickly unfurl the sails of their ships..."
The warriors of Prophetic Oleg showed the same cruelty in the campaign against the Greeks:
“You have committed many murders with the Grikom... and their own prisoners - I have flogged the other tormentors... and I have done many other evils.”
8. By the end of the 10th - beginning of the 11th century, one of the important tasks of the Russian state was to counter the violent bands of mercenaries. They were settled not in cities, but outside the city walls (for example, Shestovitsy near Chernigov). In 980, when Prince Vladimir traveled overseas to hire the Varangians and, with their help, recaptured Kyiv from his brother, the Varangians demanded very high payment for their services. Vladimir sent the Varangians to Byzantium, asking the emperor not to return them: “and therefore don’t let a single one in.”
Acute conflicts arose in Novgorod in 1015, when Yaroslav hired many Varangians, intending to start a war against his father. Novgorodians defended the honor of their wives and daughters with weapons in their hands.
9. The second stage of the development of Kievan Rus, marked by the appearance of the Varangians, did not make any significant changes in the course of the Russian historical process. The expansion of the territory of Rus' at the expense of the northern tribes was the result of the consolidation of these tribes during the fight against the “Nakhodniki” and the inclusion of Kyiv in this fight.
The two initial stages of the development of Kievan Rus, of which the first is covered by the chronicle only fragmentarily, and the second - distorted, should not be sharply separated from one another. Throughout the 9th and first half of the 10th century, the same process of formation and strengthening of the state principle of Rus' took place.
Neither the raids of the Magyars or internal Bulgarians, nor the raids of the Varangians or the attacks of the Pechenegs could either stop or significantly modify the course of this process. We just need to take a closer look at what was happening in the Slavic lands in general and in the super-union Rus in particular.
Orthodox believers are holding a number of fasts during 2020, both one-day and multi-day. associated not only with food restrictions, but also with a voluntary refusal of all kinds of entertainment. For example, during multi-day fasts it is not customary to “play” weddings.In this material we will list all the Orthodox fasts of 2020 (one-day and multi-day) and tell you when they will take place (dates and deadlines).
In 2020, after the end of the Nativity Fast on January 6 and the holidays associated with the Nativity of Christ and Christmastide, the first one-day post will be January 18, 2020 on Epiphany Christmas Eve.
Further, after Epiphany (after January 19, 2020), one-day posts believers hold every Wednesday and Friday for three weeks in a row (until Friday 7 February 2020). These days you should stick to plant foods, but you can cook them in vegetable oil. Fast days are canceled on February 12, 2020 (Wed) and February 14, 2020 (Fri), in connection with the continuous week in memory of the divine parable of the publican and the Pharisee. Next week again Wednesday February 19, 2020 and Friday February 21, 2020 Lenten.
After Easter week ( during which there is no fasting on Wednesday and Friday) before Trinity, i.e. from April 27, 2020 to June 7, 2020, every Wednesday and Friday fasting, but with a fish permit.
After Trinity and the festive Trinity Week ( when fasting on Wednesday and Friday is canceled) Petrov fast 2020 begins on June 15, 2020. Petrov's fast in 2020 lasts almost a month, more precisely 27 days, ending on Saturday June 11 before the day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. During this fast, on many days it is allowed to add oil to dishes and eat fish, so this fast is quite mild. Only on the first Monday of Lent, June 15, 2020, on Fridays, June 26, 2020, and July 3, 2020, should you adhere to a strict lean diet.
On the following summer days after the day of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (July 12, 2020), Orthodox believers adhere to fast days only on Wednesdays and Fridays(however, with permission to use vegetable oil), up to until the Assumption Fast.
Dormition Fast 2020 begins on Friday, August 14, 2020 and lasts until Friday, August 28, 2020, ending on the day of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Assumption Fast lasts 15 days and is strict. All his days are truly fast except Saturdays and Sundays, when oil is allowed. On the holidays of August 19, 2020 (Transfiguration of the Lord or Apple Savior) and August 28, 2020 (Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary), dishes with fish are added.
In September, October and November 2020 one-day posts follow on Wednesdays and Fridays, when dairy products, meat and eggs are not consumed, but vegetable oil is allowed. Strict one-day posts awaits believers September 11, 2020 on the Day of the Beheading of John the Baptist and September 27, 2020(Exaltation of the Holy Cross).
The Christmas (or Filippov) fast 2020 begins on November 28, 2020, last long post of the year 20. It continues until the Nativity of Christ 2021, ending on Christmas Eve January 6, 2021. The Nativity Fast lasts 40 days, but is not strict. Fish is allowed on holidays and weekends, and oil is allowed on almost all days. Only four days should be noted when one must fast strictly. These are Mondays 7 and 21 December 2020, Wednesday 9 December 2020 and Friday 25 December 2020.
All Orthodox posts for 2020 (briefly):
* All Wednesdays and Fridays 2020, except for Christmastide and continuous weeks (Publican and Pharisee, Cheese/Maslenitsa, Easter, Trinity).
