Ethnic history of Russians. Origin of the ethnonym “Russian”
Ethnogenesis of the Russian people. Ethnonym "Russians"
The Russian ethnos arose on the basis of the Eastern Slavs. The very question of the origin of the Slavs is complex, there is a lot of unknowns. As sources, it is necessary to compare messages from Russian chronicles, chronicles of Roman, Byzantine, oriental authors, archaeological data, languages, and place names. Scientists are still arguing where the ancestral home of the Slavs was, when and how they settled across the East European Plain. There are many theories. Slavic peoples speak Indo-European languages. The time of separation of the Slavs (their ancestors) from the Indo-European linguistic and ethnic community dates back to the 2nd - 1st millennium before the birth of Christ, that is, 3 - 4 thousand years ago, these tribes settled throughout Europe, their language began to stand out. These were settled agricultural tribes, conditionally Let's call them “peoples of the forest.” In addition to the Slavs, other peoples lived in Eastern Europe - Finnish-speaking tribes (the ancestors of the Mordvins, Mari, Udmurts, etc.). The Slavs were engaged in settled agriculture, hunting, forest beekeeping, fishing, and livestock raising. For the first time in written sources, Roman historians of the 1st centuries Pliny, Tacitus, Ptaligeus wrote about them. They called the Slavs Wends or Ants. They wrote that they lived in the basins of the Vistula River and along the shores of the Venedian Bay (Baltic Sea). The Slavs raided the outskirts of the Roman Empire (Byzantium). South of the forest there was a steppe zone. The steppe strip of Eastern Europe has been a place of nomadic pastoral tribes for centuries. More militant, mobile. For centuries they slowly moved across the steppes of Eurasia from east to west. Let's call them "Peoples of the Steppe". This was the era of the Great Migration ( VIII BC – VII AD) The peoples of the forest and steppe were in contact (military skirmishes, raids, political alliances, trade, long-term proximity, marriages), i.e. these peoples influenced each other. The peoples of the steppe also participated in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs.K VIII century, the Slavs were divided into southern, western and eastern, but the common culture and similarity of languages were still preserved (Southern Slavs are the ancestors of Serbs, Croats, Butars, Western Slavs - Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Eastern Slavs - Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians) Eastern Slavs gradually formed a new ethnic community, which was conventionally called the Old Russian nationality. These were Slavic tribal unions, but this is not yet a Russian ethnic group. Kievan Rus was dominated by pagans, even after the adoption of Christianity in 988. Only to XIII century, Orthodox Christianity has become the basis of the spiritual life of the majority of the population. It was Orthodoxy that became the unifying Orthodox idea and on this basis in XIV–XV centuries, the Russian ethnos arose. At the same time, Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnic groups were formed on the territory of Ukraine and Belarus.
Ethnonym "Russians"
1. In the Carpathian region (Ukraine) there is a river Ros. The chronicler Nestor believed that the ethnonym “Russians” came from the name of the river.
2. Lev Gumilyov put forward a theory according to which the “Russians” descended from the Scythian tribe - the Rassovans.
3. From the Old Scandinavian language the word “Rus” is translated as “oarsman”, the leader of which founded the Old Russian state.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the works of scientists and publicists, both in Russia and in Europe, concepts began to appear designed to prove the heterogeneity of the Russian ethnic group. Nowadays, there are much more adherents of this idea. Increasingly, articles by various authors appear in the press, who with enviable consistency develop this concept, without bothering themselves with scientific evidence.
The importance of a comprehensive analysis of this problem is obvious. While the idea of the ethnohistorical heterogeneity of Russians took on a pronounced political overtones, it became necessary to present a number of facts designed to shed light on this “mystery.” Moreover, in our time, completely monstrous theories appear. One writer, for example, claims that not a single Russian can say for sure where his ancestors were on the Kulikovo Field - either in the Russian army, or under Mamai’s bunchuks.
A certain difficulty of this work lies in the fact that a logically constructed chain of scientific facts, contrary to the concept of heterogeneity, often meets with complete misunderstanding and sometimes even aggressiveness of a number of people, especially those committed to established stereotypes of thinking.
It was from this environment that voices began to be heard calling to avoid talking about the Russian ethnic group altogether, due to its alleged absence. The authors of this circle, in a number of articles, put forward the thesis that the geographical space from the Baltic and the Carpathians to the Pacific Ocean is occupied not by the Russian people, but by population groups that are not genetically related to each other, but are only accidentally united by the Russian language. This heterogeneous population is given the “scientific” term “Russian-speaking”.
Of course, it would be possible not to react to such nonsense of authors who did not receive proper education if their ideas did not occupy a certain place in the sequence of political steps aimed at destroying Russia as a single state.
The synchronicity of the emergence of ideas of the dismemberment of the Russian state and the ethnic heterogeneity of Russians has manifested itself for the third time in a century. Two previous times, the exaggeration of similar ideas in the European press preceded the world wars. What can we expect from the third time? What new evidence is provided by our European opponents and their Russian admirers in favor of the dismemberment of Russia? Compared to the beginning of the century, nothing new and smart has been heard.
Let us consider in more detail a number of issues that affect the main problems of the ethnic history of the Russian people.
Slavic ethnogenesis
First of all, we must clearly understand an immutable historical fact: for the last millennium of human history, the plain from the Carpathians to the Urals, from the White Sea to the Black Sea has been occupied by the Russian ethnos, Orthodox in religion, Slavic in language and firmly welded together by a single historical memory and ethnic history. Inexorable facts indicate that the difference between the three branches of the Russian people (Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians), according to linguistics and anthropology, is less, for example, than the differences between the Germans living in Bavaria and the Germans living in Hamburg.
The unity of the Eastern Slavs is recorded in written sources starting from the 11th century. In “The Tale of Bygone Years” St. Nestor the chronicler writes: “They speak Slavic in Rus': Polyans, Drevlyans, Novgorodians, Polochans, Dregovichs, Northerners, Buzhans.” St. Nestor reflected not just linguistic unity, but also the awareness of this unity by the Slavs.
Next, St. Nestor provides data from the point of view of anthropology, cultural and physical, which will be given below: “...But here are other peoples giving tribute to Rus': Chud, Merya, Ves, Muroma, Cheremis, Mordovians, Perm, Pechera, Yam, Lithuania , blinked, writhed, parova, divas, these speak their own languages, they are the descendants of Japheth, living in the northern countries.” This passage is interesting not only because it outlines the borders of Rus' at the end of the 11th century, or because for the first time in history a geopolitical definition of Rus' was given as the “North”, which the descendants of Japheth received as an inheritance. The fact is that a similar geopolitical orientation of Russia existed in scientific works, political treatises and fiction until the 20th century, when it was changed to “East”. The substitution did not occur by chance, and it went in parallel with the introduction of ideas about the “Tatarness” or “Asianness” of Russia, about the racial heterogeneity of Russians and their state and civilizational failure. For their own purposes, the “Russia-East” orientation was also adopted by Russian Eurasians in the 20-30s of our century.
However, in these lines of the chronicle we are interested in something else. St. Nestor defines all non-Slavic peoples who give tribute to Rus' as the descendants of Japheth. According to Biblical historiosophy, the descendants of the youngest son Noah are all European peoples and the Slavs among them. Here we see not just a tribute to the Biblical tradition, but also the fact that, in addition to linguistic differences, St. Nestor did not see a sharp line between the Slavs, Bolts and Finns. It can be assumed that if the differences in the external characteristics of these ethnic groups were obvious, St. Nestor would definitely note this fact.
Of course, this is just an assumption, which, however, has some confirmation based on anthropological data.
The Russian and then the Soviet school of anthropology, being the leading one in the world, provides very interesting material about the racial type of the Slavs and their neighbors. The scope of this work is not sufficient for a broader anthropological analysis, so we will limit ourselves to data from the works of our most famous world-famous anthropologists: A.P. Bogdanov, A.A. Bashmakov, V.P. Alekseev, G.V. Lebedinskaya.
In his doctoral dissertation on the paleoanthropology of the Slavs, as well as in a number of other studies, A.P. Bogdanov established the fact of the cardinal significance of the differences in the shape of the cranium between the long-headed kurgan population of ancient Rus' and the mainly round-headed modern representatives of the Russian people (A.P. Bogdanov , 1879). In his last work, which sums up all the scientist’s research, A.P. Bogdanov came to the conclusion about the brachycephalization of the modern population under the influence of the development of civilization (Vodaapou, 1892). Similar processes were observed not only in Russia, but also in Germany, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland. This conclusion of the Russian anthropologist, extremely advanced for its time, later received numerous confirmations on a variety of materials and firmly entered the golden fund of achievements of Russian anthropology.
We can glean information that is very important for us in the articles of I.A. Ilyin, the great Russian thinker of our century, where he cites data from the famous Russian anthropologist of the first half of the 20th century, Professor A.A. Bashmakov, who summarizes the process of racial education throughout Russia as organic “uniformity in difference.”
A.A. Bashmakov writes: “This is the formula. The Russian people... currently represent a certain homogeneity, clearly expressed in cranial measurement data and very limited in the scope of deviations from the central and average type of the race they represent. Contrary to what everyone imagines, Russian homogeneity is the most established and most pronounced in all of Europe!”
American anthropologists have calculated that variations in the structure of the skull among the Russian population do not exceed 5 points per hundred, while the French population varies within 9 points, declared by the ideologists of National Socialism to be racially pure, the Germans have about 7 anthropological types, and the Italians - 14.
Professor IA.Ilyin cites in one of his articles the data of A.A. Bashmakov that “the average cranial type of the purely Russian population occupies almost the middle between the non-Russified peoples of the Empire.” I.A. Ilyin also writes that it is in vain to talk about the “Tatarization” of the Russian people. “In fact, the opposite happened in history, that is, the Russification of foreign peoples: for for centuries foreigners “kidnapped” Russian women who bore them half-Russian children, and Russians, strictly adhering to national affinity, did not take wives from foreigners (of foreign faiths) ! someone else's language! someone else's character!); Frightened by the Tatar yoke, they stuck to their own and thereby preserved their organic-central purebred. This entire centuries-long process has created in the Russian type a point of concentration of all the creative forces inherent in the peoples of its territory” (see the work of A.A. Bashmakov, published in French in 1937 in Paris, “Fifty centuries of ethnic evolution around the Black Sea”). Apparently, the process of driving away a large number of the Russian population to Kazan became the decisive factor in the current Caucasian identity of the Volga Tatars, along, of course, with the Finno-Ugric substrate.
It is known that the population of Volga Bulgaria in the Middle Ages, before the Tatar defeat, was mainly Caucasian with a slight Mongoloid admixture. The word “Tatars” finally became the self-name of the Volga Tatars only at the beginning of our century. Until the end of the last century, they “recommended” themselves as Bolgarls (Bulgars). The original bearers of the ethnonym “Tatars” lived in Eastern Mongolia and had nothing in common with those who now live in Russia. They spoke the ancient Mongolian language and had a characteristic Mongoloid appearance.
The Tatar-Mongol invasion was of great importance for the ethnic history of the tribes of Eastern Europe. But in relation to the Russian people, the invasion had a fundamentally different nature of consequences in comparison with the Finno-Ugric tribes of the Volga region.