* Epiphany Christmas Eve- one-day, January 18, 2020
* Lent- multi-day, from March 2, 2020 to April 18, 2020
* Petrov post- multi-day, from June 15, 2020 to July 11, 2020;
* Dormition post- multi-day, from August 14, 2020 to August 28, 2020
* Beheading of John the Baptist- one-day, September 11, 2020
* Exaltation of the Holy Cross- one-day, September 27, 2019
* Christmas (Filippov) post- multi-day, from November 28, 2020 to January 6, 2021.
Established by the 9th century. The ancient Russian feudal state (also called Kievan Rus by historians) arose as a result of a very long and gradual process of splitting society into antagonistic classes, which took place among the Slavs throughout the 1st millennium AD. Russian feudal historiography of the 16th - 17th centuries. sought to artificially connect the early history of Rus' with the ancient peoples of Eastern Europe known to it - the Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans; The name of Rus' was derived from the Saomat tribe of Roxalans.
In the 18th century Some of the German scientists invited to Russia, who had an arrogant attitude towards everything Russian, created a biased theory about the dependent development of Russian statehood. Relying on an unreliable part of the Russian chronicle, which conveys the legend about the creation of three brothers (Rurik, Sineus and Truvor) as princes by a number of Slavic tribes - Varangians, Normans by origin, these historians began to argue that the Normans (detachments of Scandinavians who robbed in the 9th century on seas and rivers) were the creators of the Russian state. The “Normanists”, who had poorly studied Russian sources, believed that the Slavs in the 9th-10th centuries. They were completely wild people who allegedly knew neither agriculture, nor crafts, nor settled settlements, nor military affairs, nor legal norms. They attributed the entire culture of Kievan Rus to the Varangians; the very name of Rus' was associated only with the Varangians.
M.V. Lomonosov vehemently objected to the “Normanists” - Bayer, Miller and Schletser, marking the beginning of a two-century scientific debate on the issue of the emergence of the Russian state. A significant part of the representatives of Russian bourgeois science of the 19th and early 20th centuries. supported the Norman theory, despite the abundance of new data that refuted it. This arose both due to the methodological weakness of bourgeois science, which failed to rise to an understanding of the laws of the historical process, and due to the fact that the chronicle legend about the voluntary calling of princes by the people (created by the chronicler in the 12th century during the period of popular uprisings) continued in the 19th - XX centuries maintain its political significance in explaining the question of the beginning of state power. The cosmopolitan tendencies of part of the Russian bourgeoisie also contributed to the predominance of the Norman theory in official science. However, a number of bourgeois scientists have already criticized the Norman theory, seeing its inconsistency.
Soviet historians, approaching the question of the formation of the ancient Russian state from the position of historical materialism, began studying the entire process of the decomposition of the primitive communal system and the emergence of the feudal state. To do this, it was necessary to significantly expand the chronological framework, look into the depths of Slavic history and attract a number of new sources depicting the history of the economy and social relations many centuries before the formation of the ancient Russian state (excavations of villages, workshops, fortresses, graves). A radical revision of Russian and foreign written sources speaking about Rus' was required.
The work on studying the prerequisites for the formation of the Old Russian state has not yet been completed, but already an objective analysis of historical data has shown that all the main provisions of the Norman theory are incorrect, since they were generated by an idealistic understanding of history and an uncritical perception of sources (the range of which was artificially limited), as well as the bias of the researchers themselves. Currently, the Norman theory is being propagated by certain foreign historians of capitalist countries.
Russian chroniclers about the beginning of the state
The question of the beginning of the Russian state was of keen interest to Russian chroniclers of the 11th and 12th centuries. The earliest chronicles apparently began their presentation with the reign of Kiy, who was considered the founder of the city of Kyiv and the Kyiv principality. Prince Kiy was compared with other founders of the largest cities - Romulus (founder of Rome), Alexander the Great (founder of Alexandria). The legend about the construction of Kyiv by Kiy and his brothers Shchek and Khoriv apparently arose long before the 11th century, since it was already in the 7th century. turned out to be recorded in the Armenian chronicle. In all likelihood, the time of Kiya is the period of the Slavic campaigns on the Danube and Byzantium, i.e. VI-VII centuries. The author of “The Tale of Bygone Years” - “Where did the Russian land come from (and) who in Kyiv began first as princes...”, written at the beginning of the 12th century. (as historians think, by the Kyiv monk Nestor), reports that Kiy traveled to Constantinople, was an honored guest of the Byzantine emperor, built a city on the Danube, but then returned to Kiev. Further in the “Tale” there is a description of the struggle of the Slavs with the nomadic Avars in the 6th – 7th centuries. Some chroniclers considered the beginning of statehood to be the “calling of the Varangians” in the second half of the 9th century. and to this date they adjusted all the other events of early Russian history known to them (Novgorod Chronicle). These works, the bias of which had been proven long ago, were used by supporters of the Norman theory.