Karamzin writes: “...despite the humiliation of slavery, we felt our civic superiority in relation to the nomadic people. The consequence was that the Russians emerged from under the yoke with a more European than Asian character. Europe did not recognize us: but because it has changed in these 250 years, and we remained as we were. Its travelers of the 13th century did not even find any difference in the clothing of ours and Western peoples: the same, without a doubt, could be said in the discussion of other customs.” Historian A. Sakharov continues this thought: “Neither in legislation, nor in social thought, nor in literature, nor in painting can one notice anything that was borrowed from the Mongol-Tatars. The surest indicator in this regard is the assessment of the Mongol-Tatar invasion and yoke by the people themselves. Everything that we know about the oral folk art of the 14th-15th centuries clearly and categorically testifies to the sharply negative assessment given by the people to the Mongol-Tatar invasion and yoke.” Therefore, we can say with confidence that the Turkic-Slavic ethnic and cultural symbiosis, so dear to Eurasians of all degrees and initiations, simply did not exist. This is the fruit of dishonest fantasies or, at best, delusions.
These misconceptions in Russia were shared mainly by home-grown Social Democrats. For example, N. Chernyshevsky wrote about the Russian folk soul: “A lot of Asian and Byzantine things entered into it, so that the people’s spirit was completely exhausted under the yoke of alien influences... The beautiful Slavic organization, the pretty Slavic face were distorted in accordance with Eastern concepts of beauty, so that a Russian man and a Russian woman, who could follow the requirements of the good manners of that time, gave themselves a completely Asian appearance and a completely Mongolian ugliness.”
To be fair, we note that, unlike the Eurasians, Chernyshevsky has a sharply negative attitude towards the eastern elements and glorifies the pure Slavic type. On the other hand, the illiteracy and illegibility of terms is shocking. It is absolutely impossible to put the two cultural worlds of Asia and Byzantine on a par. Byzantium nourished not only Russia, but also the European Renaissance with its life-giving juices.
Now let us turn to the works of modern anthropologists V.P. Alekseev and G.V. Lebedinskaya.
V.P. Alekseev’s research on the ethnic history of the Eastern Slavs is especially interesting. When considering the craniological type of Russian series, V.P. Alekseev emphasized the exceptional morphological similarity, which appeared when comparing all the materials at his disposal.
“Comparative monotony,” writes V.P. Alekseev, speaking about the geographical situation of the area of the Russian people, is widespread over the vast territory of a single language, although it breaks up into dialects, but they are closely related and understandable throughout the entire territory of Russian settlement. To this we must add the lack of social isolation within groups of the Russian population. All these facts led to the fact that the combination of craniological features characteristic of the Russian population spread over a vast territory from Arkhangelsk to Kursk and from Smolensk to Vologda and Penza.”
Here we are talking, of course, about the Great Russian population of European Russia, which is very stable over time and a homogeneous genetic core of the Russian ethnos. Let's return to the fact that Russians have 5 main anthropological types, taking into account Belarusians and Little Russians. This indicates an even greater homogeneity of the Great Russian branch of the Russian people.
Further, V.P. Alekseev, in his work “Craniology of the peoples of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus in connection with the problems of their origin” (Moscow, 1967), actually pronounces a verdict on the untenable attempts to present the Russian people as a random combination of ethnic groups, not united by anything other than language . In particular, V.P. Alekseev writes that the differences between groups of Russians do not depend on the distance between them: the differences between territorially close series are no less than between distant ones.
Obviously, in these circumstances, variability due to random causes plays a special role. A striking fact is the relative preservation of the anthropological type of the Eastern Slavs of the early Middle Ages in the Russian environment. This fact allows us to restore continuity in the anthropological type of Russians with specific East Slavic tribes. For example, when comparing Belarusians with the medieval craniological series of Radimichi and Dregovich, it is permissible to talk about the continuity of the anthropological type. For the Little Russian population, the fact of genetic continuity of the Drevlyans and the modern population of Ukraine is established. The Great Russians were formed on the basis of the Slavs, Krivichi and Vyatichi, including the Radmichi in the west, and the Northerners in the south.
For a long time, scientists believed that the Great Russians also included the Finno-Ugric tribes Vesi, Mori and Murom. In this case, it would seem that the flat-faced and flat-nosed type, which is associated mainly with the Finnish population, should have been preserved and manifested in the Great Russians. However, modern Russians are more likely to approach even the hypothetical type that was characteristic of the ancestors of the Eastern Slavs before the collision with the Finnish substrate.
It is also important that modern craniological series of the Eastern Slavs are closer to the West Slavic and South Slavic groups than even the medieval East Slavic series available to anthropologists. Most of all, this similarity is characteristic of Great Russians. The facts convincingly indicate the similarity of all Slavic peoples not only in language, but also in anthropological type.
The ethnic history of the Russian people, the Slavs, is closely connected with the problem of the ancestral homeland of the peoples who spoke Indo-European languages, which we will further call Aryan, as was customary in the scientific world of the 19th and early 20th centuries. This term is more convenient and does not violate the continuity of scientific thought.
Now scientists are developing questions about the Aryan ancestral homeland with the wide involvement of historical, archaeological, linguistic, anthropological and other materials. A large role is given to geography and the history of the evolution of the earth's climate.
At the moment, there are three main versions of the geographical localization of the ancestral home of the Aryan peoples. Some scientists consider Central Europe to be the ancestral home, while others consider the Northern Black Sea region to be its ancestral home. The most interesting is the hypothesis about the polar ancestral home of the Aryans. This idea has found a large number of adherents in the scientific world. First expressed by the Indian scientist B.G. Tilak (1856-1920), it finds a large number of direct and indirect scientific confirmations today.
BG Tilak was not the first to point to the Arctic as the ancestral home of humanity. But his merit is that he carried out a deep analysis of the Rig Veda, the sacred and ancient book of the Aryans, and Indian epic poems - primarily the Mahabharata. Being a direct bearer of the Tradition (B.G. Tilak was a Brahman), the scientist found in the Vedas and epics a large number of facts pointing to the Arctic as the ancestral home of the Aryan tribes.
The topic of the Arctic ancestral home is not touched upon here by chance. It is closely connected with the problem of the ethnic history of not only the Slavs, but also their closest neighbors in the north, the Finno-Ugric.
And in this regard, the facts established by the Soviet anthropologist V.V. Bunak are very important. In his article “The Origin of the Russian People According to Anthropological Data,” he writes in particular:
“In addition, it turned out that not a single Russian group fully reproduces the complex of features characteristic of the central variants of the Baltic, Ural or Neo-Pontic racial types. This fact and many others have led to the conclusion that the Russian anthropological variants and some pre-Slavic (?) are based on one common anthropological layer, very ancient, dating back to the early Neolithic and Mesolithic times. The original general type, called ancient Eastern European, clearly appears in the overall characteristics of modern groups of the Russian population. Racially and taxonomically, the Eastern European type, not identified in previous works, is included in the circle of varieties of the European group as a special race.” These facts are the most important evidence that the Slavic Russians are the oldest, original inhabitants of the Russian Plain. The question of ancient migrations disappears.
Surprising is the fact of the preservation of the oldest special racial type, which is not correlated either with the racial type of the Baltic peoples or with the Finno-Ugric peoples of the Urals. Consequently, the question of racial mutations of Russians also disappears as unscientific.
But most importantly, anthropological science determines the racial type of the ancient Aryan ancestral home according to Tilak, which the Aryans brought to India and Iran, and the tribes of the battle ax culture to Western Europe. Everywhere this type underwent changes and remained pure in the ancient Aryan ancestral home on the Russian Plain from the White to the Black Seas. The fact of the existence of an ancient Eastern European race illuminates the ethnogenetic history of the Finns in a new way.
Slavs and Finno-Ugric
It is necessary to take into account that anthropology as a science was not seriously involved in reconstructing the true ethnic history of Russians until the middle of the 20th century. Even the pillars of Russian historical thought had a vague idea on this issue. Most of them paid tribute to the then fashionable theory about the Finnish substratum as one of the components of the Great Russian nationality.
For example, V. Klyuchevsky believed that the meeting between Rus' and Chudi was peaceful. Indeed, neither in written monuments nor in the folk traditions of the Great Russians is there any mention of the struggle with the Finnish natives. Of course, the character of the Finns also contributed to this. In European historiography, the Finns are marked by common characteristic features - peacefulness, timidity, even downtroddenness. The Russians, having met the Finns, immediately felt their superiority over them and called them by a common collective name: chud, which means wonderful. Both Estonians and Zyryans were called Chudya. However, there was, of course, no absolutely peaceful picture of the relationship. The Finns did not at all strive to convert to Orthodoxy. The Komi Zyryans and Permyaks did not show much zeal for a change of faith back in the 14th century. Saint Stephon of Perm had to put a lot of work into converting them. The main mass was in “trash”.
Finnish hunters were by no means sedentary tribes. The cities of Rostov, Murom and Beloozero were built by the Slavs, not by Finnish hunters and fishermen. The bulk of the Finns, of course, migrated to the northeast. Since the Finnish population was small, those left without a trace disappeared into the Russian sea.
It is important to note that conflicts with the Finns still took place on religious grounds. According to the life of St. Leonty of Rostov, all Rostov pagans stubbornly fought against Christian preachers. Rostov Rus', which revered Veles, sided with the Merians. A legend has been preserved, recorded in the 17th century, that the pagan Merians and Rus of the Rostov region, fleeing “from Russian baptism,” moved to the borders of the Bulgarian kingdom on the Volga to the related Cheremis. Of course, this was not a purely tribal struggle between Rus' and Chud, but a religious one. But the bearers of the antagonistic spiritual constants of Christianity and paganism were Rus' and the Finns. Moreover, some of the pagan Slavs left with the Finns to the east. So, part of the Vyatichi left the Oka for Vyatka in the 11th century, opposing Christianization.
Thus, the issue of the merger of Finns and Slavs should be resolved on a different plane, namely, the issue of the Slavic component among the Finns of Eastern Europe should be considered. The original Finnish features: high cheekbones, dark complexion, wide nose and dark hair are not so common among Finno-Ugric people due to Slavic influence - light-colored types predominate.
The Russian people did not have racial fanaticism, and they willingly agreed to mixed marriages. But the phenomenon of the Slavs is that children from mixed marriages very often remain in the bosom of small nations. Russians look with amazing calm at the fact that their children become Zyryans, Mordovians, Permyaks by upbringing and culture - the main thing is that they are Orthodox. This largely explains the fact that the Slavic racial type was preserved among the Great Russians in its pristine purity, and, at the same time, the racial type of the surrounding Russian neighbors absorbed the Slavic component.
After the adoption of Orthodoxy, all Finno-Ugric peoples became full participants in the construction of the Russian state. But the most interesting thing is that even the Tatar settlements of the Ryazan, Kostroma, and Moscow provinces retained their national identity, culture, and even Islam until the 20th century.
However, it is important to say that, getting along with the Tatars, the Russian people did not seek to merge with them ethnically. And if at the level of the elite, representatives of local elites entered the nobility and eventually merged with the purely Russian nobility, then in the lower ranks of the people various barriers remained that did not allow merging with those of other faiths.