East Slavic tribes and tribal unions on the eve of the formation of a state in Rus'
The state of Rus' was formed from fifteen large regions inhabited by Eastern Slavs, well known to the chronicler. The glades have long lived near Kyiv. The chronicler considered their land to be the core of the ancient Russian state and noted that in his time the glades were called Russia. The neighbors of the glades in the east were the northerners who lived along the Desna, Seim, Sula and Northern Donets rivers, which retained the memory of the northerners in their name. Down the Dnieper, south of the glades, lived the Ulichi, who moved in the middle of the 10th century. in the area between the Dniester and Bug rivers. In the west, the neighbors of the glades were the Drevlyans, who were often at enmity with the Kyiv princes. Even further to the west were the lands of the Volynians, Buzhans and Dulebs. The extreme East Slavic regions were the lands of the Tiverts on the Dniester (ancient Tiras) and on the Danube and the White Croats in Transcarpathia.
To the north of the glades and Drevlyans were the lands of the Dregovichs (on the swampy left bank of the Pripyat), and to the east of them, along the Sozha River, the Radimichi. The Vyatichi lived on the Oka and Moscow Rivers, bordering on the non-Slavic Meryan-Mordovian tribes of the Middle Oka. The chronicler calls the northern regions in contact with the Lithuanian-Latvian and Chud tribes the lands of the Krivichi (the upper reaches of the Volga, Dnieper and Dvina), Polochans and Slovenes (around Lake Ilmen).
In the historical literature, the conventional term “tribes” (“tribe of the Polyans”, “tribe of the Radimichi”, etc.) was established for these areas, which, however, was not used by the chroniclers. These Slavic regions are so large in size that they can be compared to entire states. A careful study of these regions shows that each of them was an association of several small tribes, the names of which were not preserved in sources on the history of Rus'. Among the Western Slavs, the Russian chronicler mentions in the same way only such large areas as, for example, the land of the Lyutichs, and from other sources it is known that the Lyutichs are not one tribe, but a union of eight tribes. Consequently, the term “tribe,” which speaks of family ties, should be applied to much smaller divisions of the Slavs, which have already disappeared from the memory of the chronicler. The regions of the Eastern Slavs mentioned in the chronicle should be considered not as tribes, but as federations, unions of tribes.
In ancient times, the Eastern Slavs apparently consisted of 100-200 small tribes. The tribe, representing a collection of related clans, occupied an area approximately 40 - 60 km across. Each tribe probably held a council that decided the most important issues of public life; a military leader (prince) was elected; there was a permanent squad of youth and a tribal militia (“regiment”, “thousand”, divided into “hundreds”). Within the tribe there was its own “city”. There a general tribal council gathered, bargaining took place, and a trial took place. There was a sanctuary where representatives of the entire tribe gathered.
These “cities” were not yet real cities, but many of them, which for several centuries were the centers of a tribal district, with the development of feudal relations turned into either feudal castles or cities.
The consequence of major changes in the structure of tribal communities, replaced by neighboring communities, was the process of formation of tribal unions, which proceeded especially intensively from the 5th century. Writer of the 6th century Jordanes says that the general collective name of the populous people of the Wends “now changes depending on the different tribes and localities.” The stronger the process of disintegration of primitive clan isolation, the stronger and more durable the tribal unions became.
The development of peaceful ties between tribes, or military victories of some tribes over others, or, finally, the need to combat a common external danger contributed to the creation of tribal alliances. Among the Eastern Slavs, the formation of the fifteen large tribal unions mentioned above can be attributed to approximately the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e.
Thus, during the VI - IX centuries. prerequisites for feudal relations arose and the process of formation of the ancient Russian feudal state took place.
The natural internal development of Slavic society was complicated by a number of external factors (for example, raids by nomads) and the direct participation of the Slavs in major events in world history. This makes the study of the pre-feudal period in the history of Rus' especially difficult.
Origin of Rus'. Formation of the Old Russian people
Most pre-revolutionary historians connected the questions of the origin of the Russian state with questions of the ethnicity of the “Rus” people. about which the chroniclers speak. Accepting without much criticism the chronicle legend about the calling of the princes, historians sought to determine the origin of the “Rus” to which these overseas princes supposedly belonged. “Normanists” insisted that “Rus” are the Varangians, Normans, i.e. residents of Scandinavia. But the lack of information in Scandinavia about a tribe or locality called “Rus” has long shaken this thesis of the Norman theory. “Anti-Normanist” historians undertook a search for the “Rus” people in all directions from the indigenous Slavic territory.
Lands and states of the Slavs:
Eastern
Western
State borders at the end of the 9th century.
Ancient Rus were sought among the Baltic Slavs, Lithuanians, Khazars, Circassians, Finno-Ugric peoples of the Volga region, Sarmatian-Alan tribes, etc. Only a small part of scientists, relying on direct evidence from sources, defended the Slavic origin of Rus'.
Soviet historians, having proven that the chronicle legend about the calling of princes from overseas cannot be considered the beginning of Russian statehood, also found out that the identification of Rus' with the Varangians in the chronicles is erroneous.
Iranian geographer of the mid-9th century. Ibn Khordadbeh points out that “the Russes are a tribe of Slavs.” The Tale of Bygone Years talks about the identity of the Russian language with the Slavic language. The sources also contain more precise instructions that help determine which part of the Eastern Slavs one should look for Rus' among.
Firstly, in the “Tale of Bygone Years” it is said regarding the glades: “even now the calling Rus'.” Consequently, the ancient tribe of Rus was located somewhere in the Middle Dnieper region, near Kyiv, which arose in the land of glades, to which the name of Rus subsequently passed. Secondly, in various Russian chronicles of the time of feudal fragmentation, a double geographical name for the words “Russian land”, “Rus” is noticed. Sometimes they are understood as all East Slavic lands, sometimes the words “Russian land”, “Rus” are used in lands should be considered more ancient and in a very narrow, geographically limited sense, denoting the forest-steppe strip from Kiev and the Ros River to Chernigov, Kursk and Voronezh. This narrow understanding of the Russian land should be considered more ancient and can be traced back to the 6th-7th centuries, when it was within these limits that a homogeneous material culture existed, known from archaeological finds.
By the middle of the 6th century. This is also the first mention of Rus' in written sources. One Syrian author, a successor to Zechariah the Rhetor, mentions the “ros” people, who lived next door to the mythical Amazons (whose location is usually confined to the Don basin).
The territory delineated by chronicles and archaeological data was home to several Slavic tribes that had lived here for a long time. In all probability. The Russian land got its name from one of them, but it is not known for certain where this tribe was located. Judging by the fact that the oldest pronunciation of the word “Rus” sounded slightly different, namely as “Ros” (the people “ros” of the 6th century, “Rus’ letters” of the 9th century, “Pravda Rosskaya” of the 11th century), apparently , the initial location of the Ros tribe should be sought on the Ros River (a tributary of the Dnieper, below Kiev), where, moreover, the richest archaeological materials of the 5th - 7th centuries were discovered, including silver items with princely signs on them.
The further history of Rus' must be considered in connection with the formation of the Old Russian nationality, which eventually embraced all the East Slavic tribes.
The core of the Old Russian nationality is that “Russian land” of the 6th century, which, apparently, included the Slavic tribes of the forest-steppe strip from Kyiv to Voronezh. It included the lands of the glades, northerners, Rus' and, in all likelihood, the streets. These lands formed a union of tribes, which, as one might think, took the name of the most significant tribe at that time, the Rus. The Russian union of tribes, famous far beyond its borders as the land of tall and strong heroes (Zachary the Rhetor), was stable and long-lasting, since a similar culture developed throughout its entire territory and the name of Rus' was firmly and permanently attached to all its parts. The union of the tribes of the Middle Dnieper and Upper Don took shape during the period of the Byzantine campaigns and the struggle of the Slavs with the Avars. The Avars failed in the VI-VII centuries. invade this part of the Slavic lands, although they conquered the Dulebs who lived to the west.
Obviously, the unification of the Dnieper-Don Slavs into a vast union contributed to their successful fight against the nomads.
The formation of the nationality went in parallel with the formation of the state. National events consolidated the ties established between individual parts of the country and contributed to the creation of an ancient Russian nation with a single language (if there were dialects), with its own territory and culture.
By the 9th - 10th centuries. The main ethnic territory of the Old Russian nationality was formed, the Old Russian literary language was formed (based on one of the dialects of the original “Russian Land” of the 6th - 7th centuries). The Old Russian nationality arose, uniting all the East Slavic tribes and becoming the single cradle of three fraternal Slavic peoples of later times - Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.
The Old Russian people, who lived in the territory from Lake Ladoga to the Black Sea and from Transcarpathia to the Middle Volga, were gradually joined in the process of assimilation by small foreign-language tribes that came under the influence of Russian culture: Merya, Ves, Chud, the remnants of the Scythian-Sarmatian population in the south, some Turkic-speaking tribes.
When faced with the Persian languages spoken by the descendants of the Scythian-Sarmatians, with the Finno-Ugric languages of the peoples of the northeast and others, the Old Russian language invariably emerged victorious, enriching itself at the expense of the defeated languages.
Formation of the state of Rus'
The formation of a state is the natural completion of a long process of the formation of feudal relations and antagonistic classes of feudal society. The feudal state apparatus, as an apparatus of violence, adapted for its own purposes the tribal government bodies that preceded it, completely different from it in essence, but similar to it in form and terminology. Such tribal bodies were, for example, “prince”, “voivode”, “druzhina”, etc. KI X-X centuries. the process of gradual maturation of feudal relations in the most developed areas of the Eastern Slavs (in the southern, forest-steppe lands) was clearly defined. Tribal elders and leaders of squads who seized communal land turned into feudal lords, tribal princes became feudal sovereigns, tribal unions grew into feudal states. A hierarchy of landowning nobility was taking shape. collaboration of princes of different ranks. The young emerging class of feudal lords needed to create a strong state apparatus that would help them secure communal peasant lands and enslave the free peasant population, and also provide protection from external invasions.
The chronicler mentions a number of principalities-tribal federations of the pre-feudal period: Polyanskoe, Drevlyanskoe, Dregovichi, Polotsk, Slovenbkoe. Some eastern writers report that the capital of Rus' was Kiev (Cuyaba), and besides it, two more cities became especially famous: Jervab (or Artania) and Selyabe, in which, in all likelihood, you should see Chernigov and Pereyas-lavl - the oldest Russian cities always mentioned in Russian documents near Kiev.