If now, in the light of new data from anthropology, linguistics and history, these processes are becoming understandable, then in the last century they caused bewilderment. On the one hand, it was generally accepted to consider the Great Russians of the provinces of Moscow, Vladimir, Yaroslavl and Kostroma as undoubtedly the best representatives of the North Slavic type in its original purity. On the other hand, they did not know what to do with the fact that Merya and Muroma lived on the lands of these provinces. The absence of these tribes in these territories since the 12th century was puzzling.
There were two possible solutions to the problem. First: the newly arrived Rus', settling among the native Chud, borrowed much from the ethnic traits and way of life of the Finns. Second: the Chud, gradually becoming Russified, with all its mass, with all its anthropological features, language and beliefs, became part of the Russians. The difficulty, however, was that it was not possible to isolate the anthropological features of the Finns from the obviously pure Russians. No traces of language or beliefs were found. This did not bother many, and books continued to depict the Great Russian as a kind of Slavic-Mongolian mestizo.
The 19th century Prussian official Baron Haxthausen considered only Little Russians to be pure Slavs. In particular, according to his theory, pure peoples could never lead great empires in history. That is why the “pure” Little Russians lost the palm to the “unclean” Great Russians.
The statement about the “unclean Great Russians” and the belief in the inability of pure ethnic groups to build empires are both absurd. History tells a different story. Both the Greeks and the Romans began their construction of great empires, being unmixed peoples. It was mixing with foreigners that was the main reason for the death of both Alexander’s empire and proud imperial Rome. Ultimately, the multi-ethnicity of Byzantium, the Romans, weakened the empire of the Christian emperors.
Russians remain a fairly pure and homogeneous tribe. And in the last century they already began to talk about this. The same Haxthausen was surprised that the significant Finnish tribe of Zyryans lived without any embarrassment next to the Russians and were engaged in their eternal trade - hunting. Other Finnish tribes, writes the Prussian baron, gradually died out, like many American Indian tribes. Some, having converted to Orthodoxy, merged with the Russians.
It is difficult to agree with Haxthausen when he writes about the extinction of the Finns like the American Indians. Over the millennium, not many tribes have disappeared from the map of Eastern Europe. In places where Russian tribes live compactly, we will not find only Meryu and Muroma.
For a long time, the scientific world recognized as a firmly established fact the process of mixing the Slavs and Finno-Ugric people in the forest belt of Eastern Europe. There is no doubt that there were certain contacts between the Slavs and Finno-Ugric people, but they no longer played a significant role in the racial development of the Russians.
To consider the anthropological type of Finns, we have at our disposal facts of a historical and archaeological nature.
The problem of the Finno-Ugric tribes is that the anthropological type of the Baltic Finns and the Trans-Ural Finns are very different. As noted above, on the territory of the East. In Europe, the Slavs lived next to Izhora, Vesya, Muroma and Merya. Russian history textbooks paint a picture of the inclusion of these nationalities into the political orbit of the Russian state and their rapid dissolution in the Slavic environment.
Let us repeat that it is difficult to confirm this fact anthropologically. Of course, there is material indicating that there were contacts, but they were very insignificant. If the process described in Russian history textbooks had taken place, then we would talk about the Vesi and Izhora as disappeared peoples who merged with the Slavs. However, both the Izhora and the Karelians continue to live among the Great Russians, without merging with them over the thousand-year history of Russian statehood.
In this regard, an indicative example is that Karelians have been living in the center of Russia, in the Tver region, for more than two hundred years, and have still preserved their ethnic and cultural appearance, without merging with the Great Russians. But Eastern Europe is the center of formation of the Great Russian people, and the processes of assimilation should, logically, occur here with particular intensity.
The most striking thing is the fact of the Orthodox religion of both Karelians and Vepsians, as well as the use of the Russian language in everyday life, along with their native language. It would seem that there were no major barriers to complete assimilation. If we take into account the fact of modern secularization of society, the dying out of old traditions and social differences, then today there are even fewer of them. However, we are more likely to see a revival of national self-awareness among the Karelians, Izhorians and Vepsians.
The situation is more complicated with two other Finno-Ugric tribes - the Meryu and the Muroma. Since the end of the 11th century, the names of these tribes have disappeared from Russian chronicles. Scientists in pre-revolutionary Russia, and then in the USSR, almost unanimously came to the conclusion about the complete dissolution of Mary and Murom in the Slavic environment. Recent archaeological discoveries do not allow us to draw such categorical conclusions.
In 1071, an uprising broke out in the Suzdal land in Rostov, on the Volga, Sheksna, and Beloozero, which had a strong anti-Christian orientation. The uprising was very harshly suppressed by the governor Dn Vyshatic. The main role in the uprising was played by the pagan Merians. The main blow was dealt to them. From this moment on, it is archaeologically possible to trace the outflow of the Finno-Ugric population to the east, and it is from this moment that the Merya disappears from the field of view of Russian chronicles. This is also confirmed by a legend from the 17th century. Obviously, Merya was included in the Mari, and Muroma played an important role in the ethnogenesis of the Mordovians.
It is important to note that the process of complete assimilation of small groups of the Finno-Ugric population in Eastern Europe simply did not have the necessary prerequisites. The sparse population of the vast space, the fundamental difference in the management of Slavic farmers and Finnish forest hunters, religious and ethnic heterogeneity and a host of other, including social, barriers hindered the process of mass mixing. Russians, in addition, over their more than thousand-year state history have proven their amazing harmoniousness without encroaching on the historical existence of other peoples. How many peoples and nationalities the Russian Empire included, that is how many it has brought to this day. This is a unique case in the history of the formation and development of empires. The Roman, Byzantine, German and British empires ended the historical life of a huge number of peoples.
The significance of the fact is that in the construction of the Russian state from the very beginning of its inception, both the whole, the Karelians, and the Chud acted as full subjects.
Thus, the fate of the Russian state is not only the fate of the Slavs, but also the Finnish peoples allied and equal with them.
In this regard, it is necessary to highlight issues of the ethnic history of the Finns. Moreover, this problem contains interesting evidence that may become the key to further research related to the search for the ancestral home of the Aryans.
Let's return to the works of anthropologist V.P. Alekseev. Here is what he writes: “The complex of characteristics characteristic of the Baltic Finns is most clearly represented among the Estonians and the Finns themselves. These are, of course, Caucasian peoples, the Mongoloid admixture of which constitutes an insignificant percentage. Apparently, the same complex of craniological features is predominant among other Baltic-Finnish peoples: Izhorians and Karelians.
The differences between the Lapp series and all of the above are in the high cranial index, slightly lower and noticeably wider face. According to other features, Lapp skulls differ little from Estonian and Finnish ones.”
The fact is that the mixture of ancient representatives of the northern branch of Caucasians with some short-faced Mongoloids, distinguished by short stature and dark pigmentation, became the ethnic basis of the modern Sami. Considering other Finnish tribes neighboring the Slavs, we should note the sharp Caucasoid expression of the Izhorians.
Many anthropological features make it possible to exclude the Mordovians from among the representatives of the sub-Ural type and consider them, like the Russian eastern regions of the European part of Russia, as a population whose anthropological characteristics developed on the basis of Caucasoid variants of the transition zone between northern and southern Caucasians.
It is very important to note the fact that the Mordovians preserved the characteristics of the Caucasian race, being in the zone of constant contacts with Turkic tribes and being a buffer between Russia and the Steppe.
Speaking about the northern part of European Russia, we must mention another Finnish people: the Komi-Zyryans.
In his monograph, the scientist V.N. Belitser (1958) gave examples of the powerful influence of Russian culture on the culture and life of the Komi and even their complete Russification. It is very likely that during the colonization of the European North, the descendants of the Novgorod Slovenes partially dissolved in the mass of the Komi-Zyrians, which later facilitated their Russification. However, the Komi still have significant Mongoloid characteristics. At least among the modern Permian Finno-Ugric people the Mongoloid admixture is more distinct than among the Baltic Finns.
Modern anthropological studies have proven that the Russian population of a number of regions of Perm are not “short Permians”, but are above average in height, mesocephalic, have narrow faces, light brown hair, soft, straight and wavy, etc., that is, they retain the Northern European type, a variant which in the European North is the White Sea type of Pomors.
Based on materials from Karelian burial grounds, it turned out that the formation of Karelians, as follows from odontological analysis, occurred on the basis of not one, but two odontological types: the northern graceful and the more ancient - the northern European relict, which is ethnically associated with the Sami. According to the most general characteristics, Karelians belong to the Caucasian peoples, whose Mongoloid admixture constitutes an insignificant percentage.
Concluding the anthropological review of the Finno-Ugric peoples of European Russia, let us look into the encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, which says the following:
“The Finns of the middle Volga region (Mordovians, Cheremis) merge in their anthropological characteristics with the neighboring Great Russians.
The Tatars of the middle Volga region, who are now sharply different in their religion (Mohammedanism), differ significantly less from the Russians in their type, despite the element of Mongolism they perceived; as a whole, they are more likely to be Tatar Finns, which is even truer for the Chuvash, who have even adopted the Tatar language.”
The self-name of the Tatars before the beginning of our century was already written above, which once again confirms the idea of the Finnish substrate of the Volga Turks.
The above-mentioned anthropological features of the Finns allow scientists to admit the possibility of a single anthropological prototype for the Slavs, Balts and Baltic Finns, which existed in the spaces of Eastern Europe and had pronounced Caucasian features.
The collection “Anthropological Types of the Ancient Population on the Territory of the USSR” (1988), co-authored by the famous anthropologist G.V. Lebedinskaya, examines the ancient Caucasian type, sharply dolichocrane with a medium-wide, high, strongly profiled face and a protruding nose. This type was widespread over a vast territory from the Dnieper region to the Rhine in the 8th-5th millennium BC. Apparently, this anthropological type underlies the ethnic history of the Germans, Bolts, Slavs and Baltic Finns.
Summing up all of the above, it is necessary to once again note the indisputable fact of the racial unity of the Russian people. At the same time, we must note that racial contacts with the Finno-Ugric people on the periphery of Russian settlement, especially in the Urals, took place, but this did not affect the genetic core of the Russian people, which has a stable gene pool.
G.L. Khit in his work “Dermatoglyphics of the Peoples of the USSR” (M.: Nauka, 1983) comes to the conclusion based on a thorough analysis of fingerprint patterns: “It has been established that Russians are homogeneous in terms of skin relief and are carriers of the most Caucasoid complex along with Belarusians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Vepsians, Komi and Mordovians.”
Scientists in Germany came to similar conclusions in the 1930s. According to German data, a dermatoglyphic complex with a pronounced Nordic type can be traced not only among Norwegians, English and Germans, but also among Russians. The party elite of the Third Reich did not want to take into account the scientists and understand that on the Eastern Front the Germans would be opposed not by the Huns, but by the Nordic brothers.
Let us add that in his study G.L. Khit also notes the huge difference in the dermatoglyphic material of the Russians, on the one hand, and the Kazan Tatars, Mari and Chuvash, on the other. Consequently, there can be no talk of any cross-breeding of Russians if, having freed ourselves from international and liberal myths, we take the firm scientific position of anthropological science.
Anthropology and politics
After familiarizing yourself with such extensive factual material, the question quite rightly arises: how could the legend about the Mongoloidity and “Asianness” of the Russian ethnos appear, what realities of the historical process were it justified, where are its roots?