Treaty of Prince Oleg with Byzantium at the beginning of the 10th century. already knows the branched feudal hierarchy: boyars, princes, grand dukes (in Chernigov, Pereyaslavl, Lyubech, Rostov, Polotsk) and the supreme overlord of the “Russian Grand Duke”. Eastern sources of the 9th century. They call the head of this hierarchy the title “Khakan-Rus”, equating the Kyiv prince with the rulers of strong and powerful powers (Avar Kagan, Khazar Kagan, etc.), who sometimes competed with the Byzantine Empire itself. In 839, this title also appeared in Western sources (Vertinsky annals of the 9th century). All sources unanimously call Kyiv the capital of Rus'.
A fragment of the original chronicle text that survived in the Tale of Bygone Years makes it possible to determine the size of Rus' in the first half of the 9th century. The Old Russian state included the following tribal unions that previously had independent reigns: Polyans, Severyans, Drevlyans, Dregovichs, Polochans, Novgorod Slovenes. In addition, the chronicle lists up to one and a half dozen Finno-Ugric and Baltic tribes who paid tribute to Rus'.
Rus' at that time was a vast state that had already united half of the East Slavic tribes and collected tribute from the peoples of the Baltic and Volga regions.
In all likelihood, this state was reigned by the Kiya dynasty, the last representatives of which (judging by some chronicles) were in the middle of the 9th century. Princes Dir and Askold. About Prince Dir, Arab author of the 10th century. Masudi writes: “The first of the Slavic kings is the king of Dir; it has extensive cities and many inhabited countries. Muslim merchants arrive in the capital of his state with all kinds of goods." Later, Novgorod was conquered by the Varangian prince Rurik, and Kyiv was captured by the Varangian prince Oleg.
Other eastern writers of the 9th - early 10th centuries. They report interesting information about agriculture, cattle breeding, beekeeping in Rus', about Russian gunsmiths and carpenters, about Russian merchants who traveled along the “Russian Sea” (Black Sea), and made their way to the East by other routes.
Of particular interest are data on the internal life of the ancient Russian state. Thus, a Central Asian geographer, using sources from the 9th century, reports that “the Rus have a class of knights,” that is, feudal nobility.
Other sources also know the division into noble and poor. According to Ibn-Rust (903), dating back to the 9th century, the king of the Rus (i.e., the Grand Duke of Kiev) judges and sometimes exiles criminals “to the rulers of remote regions.” In Rus' there was a custom of “God’s judgment”, i.e. resolving a controversial case by combat. For especially serious crimes, the death penalty was applied. The Tsar of the Rus traveled around the country annually, collecting tribute from the population.
The Russian tribal union, which turned into a feudal state, subjugated the neighboring Slavic tribes and organized long campaigns across the southern steppes and seas. In the 7th century the sieges of Constantinople by the Rus and the formidable campaigns of the Rus through Khazaria to the Derbent Pass are mentioned. In the 7th - 9th centuries. Russian prince Bravlin fought in the Khazar-Byzantine Crimea, marching from Surozh to Korchev (from Sudak to Kerch). About the Rus of the 9th century. a Central Asian author wrote: “They fight with the surrounding tribes and defeat them.”
Byzantine sources contain information about the Rus who lived on the Black Sea coast, about their campaigns against Constantinople and about the baptism of part of the Rus in the 60s of the 9th century.
The Russian state developed independently of the Varangians, as a result of the natural development of society. At the same time, other Slavic states arose - the Bulgarian Kingdom, the Great Moravian Empire and a number of others.
Since the Normanists greatly exaggerate the impact of the Varangians on Russian statehood, it is necessary to resolve the question: what actually is the role of the Varangians in the history of our Motherland?
In the middle of the 9th century, when Kievan Rus had already formed in the Middle Dnieper region, on the distant northern outskirts of the Slavic world, where the Slavs lived peacefully side by side with the Finnish and Latvian tribes (Chud, Korela, Letgola, etc.), detachments of Varangians began to appear, sailing from across the Baltic Sea. The Slavs even drove away these detachments; we know that the Kyiv princes of that time sent their troops to the north to fight the Varangians. It is possible that it was then that, next to the old tribal centers of Polotsk and Pskov, a new city, Novgorod, grew up in an important strategic place near Lake Ilmen, which was supposed to block the Varangians’ path to the Volga and Dnieper. For nine centuries until the construction of St. Petersburg, Novgorod either defended Rus' from overseas pirates, or was a “window to Europe” for trade in the Northern Russian regions.
In 862 or 874 (the chronology is confusing), the Varangian king Rurik appeared near Novgorod. From this adventurer, who led a small squad, the genealogy of all Russian princes “Rurik” was traced without any particular reason (although Russian historians of the 11th century traced the genealogy of the princes from Igor the Old, without mentioning Rurik).
The alien Varangians did not take possession of Russian cities, but set up their fortified camps next to them. Near Novgorod they lived in the “Rurik settlement”, near Smolensk - in Gnezdovo, near Kiev - in the Ugorsky tract. There could have been merchants here and Varangian warriors hired by the Russians. The important thing is that nowhere were the Varangians masters of Russian cities.
Archaeological data show that the number of Varangian warriors themselves who lived permanently in Rus' was very small.