It should be recognized that the origins of this legend are mainly political - this myth served exclusively the unseemly political goals of Russia's historical enemies.
The modern reader may be puzzled why anthropological and ethnographic knowledge is given such special attention in matters of interpretation of historical processes and in political life. Moreover, many sincerely believe that the beginning of this approach to politics and history was laid in the 30s of our century in Nazi Germany. It is with this that the obvious prejudice of not only ordinary people, but also many scientists towards anthropological science is connected.
In fact, already in the 19th century, anthropology became a very highly politicized science. The works of the Frenchman A. de Gobineau had a great influence on European thought in the 19th century, in which he proved the inequality of human races on the basis of anthropological science. A. de Gobineau went down in history as the father of racist ideology. However, this did not in the least compromise anthropology, either in its purely scientific aspect or in its political rethinking.
In the works of the Slavophile N.Ya. Danilevsky, special attention is paid to the anthropology of Western and Eastern Slavs in the light of the prospect of the transition of the center of world culture from Western Europe to the Slavic world. The first president of independent Czechoslovakia, T. G. Masaryk, also paid tribute to anthropology in its political aspect. In one of his conversations with K. Chapek, he said the following: “In the works of German anthropologists, I find data on skull measurements, according to which we (Chekhs - author) are considered to be among the first peoples: we are talented, what is true is true.” It should be especially noted that in those years such an approach did not evoke negative emotions.
The pinnacle of the politicization of anthropology is the activity of the “scientific” institutions of the Third Reich. Anthropology was made a servant of delusional ideas about the racial superiority of the Germans. The unimaginable human sacrifices made on the black altar of Nazism made anthropology a sinister science in the eyes of many people. Her rehabilitation is a matter of the future. But anthropology cannot be objectively blamed for the crimes of the Nazis. Moreover, history and modernity show us examples when masses of people were destroyed without the use of anthropological knowledge, but simply in the name of “bright ideals”: building communism in a single country, creating a Jewish state on Arab lands, or in the name of the “new world order” , where no place is allocated for independent Serbia and Iraq.
Let us return to the problem of the anthropological history of the Russian people and the emergence in the West of the belief in the “Asianness” and racial inferiority of the population of the Russian Empire, the danger of Asian hordes for Western civilization.
The circulation of this legend was started by “enlighteners from the West”, who from the beginning of the 18th century became involved in the field of young Russian secular science. It is easy to notice that thoughts about racial heterogeneity, Mongoloidity and, as a consequence of the first two signs, inferiority - social and political, appear simultaneously with the “Norman” theory of the origin of the Russian state. Both ideas were intended to complement each other. Due to the pronounced unfoundedness of both, their supporters made a lot of effort to ensure that both legends were perceived in the scientific world as scientific axioms.
The success of such efforts is obvious. Starting from the middle of the 18th century, any European traveler used the “Tatar” stamp when describing Russians, even when the facts he saw contradicted this. The majority used the “witty” French advice: “Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar.” And so, for more than two centuries they have been “scraping” us and looking for Asians in us.
To be fair, it should be noted that not all Europeans were engaged in such searches. Some travelers who had no prejudices against Russia and Russians left us comments of a different kind. The Frenchman Leroy-Collier wrote: “Remove the touch of the Tatar yoke, and you will find a European in the Russian.” Leroy-Collier makes an interesting remark: “... the long thick beard of the Great Russians serves as proof of the predominance of Slavic blood in them.” The English pundit Baring also says that the Tatars, while having political influence on Russia, did not have racial influence. However, the majority of Western Europeans, especially those close to politics, are not concerned about objectivity in relation to Russians.
Ideas about the racial mixing of the Slavs with the Turks, and, consequently, their inferiority, “Asian aggressiveness,” existed and still exist in Europe and America. These ideas have one source - fear of Russia and hatred of it. This idea was used to justify the “onslaught on the East” by Charles XII, Napoleon, and Hitler. For more than two hundred years, the European man in the street has been frightened by Asian hordes from the East, which will bring the death of European civilization. And for more than two centuries, European civilization has been sending “civilized” hordes to the East with enviable consistency, trying to put an end to national Russia and its fundamentally different civilizational form of development.
Possessed by the ardor of conquest and “industrial envy” of Russian natural wealth, they convince themselves and others that the Russian people belong to an inferior, semi-barbarian race, that they are nothing more than “historical dung”, and that “God himself” destined them for conquest , conquest and extermination. These same racist nonsense are deliberately repeated by our domestic enemies of historical Russia, who unconsciously or half-consciously call themselves its patriots.
In this regard, the modern “democratic” intelligentsia proposes not to discuss any issues related to the Russian people at all, since such a people allegedly do not exist in nature. There is, they say, only the Russian language and a mass of Russian-speaking people of unknown origin, who mistakenly consider themselves Russian.
Such nonsense can be said either by uneducated people or by obvious enemies of the Russian people. Those people who now in Russia call themselves “democratic” intelligentsia and defend these racist nonsense, basically, are both at the same time.
Russian racial type
Having traced the political roots of pseudoscientific theories about the racial heterogeneity of Russians and their Mongoloid identity, we should also consider a number of issues related to the genetic aspects of the Russian people and the problems of their ethnogenesis.
Starting with Roman historians, a steady interest in the appearance of historical and modern tribes and peoples has not waned to the present day. This interest is shared equally by both the scientist and the layman. The descriptions of ancient historians of the appearance of the Gauls, Germans, Scythians and Slavs provided abundant creative “food” for the romantic writers of the last century. Within the framework of this work, we can only take a quick look at the facts left to us by ancient and modern writers about the Slavs and Russians. This topic is directly related to issues of anthropology and ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs.
The Greek astronomer and geographer Ptolemy (2nd century AD) in his geographical work places certain “Voltae” on the southern coast of the Baltic. Many learned Slavists, including Safarik, Brown, Udaltsov, Lovmyansky and Golomb, considered this ethnonym Slavic. Golomb reconstructs the ethnonym “veleti”, raising it to the Slavic form “veletъ/volotъ” (“giant”). As we will see below, tall stature has always been a distinctive feature of the Slavs.
The Gothic historian of the 6th century Jordan, describing the campaigns of the Goths, mentions the people of Spol. Starting with the research of the Slavist Miklosic, the ethnonym “Spali” has been compared with the Old Slavic “giant”, “giant” and related words in other Slavic languages.
Recently, the famous scientist O.N. Trubachev spoke in support of this comparison. He, in particular, concludes that, in principle, it is impossible to exclude a possible connection between the Gothic epic ethnonym “Spols” and the indicated Slavic words. The cases of the transformation of the name of an ethnic group into a word denoting a giant are quite well known. This happened with the Huns and Ants, who left their mark in the German folk tradition in the form of giants.
The Byzantine historian of the 6th century, Procopius of Caesarea, left a large amount of news about the Slavs and Ants. In particular, he writes that both have the same language. “And in appearance they are no different from each other. They are tall and of great strength. Their hair and skin color is very white.”
Procopius of Caesarea also describes a very curious case. In 539, the Byzantine commander Belisarius besieged the stubbornly resisting Goths in the city of Auxima, modern Osimo. Belisarius demanded that his subordinate Valerian deliver him a “tongue” Goth. The task was not an easy one. The Goths remained in history the most powerful and warlike Germanic tribe. “And so Valerian, having chosen one of the Sklavins, distinguished by the size of his body and very skillful, instructed him to bring an enemy warrior, firmly promising that he would receive a lot of money from Belisarius. And so, at dawn, the sklavin, coming close to the wall, hiding in some bushes and huddling his whole body into a ball, hid near the meadow. And with the onset of day, some Goth, having arrived there, began to quickly collect herbs, not expecting any danger from the bushes, but often looking back at the enemy’s camp, lest someone attack him from there. Having rushed at him from behind, the sklavin suddenly grabbed him and, strongly squeezing the man across the body with both hands, brought him to the camp and, continuing to carry him, handed him to Valerian.” You can imagine the difference in the build of these people. But the Slav brought to the camp not an ordinary man in the street, but a professional warrior.
Syrian historians of the 6th century write about the Slavs as inhabitants of the “seventh climate”; their “temperaments” are slowed down because the sun rarely shines above their heads. Syrian authors see this as the reason why the Slavs have coarse, straight and light hair.
In the 6th century, the Greeks captured three foreigners who had citharas and harps instead of weapons. They were brought to the emperor. The Emperor asked who they were. “We are Slavs,” the strangers answered, “and we live at the farthest end of the Western Ocean (Baltic Sea).” The emperor marveled at the quiet disposition of these people, their great stature and strength.
Thus, according to the testimony of ancient authors, the Slavs were a powerful, tall people, mostly light-colored. The Rus of the 10th century appear to us in exactly the same way. The Arab traveler and historian Ibn Fadlan met the Russians in Bulgar, on the Volga, and left us precious information. “I have not seen, wrote Ibn Fadlan, people with more perfect bodies than them. They are like palm trees, blond, red in face, white in body.”
Of course, not all Russians and Slavs were blond. Since the 19th century, Russian archaeologists have been exploring burial mounds in Eastern Europe. In the mounds left by the Slavs, a variety of hair remains are found, both blond, red, and chestnut. It is not surprising that all the largest European nations (Russians, Poles, Czechs, Germans, English, Swedes and Norwegians) now include people with various combinations of blond, red and brown hair of different shades with blue, gray, green and brown eyes. The medieval European population had exactly the same genetic type.
We find important evidence for this work in the treatise of the traveler M. Polo, which is called: “The Book of the Diversity of the World.” In this treatise M. Polo writes about Russia: “Russia is a large country in the north. Christians of the Greek rite live here. There are many kings and its own language; the people are simple-minded and very beautiful; men and women are white and blond.” We are talking about the end of the 13th century. Scientists believe that M. Polo described the Russian population from the upper reaches of the Don. But this is the borderland with the steppe, where, according to adherents of the idea of racial heterogeneity and Mongoloidity of Russians, racial contacts between Slavs and Turks should have taken place.
When describing the hair and eye color of the Slavs and Russians of the Middle Ages, it is necessary to mention one interesting point. The scientific world knows that the hair and eyes of the European population darkened in the 15th-18th centuries. This process ran parallel to the process of brachycephalization described by the anthropologist Bogdanov in the last century. Scientific facts speak of a purely social factor of urbanization that influenced these processes. In Russia, this process began in the 16th century. Now in Switzerland the opposite process is happening. Compared to the last century, the skulls of the Swiss are beginning to lengthen. It is possible that similar processes are now taking place in Russia, and they are connected, as has already been said, with the process of development of civilization.
The problem of fluctuations in population growth lies in the same plane. For a long time, there was an opinion in science about the gradual “growth” of the world’s population. It was believed that people of the Middle Ages were smaller than modern people. This is fundamentally wrong. In the early 80s, in the village of Nikolskoye near Moscow, archaeologists excavated a Vyatichi burial mound from the 12th century. A tall man (1 m 90 cm) was buried in the mound; a light beard and mustache were preserved on the skull. Thus, we see that the medieval population of Rus' did not suffer from short stature.
Let's see what foreigners wrote about Russians in the 16th-18th centuries. What did our ancestors look like after the Tatar yoke, were they different from the ancient Slavs? Let's try to compare.
The 15th-century Venetian diplomat Cantarini writes: “The Muscovites, both men and women, are generally beautiful in appearance...” The 16th-century English ambassador to Russia Fletcher notes: “as for their physique (Russians), they are, more often than not, tall tall...” The Dutch sailing master Struys, having visited Russia and Livonia in the 17th century, wrote in his travel notes: “Usually Russians are above average height.” The Ambassador of Rome to Moscow from 1670-1673, Reitenfels, described the Russians as follows: “Their hair, for the most part, is light brown or red, and they cut it more often than comb it. Their eyes are mostly blue, but they especially value gray ones, with a certain fiery reddish shine; Most of them look sullenly and wildly. Their head is large, their chest is wide...” The 18th century Dutch merchant K. fan-Klenk also states: “Russians or Muscovites, for the most part, are tall and portly people with large heads and thick arms and legs.”
Traveling through time, looking for references to our ancestors from foreign authors, we cannot miss the notes of Europeans about Muscovite Rus' of the 16th-16th centuries, which will complement the material already given above. The Venetian merchant Josophat Barbaro writes: “Russians are very beautiful, both men and women.” The Pole Matthew Mekhovsky in his treatise “On Two Sarmatias” notes: “Russian people are tall and strongly built.” They are echoed by a native of Nuremberg, Hans Moritz Airmann, who was in Russia in 1669: “... regarding the Muscovites themselves,” he notes, “in terms of their figure, they are mostly large people with a tall body and broad shoulders.”
It is very interesting that an Italian, a Pole and a German note the high growth of Russians in the Middle Ages, having, of course, the opportunity to compare them with Europeans. The same features of the Russian people were noticed in the 19th century by the traveler and diplomat Marquis de Custine, who is difficult to suspect of love for Russia. In his pamphlet “Nicholas Russia,” published first in Europe, immediately after the Marquis’s trip to Russia, and then here, he writes about the Russian men he met in St. Petersburg. The Marquis de Custine writes: “The Russian people are quite beautiful. Men of a purely Slavic race ... are distinguished by their light hair color and brightly colored faces, especially by the perfection of their profile, reminiscent of Greek statues. Their almond-shaped eyes are Asian in shape (?) with a northern bluish coloration.” It should be noted that this is almost the only positive observation of the Marquis in Russia. Therefore, we can forgive him in this case for the “Asian” shape of his bluish eyes that came from nowhere.
Thus, we see that for more than ten centuries the Russian people have preserved their ethnic identity and brought it to our time. The facts clearly demonstrate this, in spite of all ill-wishers.
It is important to note that the people themselves have developed certain concepts of beauty. In epics we can find a generalized image of the Russian people as they saw themselves in their epic heroes. These are golden-haired heroes with clear eyes. These are chubby, fair-haired girls. Basurman, on the other hand, is invariably depicted as black, which is intended to emphasize their dark spiritual essence. In proverbs, sayings, and signs of the Russian people you can often find the phrase “black as a gypsy.” Fellow villagers who had darker skin were also jokingly called “gypsies,” which immediately caught the eye. In Russian literature of the noble period one can often find descriptions of blond-haired village boys. Blonde hair was considered a sign of common people.
A.S. Khomyakov, describing the ancient Wends in Semiramis as one of the proofs that the Wends were Slavs, calls them a blond people. From the few surviving frescoes of the 11th-12th centuries, we can judge what the Russian people of the Middle Ages looked like. In the St. Cyril Church in Kyiv there is a fresco from the 12th century. On it we see a fair-haired warrior. Judging by the 11th century frescoes of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, it should be noted that brown-haired people apparently predominated in Southern Rus'.
What did the Russian people of the 18th-19th centuries look like? Let us turn to authoritative reference books, which provide an interesting table of “types of guards soldiers.” We present it in full, since it perfectly shows what racial subtypes make up a single Russian ethnic group.
So, the table of “types of guard soldiers”:
Preobrazhensky Regiment: tall blondes, 3rd and 5th companies with beards.
Semenovsky: tall brown-haired, no beards. Izmailovsky: brunettes, company E.V. (His Majesty) with beards. Jaeger: light build, all hair colors. Moscow: red-haired, with beards. Grenadier: brunettes, company E.V. with beards.
Pavlovsky: snub-nosed, company E.V.: tall; 5th company: blondes; 2nd Rifle: brunettes, 3rd Rifle: no specific type, 4th Rifle: short-nosed with connected thick eyebrows.
Cavalier Guard: tall, blue-eyed and grey-eyed blond, without beards.
Equestrian: tall, burning brunettes with mustaches; 4th squadron with beards.2
His Majesty's Cuirassier: tall, red-haired, long-nosed. Her Majesty's Cuirassier: tall, dark brunettes. His Majesty's Cossack: brunettes and brown-haired men with beards. Atamansky: blondes with beards. Step Cossack: all hair colors with beards. Horse Grenadier: dark-haired, with a mustache, without beards. Dragunsky: brown-haired, no beards.
His Majesty's Hussars: well-built brown-haired men, squadron E.V. with a brown beard.
Ulansky of His Majesty: dark brown-haired and brunette, with a mustache.
Grodno Hussars: brunettes with beards.
Gendarmerie squadron: no specific type.
So, a wide panorama of various Russian types, presented in the descriptions of employees of various guards regiments, suggests that in the racial subtypes of Russians we can distinguish three types: northern (blonds and redheads), transitional (brown-haired) and southern Russian (brunets).
Let us note the Pavlovsk regiment, where snub-nosed soldiers were recruited. The fact is that, contrary to popular belief, in Russia there are not so many snub-nosed people among the Slavic population. Anthropologists have determined that the highest coefficient of “snub nose” is noted in the Baltic Sea, in the German state of Brandenburg.
Let us turn again to the notes of foreigners of the 15th-17th centuries about Russia. All of them unanimously testify to the amazing health and endurance of the Russians. The Austrian diplomat Baron Meyerberg wrote in the 17th century:
“It’s strange to say, but with such a disorderly life of both sexes in Muscovy (?) many live to a ripe old age without ever experiencing any illness. There you can see seventy-year-olds who have retained all their strength, with such strength in their muscular arms that it is not at all possible for our young people to endure the work. One must think that healthy air helps a lot to such good health, which is not upset in any of them by teaching, like ours. The Muscovites say, however, that this is more because they neglect the art of medicine. In all of Muscovy there is not a single doctor or pharmacist, and although in my time the Tsar gave quite a generous allowance to three doctors at his palace, this must only be attributed to his imitation of foreign Sovereigns, because neither he himself ever uses their labors, nor anyone below -or another of the Muscovites. Those who are ill despise all the correct remedies of Hippocrates, barely allowing themselves to apply external medicines. They would rather resort to conspiracies of old women and Tatars. And when there is an aversion to food and to relieve a fever, they drink vodka and garlic.”
Even earlier, at the beginning of the 17th century, the Frenchman Jacob Margeret wrote the same thing about Russians: “Many of the Russians live to be 80, 100, 120 years old, and only in old age are they familiar with diseases. Only the king and some of the most important nobles use medical benefits; and common people even consider many medicinal things unclean: they take pills very reluctantly, but they hate rinsing agents, musk, muskrat and other similar remedies. Feeling unwell, they usually drink a good glass of wine, pouring a charge of gunpowder into it or mixing the drink with crushed garlic, and immediately go to the bathhouse, where they sweat for two or three hours in the unbearable heat. This is how the common people are treated for all illnesses.” This is truly a mighty race of the northern reaches of the earth, as our wonderful publicist of the early 20th century M.O. Menshikov wrote with respect and love about the ordinary Russian people.
It is not by chance that we touched upon the issues of the nation's health. The fact is that health seriously affects the biological indicators of the people. As we have seen, all foreign authors from antiquity to the beginning of the 20th century describe the Slavs and Russians as tall and powerful people.
The situation with the growth rates of Russians today is more complicated. This problem is extremely serious. At the beginning of our century, it was directly related to the health of the nation. M.O. Menshikov was the first to raise these issues. In the article “National Congress” (01/23/1914) he writes that just over a hundred years ago the tallest army in Europe (Suvorov’s “miracle heroes”), the Russian army of the beginning of our century was already the shortest, and a terrifying percentage recruits had to be rejected for service. Menshikov M.O. pointed out the reasons for the loss of health of the nation and the decline in growth rates. The first reason is infant mortality, unprecedented on such a scale in Europe. The second is “...the poorly thought-out reform of 1861, which released tens of millions of people, previously robbed, ignorant, poor, and not armed with culture, into the wild, and so all the curves of the people’s well-being went sharply downward.” The third reason is the consequences of the first two: “scarcity of land, usurious loans from kulaks and world-eaters, a flooded sea of drunkenness - all this led to a decline in the people’s spirit.”
M.O. Menshikov writes that this was followed by a series of famine years and cholera and typhus epidemics, which are explained not only by physical reasons, but also by the psychological decline of the race, a decrease in the ability to deal with disasters and overcome them. Here are a few more quotes from the same article. “Over the last half century, the physical exhaustion of our once mighty race, which began long ago, has completely taken shape.” And again: “I don’t want to frighten, but in fact the situation of the Russian people in zoological terms has become extremely unfavorable.”
All this was written almost 80 years ago. We are forced to admit that the situation has only worsened. And the problem that M.O. Menshikov posed: “How to create a position in Russia for the Russian tribe that truly corresponds to its great historical labors and sacrifices” is still acutely facing our people.
Blood and Spirit
It is no coincidence that we turn to Germany when we talk about racial problems and racial theory. It was Germany of the 20th century that made biological racism the basis of the new National Socialist ideology. This fact turned anthropology into a “forgotten” science.
The following material is of interest to us. In the 30s, just before the war, representatives of the Ahnenerbe Institute, under the guise of sales representatives, traveling around Russia, collected anthropological material. One of the reports to Germany said that the bulk of the Russians, with the exception of the Mordvins, Tatars, Bashkirs and Mari, were undoubtedly of Aryan origin and should be subject to assimilation by the Germans. Along with this, Poles, Lithuanians, some Latvians and Estonians were threatened with complete destruction. The fact is that German “scientists” did not detect the Aryan element among these peoples in the proper percentage ratio to the mass of the population. However, in Germany itself, official propaganda continued to harp on the racial inferiority of Russians.
After the defeat at Stalingrad and the Kursk Bulge, anthropological measurements of Russian prisoners of war were carried out in concentration camps. Goebbels was reported that the majority of Russians have purely Aryan indicators of cranial proportions. This information shocked the top of the Reich's ideological apparatus.
Now, in our time, all this seems wild. But in the Third Reich this issue was given paramount importance. True, many even then criticized the Nazis for their flat biologism in matters of race. The famous scientist and traditionalist thinker Julius Evola, who welcomed the coming to power of the fascists in Italy, writes two important works: “Synthesis of Racial Teaching” and “Remarks on Racial Education.” Evola identified three types or stages of race - “body race”, “soul race” and “spirit race”, which, as he believed, do not always coincide. As an example of this three-stage scheme, Evola cited the Scandinavian peoples, who can least of all be called spiritual Aryans, conscious of the “highest values of the Aryan Tradition,” although in a purely biological sense they can be considered a model of the white race.