In 882, one of the Varangian leaders; Oleg made his way from Novgorod to the south, took Lyubech, which served as a kind of northern gate of the Kiev principality, and sailed to Kiev, where by deception and cunning he managed to kill the Kiev prince Askold and seize power. To this day, in Kyiv, on the banks of the Dnieper, a place called “Askold’s grave” has been preserved. It is possible that Prince Askold was the last representative of the ancient Kiya dynasty.
The name of Oleg is associated with several campaigns for tribute to neighboring Slavic tribes and the famous campaign of Russian troops against Constantinople in 911. Apparently Oleg did not feel like a master in Rus'. It is curious that after a successful campaign in Byzantium, he and the Varangians around him ended up not in the capital of Rus', but far in the north, in Ladoga, from where the path to their homeland, Sweden, was close. It also seems strange that Oleg, to whom the creation of the Russian state is completely unreasonably attributed, disappeared from the Russian horizon without a trace, leaving the chroniclers in bewilderment. Novgorodians, geographically close to the Varangian lands, Oleg’s homeland, wrote that, according to one version known to them, after the Greek campaign, Oleg came to Novgorod, and from there to Ladoga, where he died and was buried. According to another version, he sailed overseas “and I pecked (him) in the foot and from that (he) died.” The people of Kiev, repeating the legend about the snake that bit the prince, said that he was allegedly buried in Kyiv on Mount Shchekavitsa (“Snake Mountain”); perhaps the name of the mountain influenced the fact that Shchekavitsa was artificially associated with Oleg.
In the IX - X centuries. The Normans played an important role in the history of many peoples of Europe. They attacked from the sea in large flotillas on the shores of England, France, Italy, and conquered cities and kingdoms. Some scholars believed that Rus' was subjected to the same massive invasion of the Varangians, forgetting that continental Rus' was the complete geographical opposite of the Western maritime states.
The formidable fleet of the Normans could suddenly appear in front of London or Marseilles, but not a single Varangian boat that entered the Neva and sailed upstream of the Neva, Volkhov, Lovat could go unnoticed by the Russian watchmen from Novgorod or Pskov. The portage system, when heavy, deep-drawing sea vessels had to be pulled ashore and rolled along the ground on rollers for dozens of miles, eliminated the element of surprise and robbed the formidable armada of all its fighting qualities. In practice, only as many Varangians could enter Kyiv as the prince of Kievan Rus allowed. It was not for nothing that the only time the Varangians attacked Kyiv, they had to pretend to be merchants.
The reign of the Varangian Oleg in Kyiv is an insignificant and short-lived episode, unnecessarily inflated by some pro-Varangian chroniclers and later Norman historians. The campaign of 911 - the only reliable fact from his reign - became famous thanks to the brilliant literary form in which it was described, but in essence it is only one of many campaigns of Russian squads of the 9th - 10th centuries. to the shores of the Caspian and Black Sea, about which the chronicler is silent. Throughout the 10th century. and the first half of the 11th century. Russian princes often hired troops of Varangians for wars and palace service; they were often entrusted with murders from around the corner: hired Varangians stabbed, for example, Prince Yaropolk in 980, they killed Prince Boris in 1015; Varangians were hired by Yaroslav for the war with his own father.
To streamline the relationship between the mercenary Varangian detachments and the local Novgorod squad, the Truth of Yaroslav was published in Novgorod in 1015, limiting the arbitrariness of violent mercenaries.
The historical role of the Varangians in Rus' was insignificant. Appearing as “finders,” aliens attracted by the splendor of the rich, already far-famous Kievan Rus, they plundered the northern outskirts in separate raids, but were able to get to the heart of Rus' only once.
There is nothing to say about the cultural role of the Varangians. The treaty of 911, concluded on behalf of Oleg and containing about a dozen Scandinavian names of Oleg's boyars, was written not in Swedish, but in Slavic. The Varangians had nothing to do with the creation of the state, the construction of cities, or the laying out of trade routes. They could neither speed up nor significantly delay the historical process in Rus'.
The short period of Oleg’s “reign” - 882 - 912. - left in the people's memory an epic song about the death of Oleg from his own horse (arranged by A.S. Pushkin in his “Song of the Prophetic Oleg”), interesting for its anti-Varangian tendency. The image of a horse in Russian folklore is always very benevolent, and if the owner, the Varangian prince, is predicted to die from his war horse, then he deserves it.
The fight against Varangian elements in the Russian squads continued until 980; there are traces of it both in the chronicle and in the epic epic - the epic about Mikul Selyaninovich, who helped Prince Oleg Svyatoslavich fight the Varangian Sveneld (the black raven Santal).
The historical role of the Varangians is incomparably smaller than the role of the Pechenegs or Polovtsians, who really influenced the development of Rus' for four centuries. Therefore, the life of only one generation of Russian people, who suffered the participation of the Varangians in the administration of Kiev and several other cities, does not seem to be a historically important period.
They invited the Varangians from overseas in order to stop internal strife and internecine wars (see the article Calling the Varangians). According to the Ipatiev Chronicle, the Varangian prince Rurik first sat down to reign in Ladoga, and only after the death of his brothers he cut down the city of Novgorod and moved there. This version is confirmed by archaeological searches. While the existence of the Ladoga settlement has been noted since the mid-8th century, in Novgorod itself there is no cultural layer older than the 30s of the 10th century. But the location of the princely residence has been confirmed in the so-called Rurik settlement, which arose in the first half of the 9th century near Novgorod.