Indeed, the Scandinavians in history have demonstrated least of all the willpower aimed at creating their Empire of northern spiritual values. In Europe only Rome and the German emperors set themselves such a task, and in Eurasia - the Greeks and Russians.
With certain reservations, taking Evola’s scheme as a working model, we can state the fact that the “race of the body” and the “race of the soul” are, in principle, the same among many peoples of Europe - the Germans, the Anglo-Saxons, the French, and the Russians. But the “race of the spirit,” the spiritual Aryanism, if you like, was preserved only by the Russians as faithful guardians of the Orthodox faith.
Most definitely, issues of the spirit and issues of blood have a close relationship in our world created by the Lord. Issues of blood and spirit are so important for humanity that it is simply impossible not to take them into account. These questions caused almost all wars until the New Time, when wars became a consequence of the economic interests of peoples. But the theme of spirit and blood continued to be heard in bloody upheavals, until in the middle of the 20th century it again became the main one in the greatest war of our history.
This cannot be explained by chance or the power of propaganda. After the collapse of fascism and National Socialism, a taboo was placed on the issue of blood, since the issue really became bloody. They preferred to forget about spirituality and the spirit of the nation. It is as if this most important category of national existence did not exist at all. But the ban and almost religious taboo only spurred people's unsatisfied interest in the secrets of blood and spirit. And people need this knowledge. But the truth here can only be known with the help of Christian anthropology. Any scientific theories only lead away from the correct understanding of the issue, giving rise to pseudoscientific and occult interpretations, which all the more lead to a dead end.
In our spirit, in our blood, we carry the sacred heritage of our fathers and grandfathers. We do not remember them all, going back in an endless chain of generations into the depths of centuries. But they all live in us thanks to our blood, our spirit. It is in this sense that our blood is sacred to us. Together with it, our parents give us not only flesh, but also our unique consciousness. To deny the meaning of blood is not just to deny oneself and one’s uniqueness in the world, but also God’s plan for oneself and one’s people. The ancients knew that blood is the carrier of spirit and life. Through blood we carry within us the sacred secret of creation. Different nationalities are the greatest creation of God. Nothing and no one in the world, no party or religion has the right to violate the Divine order and want to make all people the same, depriving them of national individuality.
For five centuries, Russia waged continuous wars and lived in a military camp. In constant wars, Russia lost its best sons, its strongest and healthiest men. The twentieth century could have been the last in the history of the Russian people: two world wars, a civil war, repressions of 1918-1953, when the best representatives of all Russian classes were destroyed, the war in Afghanistan and the ongoing hidden genocide brought the Russians to the last line, beyond which there was already oblivion. Our gene pool has been significantly undermined, but we are alive and must act.
It is absolutely necessary to stimulate the birth rate among Russians, but this is not enough. The Russian people need people who are spiritually and physically healthy, and for this it is necessary to improve the very spirit of the nation, which, according to N.M. Karamzin, with courage and courage gained dominance over a sixth of the world and is worthy of a great future.
First of all, we must help our people regain a sense of unity, historical and blood relationship with our great ancestors. We need our lost national pride. We must end the feeling of inferiority imposed on us. We have proven our greatness with a thousand years of heroic history. We need responsibility for future generations. This is the key to our future development.
The scientific data presented is more than enough to firmly state that the anthropological and genetic unity of the Russian people is a strictly scientific fact. We are flesh of flesh, blood of blood, descendants of our glorious ancestors. And in the awareness of this blood connection we must draw strength for our revival. And to all those who doubt our unity, to all who speak and write about the Slavic-Turkic symbiosis, to all who do not know where their ancestors stood on the Kulikovo field, we must firmly answer that our ancestors stood under the banner of Dmitry Donskoy both honestly and menacingly carried in their hearts the image of the Savior Not Made by Hands. And we, their descendants, accepted and menacingly carry this our sacred banner of the Orthodox Russian people.
The Slavs are one of the indigenous inhabitants of Eastern Europe, but they are divided into three large groups: eastern, western and southern, each of these communities has similar cultural and linguistic features.
And the Russian people - part of this large community - came from along with Ukrainians and Belarusians. So why were the Russians called Russians, how and under what conditions did this happen? We will try to find answers to these questions in this article.
Primary ethnogenesis
So, let’s take a journey into the depths of history, or rather, at the moment when this IV-III millennium BC begins to take shape.
It was then that the ethnic division of European peoples occurred. The Slavic mass stands out from the general environment. It was also not homogeneous, despite the similarity of languages; otherwise, the Slavic peoples are quite different, this even applies to the anthropological type.
This is not surprising, since they mixed with different tribes, this result was obtained with a common origin.
Initially, the Slavs and their language occupied a very limited territory. According to scientists, it was localized in the area of the middle reaches of the Danube, only later did the Slavs settle in the areas of modern Poland and Ukraine. Belarus and southern Russia.
Range expansion
The further expansion of the Slavs gives us the answer to the origin. In the 4th-3rd centuries BC, the Slavic masses move towards central Europe and occupy the Oder and Elbe basins.
At this stage it is still impossible to talk about any clear demarcation within the Slavic population. The greatest changes in ethnic and territorial demarcation were brought about by the Hun invasion. Already by the fifth century AD, the Slavs appeared in the forest-steppes of modern Ukraine and further south in the Don region.
Here they successfully assimilate the few Iranian tribes and establish settlements, one of which becomes Kyiv. However, numerous toponyms and hydronyms remain from the former owners of the lands, which led to the conclusion that the Slavs appeared in these places around the above period.
At this moment, there was a rapid growth of the Slavic population, which led to the emergence of a large intertribal association - the Anta Union, and it was from its midst that the Russians emerged. The history of the origin of this people is closely connected with the first prototype of the state.
The first mentions of Russians
From the fifth to the eighth centuries there was a continuous struggle between the Eastern Slavs and nomadic tribes, however, despite the enmity, these peoples in the future will be forced to coexist.
By this period, the Slavs had formed 15 large inter-tribal unions, the most developed of which were the Polyans and Slavs who lived in the area of Lake Ilmen. The strengthening of the Slavs led to the fact that they appeared in the possessions of Byzantium, and it was from there that the first information about the Russians and Dews came.
That is why the Russians were called Russians, this is a derivative of the ethnonym that the Byzantines and other peoples surrounding them gave them. There were other names that were similar in transcription - Rusyns, Rus.
During this chronological period, there was an active process of formation of statehood, moreover, there were two centers of this process - one in Kyiv, the other in Novgorod. But both bore the same name - Rus'.
Why were Russians called Russians?
So why did the ethnonym “Russians” appear both in the Dnieper region and in the north-west? After the great migration of peoples, the Slavs occupied vast areas of Central and Eastern Europe.
Among these numerous tribes there are the names Russ, Rusyns, Rutens, Rugs. Suffice it to recall that Rusyn has survived to this day. But why this particular word?
The answer is very simple, in the language of the Slavs the word “blond” meant fair-haired or simply fair, and the Slavs looked exactly like that according to their anthropological type. A group of Slavs who originally lived on the Danube brought this name when moving to the banks of the Dnieper.
This is where the terminology and origin of “Russian” originate; the Russians, over time, turn into Russians. This part of the Eastern Slavs settles in the area of modern Kyiv and adjacent territories. And they brought this name here, and since they established themselves here, the ethnonym became established; over time it only changed a little.
The emergence of Russian statehood
Another part of the Russians occupied lands along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, here they pushed the Germans and Balts to the west, and they themselves gradually moved to the north-west, this group of Eastern Slavs already had princes and a squad.
And she was practically one step away from creating a state. Although there is a version about the Northern European origin of the term “Rus” and it is connected with the Norman theory, according to which the Varangians brought statehood to the Slavs, this term denoted the inhabitants of Scandinavia, but there is no evidence for this.
The Baltic Slavs moved to the area of Lake Ilmen, and from there to the east. Therefore, by the ninth century, two Slavic centers bear the name Rus, they are destined to become rivals in the struggle for dominance, this is what gives the new people their origin. Russian man is a concept that originally denoted all the Eastern Slavs who occupied the territories of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
The history of the Russian people at its very beginning
As mentioned above, intense rivalry arose between Kiev and Novgorod at the end of the ninth century. The reason for this was the acceleration of socio-economic development and the need to create a unified state.
The northerners gained the upper hand in this battle. In 882, the Novgorod prince Oleg gathered a large army and went on a campaign against Kyiv, but he was unable to take the city by force. Then he resorted to cunning and passed off his boats as a merchant caravan. Taking advantage of the effect of surprise, he killed the Kyiv princes and took the Kiev throne, declaring himself the Grand Duke.
This is how the ancient Russian state appears with a single supreme ruler, taxes, squad and judicial system. And Oleg becomes the founder of those who ruled in Rus'-Russia until the 16th century.
It was then that the history of our country and its largest people begins. The fact is that the Russians, the history of the origin of this people, are inextricably linked with the Ukrainians and Belarusians, who are their closest ethnic relatives. And only in the post-Mongol period did the fragmentation of a single base become apparent, as a result of which new ethnonyms (Ukrainians and Belarusians) appeared, characterizing the new state of affairs. Now it’s clear why the Russians were called Russians.
The Russian ethnic group is the largest people in the Russian Federation. Russians also live in neighboring countries, the USA, Canada, Australia and a number of European countries. They belong to the large European race. The modern territory of settlement of the Russian ethnic group stretches from the Kaliningrad region in the west to the Far East in the east and from the Murmansk region and Northern Siberia in the north to the foothills of the Caucasus and Kazakhstan in the south. It has a complex configuration and has developed as a result of long migrations, cohabitation in the same regions with other peoples, assimilation processes (for example, some Finno-Ugric groups) and ethnic division (with Belarusians and Ukrainians).
The name of the people “Rus” or “ros” appears in sources in the middle of the 6th century. There is no clarity in the origin of the word “Rus”. According to the most common version, the ethnonym “Rus” is associated with the name “ros”, “rus”, which goes back to the name of the Ros River, a tributary of the Dnieper. The word "Rus" was common in Europe.
Anthropologically, Russians are homogeneous in the sense that they are all part of the large Caucasoid race. However, differences are observed between individual groups. Among the Russian population of the northern regions, signs of the Atlanto-Baltic race predominate, the Russians of the central regions constitute the East European type of the Central European race, the Russians of the north-west are represented by the East-Baltic type of the White Sea-Baltic race, among the Russians of the south signs of an admixture of Mongoloid and Mediterranean elements are found.
The ethnogenesis of the Russian ethnos is closely connected with the origin of the Old Russian people, in the formation of which, in turn, East Slavic tribes played an important role. The Old Russian nationality with a pan-East Slavic identity was formed during the period of the unity of the Old Russian early feudal Kievan state (Kievan Rus of the 9th - early 12th centuries). During the period of feudal fragmentation, general self-awareness was not lost, which affected, in particular, the formation of ethnonyms denoting in subsequent centuries the three East Slavic peoples - Great Russians, Little Russians, and Belarusians.
The process of development of the Russian nationality proceeded in parallel with the formation of the Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities. A certain role in this was played by the gradual accumulation of local differences in the conditions of the collapse of the unified ancient Russian state. The ethnocultural differences of the three peoples, which were formed in subsequent centuries, are explained both by the tribal division of the Eastern Slavs of the pre-state era, and by socio-political factors. In the conditions of the liberation struggle against the Horde yoke (mid-XIII - late XV centuries), the ethnic and ethno-confessional consolidation of the principalities of north-eastern Rus' took place, which formed in the XIV - XV centuries. Moscow Rus'.
By the period when a new process of unification of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians in the Russian state began, the ethnic differentiation of the Eastern Slavs, which developed in the 14th - 17th centuries, had gone quite far (although it was not completely completed until the 19th - 20th centuries) and turned out to be irreversible . The Eastern Slavs continued to develop in conditions of intense interethnic contacts, but as three independent peoples.
The most important features of the ethnic history of Russians were the constant presence of sparsely populated territories and the centuries-old migration activity of the Russian population. The period preceding the formation of the Old Russian state, as well as the era of Kievan Rus, was marked by the movement of the East Slavic ethnic massif to the north and northeast and the settlement of those regions that subsequently formed the core of the Russian (Great Russian) ethnic territory.
The ethnic core of the Russian people took shape in the 11th - 15th centuries. within the lands lying in the Volga-Oka interfluve and the borders of Veliky Novgorod, during fierce resistance to Mongol-Tatar dependence.
After liberation from the Horde yoke, the secondary settlement of the “wild field” began, that is, the southern Russian regions devastated by the Horde raids. Relocations followed to the Volga region in the 17th - 18th centuries, to Siberia, the North Caucasus, and later to Kazakhstan, Altai and Central Asia. As a result, a vast ethnic territory of Russians gradually formed. During the Russians' exploration of new territories, intensive interethnic contacts took place with representatives of a number of other peoples. These and other factors contributed to the fact that special (separate) ethnographic, ethno-confessional, and ethno-economic groups were preserved or formed within the Russian people.
In the XVIII - XIX centuries. The Russian nation is gradually being formed. We can say that in the second half of the 19th century. basically the Russian nation was formed. Reforms of the 60s XIX century gave a strong impetus to the development of capitalism in Russia. During the 19th century. The formation of the Russian intelligentsia took place, major successes were achieved in the field of literature, art, science, and social thought. At the same time, archaic forms of traditional culture were preserved to a certain extent.
The formation of the Russian ethnic group was greatly influenced by the natural and climatic features of the country: the virtual absence of mountain ranges, the presence of a large number of forests and swamps, harsh winters, etc. The intensity of agricultural work, especially the need to manage the harvest on time and without losses, contributed to the formation of the Russian national character, the ability to withstand extreme stress, which turned out to be life-saving and necessary during periods of enemy invasions, famine, and serious social upheavals. Periodically repeated attacks on the external borders of the country strongly encouraged the Russian population to fight for liberation and unity. Under these conditions, the state played an exceptional role in the formation and strengthening of the Great Russian nationality, and then the Russian nation.
In the absence of summary statistical data, up to the 17th century, according to various estimates, in the Russian state in the middle of the 15th century. there were 6 million people in the first half of the 16th century. 6.5 - 14.5, at the end of the 16th century. 7 - 14, and in the 17th century. 10.5 - 12 million people.
In the 18th century The demographic state of the Russian state and the Russian people is presented in the following form. In 1719, the entire population of Russia was 15,738 million people, including Russians - 11,128 million. In 1795, out of a population of 41,175 million, Russians numbered 19,619 million people, or 49% of the total population. The given data does not take into account the Russian population living in the Baltic states, Belarusian and Ukrainian provinces, in the area of the Cossack troops (Don and Ural).
After Estland and Livonia, and later Courland, became part of the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Nystad (1721), at the beginning of the 19th century. Finland and Bessarabia, and in the second half of the century in Central Asia and the Far East, Russians began to populate these regions. Thus, the migration movements of the Russian people in the 19th - early 20th centuries. did not stop, new centers of Russian settlement were formed. As a result of these movements, the Russian population in the Central Industrial and Northern regions of the European part of the country grew more slowly than in the southern populated regions.
According to the 1897 census, the entire population of the country numbered 125.6 million people, of which Russians made up 43.4% of its composition (55.7 million people), most of them were in the European part of the country.
By 1990, the number of Russian ethnic groups reached 145 million (actually in Russia - almost 120 million people), or 82.6% of the total population. 49.7% of Russians inhabit the center of the European part of Russia, the north-west, the Volga-Vyatka region and the Volga region; in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East - 23.9%. In the near abroad, the majority of Russians are in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus.
about two thousand years ago, Greek and Roman scientists knew that in the east of Europe, between the Carpathian Mountains and the Baltic Sea, numerous tribes of Wends lived. These were the ancestors of modern Slavic peoples. After their name, the Baltic Sea was then called the Venedian Gulf of the Northern Ocean. According to archaeologists, the Wends were the original inhabitants of Europe.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1.2. Southern, local version
1.4. Version by V.I. Yashkichev
CONCLUSION
LINKS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INTRODUCTION
D the more reverent name of the Slavs - Wends - was preserved in the language of the Germanic peoples until the late Middle Ages, and in the Finnish language Russia is still called Venea. The name “Slavs” began to spread only one and a half thousand years ago - in the middle of the 1st millennium AD. At first only Western Slavs were called this way. Their eastern counterparts were called antes. Then all tribes speaking Slavic languages began to be called Slavs.
IN At the beginning of our era, large movements of tribes and peoples took place throughout Europe. At this time, the Slavic tribes already occupied a large territory. Some of them penetrated to the west, to the banks of the Odra and Laba (Elbe) rivers. Together with the population living along the banks of the Vistula River, they became the ancestors of modern West Slavic peoples - Polish, Czech and Slovak.
ABOUT The movement of the Slavs to the south was especially grandiose - to the banks of the Danube and to the Balkan Peninsula. These territories were occupied by the Slavs in the 6th-7th centuries after long wars with the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire, which lasted over a century.
P rare modern South Slavic peoples - the Bulgarians and the peoples of Yugoslavia - were Slavic tribes that settled on the Balkan Peninsula. They mixed with the local Thracian and Illyrian populations.
IN At the time when the Slavs settled the Balkan Peninsula, Byzantine geographers and historians became closely acquainted with them. They pointed to the large number of Slavs and the vastness of their territory, and reported that the Slavs were well acquainted with agriculture and cattle breeding. Particularly interesting is the information from Byzantine authors that the Slavs in the 6th and 7th centuries did not yet have a state. They lived as independent tribes. At the head of these numerous tribes were military leaders. We know the names of the leaders who lived more than a thousand years ago: Mezhimir, Dobrita, Pirogost, Khvilibud and others.
IN the Izantians wrote that the Slavs were very brave, skilled in military affairs and well armed; They are freedom-loving, do not recognize slavery and subordination. The ancestors of the Slavic peoples of Russia in ancient times lived in forest-steppe and forest areas between the Dniester and Dnieper rivers. Then they began to move north, up the Dnieper. It was a slow movement of agricultural communities and individual families that took place over centuries, looking for new convenient places to settle and areas rich in animals and fish. Settlers cut down virgin forests for their fields.
IN At the beginning of our era, the Slavs penetrated into the upper Dnieper region, where tribes related to modern Lithuanians and Latvians lived. Further in the north, the Slavs settled areas in which ancient Finno-Ugric tribes lived here and there, related to the modern Mari, Mordovians, as well as Finns, Karelians and Estonians. The local population was significantly inferior to the Slavs in terms of their level of culture. Several centuries later, it mixed with the newcomers and adopted their language and culture. In different regions, the East Slavic tribes were called differently, which is known to us from the oldest Russian chronicles: Vyatichi, Krivichi, Drevlyans, Polyans, Radimichi and others.
CHAPTER 1. RUSSIAN ETHNOS: BRIEF HISTORICAL SUMMARY
P Almost all sources very expressively, with reference to a specific territory, record the Slavs only from the middle of the 1st millennium AD. (most often from the 4th century), i.e. when they appear on the historical arena of Europe as a large ethnic community.
A ancient authors (Herodotus, Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Jordan, Procopius of Caesarea) knew the Slavs under the name of the Wends. Mentions are present in Byzantine and Arab authors, in Scandinavian sagas, and in Germanic tales.
P The history of the Eastern Slavs begins from the 3rd millennium BC. The tribes of the Proto-Slavs already knew hoe farming And cattle breeding. It has been established that within the 4th millennium BC. pastoral and agricultural tribes, carriers of the Balkan-Danube archaeological culture, occupied the region of the lower reaches of the Dniester and the Southern Bug. The next stage was the settlement of the “Tripillian” tribes” - III millennium BC. These were tribes with a developed cattle-breeding and agricultural economy for their time, inhabitants of huge settlements.
« ABOUT The education and development of the Russian people were in direct connection with the centuries-long expansion of its historical and ethnic territory. The origins of the history of the Russian people go back to the era of the ancient Russian state - Kievan Rus, which arose in the 9th century as a result of the unification of East Slavic tribes. The territory of the ancient Russian state extended from the White Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south, from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to the Volga in the east. In the process of strengthening the central government, Finno-Ugric, Baltic and Turkic tribes became part of the state. Under the leading branch of the economy - agriculture, which was engaged in by the Eastern Slavs, in the Old Russian state there was a constant process of internal agricultural development of land, which led to the development of integration processes, during which the Old Russian people took shape.
M population migrations across the East European Plain represented a constantly operating factor, which for many centuries after the collapse of the ancient Russian state exerted its influence on the economic, political, ethnic and cultural situation. In the 9th - 10th centuries in the Volga-Oka interfluve, where the core of the historical and ethnic territory of the Russians was created, the Finno-Ugric tribes - all, Muroma, Meshchera, Merya, as well as Golyad of Baltic origin, lived in stripes in separate areas with an East Slavic population. Several streams of Slavic settlers rushed to this territory in search of the most favorable conditions for agriculture. First of all, such flows came from the north-west, from the lands of the Novgorod Slovenes, which were connected with the Volga-Oka interfluve through the upper reaches of the Volga. From the Upper Volga region, settlers penetrated into the basins of the Moscow and Klyazma rivers. They also traveled north along Sheksna, to Lake Beloye. From the west, there was a colonization movement of the Smolensk Krivichi, moving through the upper Volga and from the upper Dnieper along the Moscow River, a later flow of Slavic settlers - the Vyatichi - headed from the south, from the upper Desna and across the Oka to the north. The first settlements of the Vyatichi in the upper reaches of the Oka date back to the 8th - 9th centuries. By the 12th century, the Vyatichi moved along the Oka and north of it, into the Moscow River basin. Their movement to the northeast was caused by pressure from the Cumans. All these colonization flows, intersecting and mixing in the Volga-Oka interfluve, created a permanent East Slavic population there. Already in the 9th century, areas of compact settlements took shape. This, in particular, is evidenced by the emergence of the most ancient cities - Beloozero, Rostov, Suzdal, Ryazan, Murom, which were founded by settlers. Some researchers believe that a number of ancient Russian cities with foreign ethnic names were built by Slavic settlers and only received names from earlier settlements (for example, Rostov on lands inhabited by Merya, Beloozero on Vesi lands, etc.).”
P The process of assimilation of local tribes by Slavic settlers was explained not only by the small number and scattering of Finnish tribes over a vast territory, but also by the higher level of social development and material culture of the settlers. Assimilating, the Finno-Ugric left to the Slavic settlers certain anthropological features, a huge toponymic and hydronymic nomenclature (names of rivers, lakes, villages and localities), as well as elements of traditional beliefs.