The Tale of Bygone Years dates the Russian raid on Constantinople in 860 to the time of the emergence of Rus', erroneously dating it to 866 and connecting it with the private campaign of the appanage Kiev princes Askold and Dir.
It was with the campaign of 860, if you trust the text of the chronicle verbatim, that its author connected the beginning of the Russian land:
« In the year 6360 (852), index 15, when Michael began to reign, the Russian land began to be called. We learned about this because under this king Rus' came to Constantinople, as it is written about this in the Greek chronicles».
In the chronicler’s subsequent calculations it is said that “ from the birth of Christ to Constantine is 318 years, from Constantine to Michael this is 542 years", thus the chronicle incorrectly names the year of the beginning of the reign of the Byzantine Emperor Michael III. There is a point of view that by 6360 the chronicler meant 860. It is indicated according to the Alexandrian era, which historians also call Antioch (to convert it to the modern era, 5500 years should be subtracted). However, the indication of the indict corresponds exactly to 852.
In those days, the Varangians-Rus created at least two independent centers. Rurik collected lands around Ladoga and Novgorod; Askold and Dir, Rurik’s fellow tribesmen, reigned in Kyiv. Kievan Rus (Varangians who rule in the lands of the glades) accepted Christianity from the bishop of Constantinople.
As the Old Russian state developed, namely in 882, its capital was moved to Kyiv by Prince Oleg, Rurik's successor. Oleg killed the Kyiv princes Askold and Dir, uniting the Novgorod and Kyiv lands into a single state. Later historians designated this period as the times of Ancient or Kievan Rus (based on the location of the capital).
Archaeological evidence
Archaeological research confirms the fact of great socio-economic changes in the lands of the Eastern Slavs in the middle of the 9th century. In general, the results of archaeological research do not contradict the legend of the Tale of Bygone Years about the calling of the Varangians in 862.
Development of ancient Russian cities
At the end of the 830s, Ladoga burned down and the composition of its population changed again. Now it clearly shows the noticeable presence of the Scandinavian military elite (Scandinavian male military burials, “Thor's hammers”, etc.)
According to the research of T. Noonan, in the 2nd half of the 9th century, the number of hoards of oriental coins in Gotland and Sweden increased 8 times compared to the 1st half, which indicates the establishment and stable functioning of the trade route from Northern Rus' to Scandinavia. Based on the distribution of early treasures, we can conclude that the “path from the Varangians to the Greeks” along the Dnieper did not yet function in the 9th century: treasures of that time were found in the Novgorod land (Volkhov-Neva waterway), along the Western Dvina, along the Oka and the upper Volga. The path “from the Varangians to the Persians” also went through the Novgorod lands to the countries of Scandinavia, which, as it were, continued the path “from the Varangians to the Bulgars” to the countries of the East.
One of the early treasures found in Peterhof (the youngest coin dates back to 805) contains a large number of graffiti inscriptions on coins, from which it became possible to determine the ethnic composition of their owners. Among the graffiti, the only inscription in Greek (name Zacharias), Scandinavian runes and runic inscriptions (Scandinavian names and magical signs), Turkic (Khazar) runes and Arabic graffiti itself.
Origin of the name "Rus"
As follows from chronicle sources, the first multinational state of the Eastern Slavs, Rus', received its name from the Varangians-Rus. Before the calling of the Varangians, the territory of the first Russian state was inhabited by Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes under their own names. Old Russian chroniclers, the earliest of whom was the early 12th-century monk Nestor, simply note that " from then on the Varangians were nicknamed the Russian land».
No Varangian Scandinavian tribes or clans with the name were noted Rus or close to it, because currently there are several versions of the appearance of the name Rus, none of which are generally accepted. All versions are divided into
- historical, derived from the testimony of contemporary authors;
- linguistic, derived from similar-sounding words in Scandinavian, Slavic or other languages.
- toponymic, derived on the basis of geographical names, somehow related by location to Russia;
Supporters of the toponymic theory of the term “Rus” point to the abundance of hydronyms with the root “ros”. So, in the Kiev region alone there are four of them. These are the rivers Ros, Rosava, Rostavitsa, Roska. At the same time, historians and linguists traditionally refer to hydronyms as the earliest and most convincing evidence of the ethnocultural affiliation of a particular region during its early history.
Historical Byzantine version
Literally the German chronicler points to Ros as the self-name of the people, but it is unknown whether he had this information from the Russians themselves or was conveyed to him through the Byzantines. Thus, the Byzantines called some Swedes (in the 9th century only Vikings traveled among the Swedes) a people Ros, but the West Franks recognized the Swedes, and moreover, they immediately became wary, because they had already begun to fear Viking raids. This happened even before the formation of the Old Russian state, when the Varangians were in no way associated with the Slavs. The name of the king of the Rus - kagan- possibly a translation of Swedish king into the Turkic language, which is closer and more understandable to the Byzantines hakan, but may also indicate the existence of a state formation on the lands of the Eastern Slavs before the arrival of Rurik, the so-called Russian Kaganate.