L The people who inhabited the north and center of the East European Plain spoke Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages. East Slavic peoples speak Slavic languages of the Indo-European group. These languages are close to the Baltic languages spoken by Lithuanians and Latvians. The branch of Slavic languages emerged in the 5th - 6th centuries AD. Both at that time and in subsequent centuries there was no clear connection and demarcation of tribes along linguistic lines; tribes fought or maintained good neighborly relations without giving primary importance to ethnic differences or similarities.
TO East Slavic peoples include Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, as well as subethnic groups of small numbers: Pomors, Don Cossacks, Zaporozhye Cossacks, Nekrasov Cossacks, Russoustyets, Markovites and some others. The territory of residence of these peoples is compact, limited from the west by Poland, the Baltic countries, the Scandinavian countries, from the north by the Arctic Ocean, then from the east by the Dvina and Volga rivers and from the south by the Black Sea. The main part falls on the East European Plain, which dictates the main landscape of the territory (plains, deciduous forest zone).
R Russians speak Russian. The Russian alphabet is a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet. The majority of believers are Orthodox.
CHAPTER 2. ORIGIN OF THE ETHNONYM “RUSSIAN”
E- a collective that opposes itself to all other collectives. An ethnos is more or less stable, although its existence is finite in time. To determine an ethnic group, it is difficult to find any real sign other than the recognition of each individual: “we are such and such, and everyone else is different.” The disappearance and emergence of ethnic groups, the establishment of fundamental differences between them, as well as the nature of ethnic continuity is called ethnogenesis. tnos
E- the moment of origin and the subsequent process of development of a people, leading to a certain state, type, phenomenon. Includes both the initial stages of the emergence of a nation and the further formation of its ethnographic, linguistic and anthropological characteristics. tnogenesis
R solving such problems as the study of ethnonyms - “...names of types of ethnic communities: nations, peoples, nationalities, tribes, tribal unions, clans, etc.; their origin, functioning, structure and area are studied by the science of ethnonymy.
D“All of these aspects of the study of ethnonyms - from the point of view of their origin and functioning - are especially close to the tasks of historical lexicology, which considers the phenomena of the evolution of vocabulary, including the comparison of facts chronologically distant from the observer with those close (contemporary) to him.”
N It should be noted that the largest ethnographic groups differ in linguistic dialects, housing characteristics, rituals and other features: northern Great Russians, southern Great Russians, Central Great Russians. Subethnic groups of Russians are distinguished on the basis of the following characteristics: directions of migration, economic activities, contacts with the foreign population - Cossacks, masons, Markovites.
A gay R.A. writes that “...Russians are a relatively late ethnonym, the only one of the East Slavic ethnonyms that is a substantivized adjective in form.” This option gradually replaced the original forms Rusyns, Russians.
P origin of the ethnonym "Russians"...... has been causing heated controversy for several centuries, the roots of which go not only and so much into linguistics as into history, politics, and ideology. There are at least 15 etymological versions, which, however, are easily divided into two blocks: agreeing that the name of the Russian people is a foreign language, researchers adhere to either the northern or southern theory (the dispute between Normanists and anti-Normanists). We present only a few of them in this work.
1.1. Varangian and West Finnish versions
E that version according to Ageeva R.A. and other researchers, mostly linguists, comes down to the following thoughts.
« P uti possible penetration of the term Rus to the Middle Dnieper from the north have been repeatedly described by historians. One of these routes, laid by the Goths no later than the middle of the 4th century, was the route to the Black Sea region through the Gulf of Finland, lakes Ladoga and Onega, then through the upper Volga region, Volga-Oka interfluve, Oka, Seim, Psel, Dnieper. The existence of this route is evidenced by the Goths’ good acquaintance with the Baltic Finns and the Baltic loach.
TO The end of the 8th century - the middle of the 9th century was a decisive era in the development of water routes that determined the path of development of Rus'.
IN in the middle of the 9th century, both the Eastern Slavs and the European West knew about the Scandinavian origin of the newcomers - Rusov(Varangians) and distinguished them from the Slavs. The Byzantines also distinguished them from the Slavs; the Arabs have not yet differentiated well Rusov and Slavs."
WITH referring to D.A. Machinsky, who considered the northernmost outskirts of the Slavs’ habitat to be the original base Rusov and noted the primary role of the Varangians in the formation of ancient Russian statehood, Ageeva R.A. says that “...in Machinsky’s opinion, the role of the Varangians seems exaggerated. By the time the Varangians appeared, East Slavic statehood already existed. Despite the importance of the ancient trade and military waterways (which were used by the Goths, Varangians and other aliens, as well as, of course, the local population themselves), the economy and politics of the East Slavic lands and the state that emerged on them were determined by many other factors.
ABOUT One fact remains immutable: the Baltic Finns indeed still call Sweden Ruotsi, and the Swedes - ruotsalaiset. In the Karelian and Vepsian languages, this ethnonym in the form ruots was even transferred to the Finns of the evangelical religion. The Sami word ruos'sa "Russian" is also an old loanword from the West Finnish ro-tsi, ruotsi meaning "Sweden, Swedish language, Swede". The fact that among the Sami this name came to mean Russians, and not Swedes, shows that the term was used on the eastern periphery of Western Finnish territory. The Sami knew the Varangians not as a sea people, but as inhabitants of the Lake Ladoga region. The Varangians mixed with the Slavs, and gradually this name passed on to the Slavs.
T the fact that the Baltic Finns call Sweden Ruotsi cannot be ignored by supporters of the northern origin of the ethnonym Rus. But this fact is interpreted in different ways. Some researchers are of the opinion that Rus And Varangians- one and the same and, therefore, Rus And Ruotsi- words of Scandinavian origin. Others believe that the Baltic Finns may have borrowed the name Ruotsi from Germanic languages much earlier than the Viking Age. The Slavs could perceive the term Rus not from the Swedes themselves, but from the Baltic Finns, as from the population of the contact area. This borrowing occurred in exactly the same way as, for example, the Hungarians adopted the term nemet“German” through the Slavic population in his new Danube homeland; in the late Middle Ages, the same Slavic designation for Germans entered the Turkic languages.
L linguists who researched the origin of the term Rus, in contrast to historians dealing with the same problem, strive to operate with specific linguistic facts, and not with general historical arguments. The facts of the language indicate that the ethnonym Rus in the Old Russian language it stands, firstly, among foreign-language ethnonymic formations; secondly, it gravitates towards the northern zone - to the territories inhabited by Finnish and Baltic peoples.
IN in fact, the collective ethnonyms of the Old Russian language in the feminine and singular form are concentrated in the forest zone, in the area of the Finno-Ugrians and Balts; they, as a rule, are a transfer of the self-names of these peoples: all, yam (eat), perm, lib, kors, zhmud or Mordovians, Lithuania, Merya etc. Another group consists of foreign language ethnonyms of the southern steppe regions (Khazars, Bulgarians, Yases, Kasogs, etc.)– names in the masculine and plural. And the names of the Slavic tribes themselves are formed according to a completely different type - with suffixes -ene (-ane) for plural and -enin (-anin) for the masculine singular: Slovenian, Slovenian. Another characteristic form of Slavic ethnonyms is on -ichi (Vyatichi, Dregovichi).
T Thus, turning to linguistic facts, first of all, analyzing the word formation of the ethnonym Rus, led many linguists to the conclusion about the West Finnish source of the borrowing of the term Rus. The local Finns continued to call the descendants of the Norman settlers of the southern Ladoga region, as before, Ruotsi, since the change of Swedish speech by this population to Slavic was not of significant importance for the Finns. Name Rus then gradually spread to the Eastern Slavs.”
1.2. Southern, local version
A now - about the hypothesis of the southern, local, or autochthonous origin of the ethnonym Rus. This hypothesis occupies a very large place in the concepts of anti-Normanists. Even some Normanists admitted that the designations of the ethnonym mentioned in Byzantine and Arabic sources may indicate its southern origin.
AND future still from M.V. Lomonosov, developed in the 19th and early 20th centuries, especially by S.A. Gedeonov, D.I. Ilovaisky, M.S. Grushevsky, V.A. Parkhomenko and others, the idea of the local, Dnieper origin of the word Rus was supported in the 30s - 50s by major Soviet historians. Even before the Kievan state, in the 6th-9th centuries there was a chain of social formations that led to the emergence in the 9th century of a Slavic state in the southern Russian steppes, which was facilitated by the weakening of Khazar rule in this territory. It is assumed that the newly formed state received the name Russian land, which was not tribal, but territorial, geographical; The Russian land served as the core of the future Kyiv state. The boundaries of the ancient Russian land of the 9th century extended to: the Kyiv region (except for the lands of the Drevlyans and Dregovichi), Pereyaslavl and Chernigov (except for the northern and northeastern parts). These three feudal semi-states-principalities then became part of Kievan Rus. Later title Rus spread to the entire Russian people and its territory. The Varangians who came to Rus' had to take her name.
IN in a condensed form, without concrete argumentation, this concept might seem too hypothetical. In fact, the existence of an East Slavic state before Kievan Rus is allowed, and its territory is reconstructed. Based on this assumption, it is assumed that the state should have been called Russian land, hence the name is of local origin. And then they look for an explanation for it either in local geographical names or in ethnonyms, and not necessarily Slavic, but most likely non-Slavic, in the ethnonyms of the closest peoples of antiquity.
A Linguistic reasoning - and it is precisely this that plays a decisive role in determining the genesis of an ethnic name - remains an extremely weak point of the “southern” hypothesis.
N For example, historian V.V. Sedov writes: “The origin of the ethnonym ros-rus remains unclear, but it is certain that it is not Slavic. All names of East Slavic tribes have Slavic formants: -ichi(Krivichi, Dregovichi, Radimichi, Vyatichi, Ulich) or -ane, -yane(Polyans, Drevlyans, Volynians). Turkic languages are not characterized by initial "R", therefore the Turkic origin of the ethnonym ros-rus incredible (the ethnonym Russian in the Turkic languages took the form oros-urus). It remains to assume the Iranian origin of the tribal name in question. Obviously, in the process of Slavicization of the local Iranian-speaking population, its ethnic name was adopted by the Slavs.” This author, one of the few archaeologists who knows the linguistic literature well, gives quite compelling arguments against considering Rus a Slavic ethnonym, but the assumption of its Iranian affiliation was made by contradiction: if not Slavs and not Turks, then, of course, Iranians, for, according to archaeological data, ancient Iranian tribes could have lived in the Middle Dnieper region. Any hypothesis has the right to exist, but by contradiction it would be possible to prove that the ethnonym belongs to Rus and any other people (Goths, for example?) who have ever been related to the territory in question.
N title Rus brought closer both to the biblical Rosh (mentioned in the biblical “Book of Ezekiel” a certain people in the Black Sea region of the 6th century BC), and to the people hro-s, hrus in the work of the Syrian author Pseudo-Zechariah (or Zechariah the Rhetor) of the mid-6th century AD, and with the people Rosomons, which, according to Jordan, in the 4th century was among the tribes subject to Germanaric (apparently Rosomons lived between the Dnieper and Don), and with the Sarmatian tribe