About the fact that it was the Byzantines who nicknamed the Varangians dew, testifies Liutprand of Cremona, ambassador of the Italian king Berengarius to Byzantium in 949:
“In the northern regions there is a certain people, which the Greeks call Ρονσιος, Rusios, by their appearance, but we call them “Normans” by their place of residence... The king of this people was [then] Inger [Igor Rurikovich]..."
On the other hand, it is difficult to explain how the Byzantine name of the Rus was borrowed by the latter as a self-name. In addition, this version of the name of the Rus based on the redness of their faces comes not from the Byzantines themselves, but from external observers.
The confusion of the name Rus and the color red in Greek is illustrated by a characteristic example when, in a translation from Greek of Theophanes’ “Chronography”, a modern Russian-language translator writes about the campaign of the Byzantines in 774: “ Constantine moved a fleet of two thousand ships against Bulgaria, and himself boarded Russians ships, intended to sail to the Danube River" In fact, they meant imperial ships decorated with purple. The Latin translator of the Pope, the librarian Anastasius, who translated Theophanes’ “Chronography” at the end of the 9th century, translated the Greek word in exactly this way ρουσια V rubea(red).
Indo-Iranian version
Indo-Iranian version insists that the ethnonym “ros” has a different origin than “rus”, being much more ancient. Supporters of this opinion, also originating from M.V. Lomonosov, note that the fantastic people “grew” (literally in Syriac it sounds like eros or hros) was first mentioned back in the 6th century in the “Church History” by Zechariah the Rhetor, where he is placed in the Northern Black Sea region. From this point of view, it is traced back to the Iranian-speaking (Sarmatian) tribes of the Roxalans or Rosomons, mentioned by ancient authors. The most fully substantiated by O. N. Trubachev (*ruksi “light” > *rutsi > *russi > rus).
A version of this theory was developed by G.V. Vernadsky, who placed the original territory of the Rus in the Kuban delta and believed that they learned their name from the Roxalans (“light Alans”), who, in his opinion, were part of the Antes. At the same time, he considered the Russians themselves to be ethnic Scandinavians.
In the 60s The 20th century Ukrainian archaeologist D.T. Berezovets proposed to identify the Alan population of the Don region with the Rus. Currently, this hypothesis is being developed by E. S. Galkina.
In the Russian-Byzantine treaty of 912, the Varangians with Scandinavian names call themselves “ from a Russian family" However, the text of the agreement is a translation from Greek into Slavic, and does not reflect the original form of the Varangians’ self-name, Prophetic Oleg. That is, the text of the treaty initially included the name of the Rus in Greek, which may have differed from their self-name, but was preserved in a reverse translation into Slavic.
Historical and toponymic Prussian version
“if you strike with a sword or a spear, or with any weapon Rusin Grchin or Grchin Rusin, and share the sin with paying 5 liters of silver, according to Russian law”
Here “Grchin” is used to mean a resident of Byzantium, a Greek; the meaning of the term “Rusin” is controversial: either “representative of the people of Rus'” or “resident of Rus'”.
Even in the earliest versions of “Russian Truth” that have reached us, Rus' is already completely equal in rights with the Slavs:
If a husband kills his husband, then he must take revenge on his brother’s brother, or on his father’s son, or on his son’s father, or on his brother’s brother, or on his sister’s son. If there is no one to take revenge, then 40 hryvnia per head, if there is a Rusyn or a Gridin, or a Kupchina, or a Yabetnik, or a Swordsman. If the outcast is either a Slav, then put 40 hryvnia for him.
In later editions, “Rusyn” and “Slav” are a continuous list (or instead of “Rusyn” there is “citizen”), but, for example, fines of 80 hryvnia appear for a princely tivun.
In a fragment of the treaty between Smolensk and the Germans of the 13th century, the word “Rousin” already means “Russian warrior”:
“Nemchich shouldn’t invite Nemchich to the field to fight in Rize and on the Gatskogo birch, and Rousin shouldn’t invite Nemchich to fight in Smolensk.”
Toponyms
Other historical names, such as White, Black, Red (or Red) Rus', come from their geographical location - in the Middle Ages, the north-south and west-east directions had their own “color” analogues.
In connection with the annexation of new territories, the names Novorossiya - New Russia (the southern part of modern Ukraine and the southern part of the European part of modern Russia) and the less commonly used Zheltorossiya - Yellow Russia (first - Turkestan, then - Manchuria, later - the northern and eastern parts of modern Kazakhstan and contiguous steppe territories of the eastern Volga region, southern Urals and southern Siberia of modern Russia). By analogy, for other and new territories of modern Russia, the names Zelenorossiya - Green Russia (Siberia), Goluborossiya - Blue Russia (Pomorie), etc. were proposed, but almost never used.
Culture
Notes
Wiktionary has an article "Rus "| Russian history | |
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| Ancient Slavs, Rus (until the 9th century) | |
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| Kievan Rus ( -) | |
| Russian principalities (XII-XVI centuries) | |
| Tsardom of Russia (-) | |
| Russian empire ( -) | |
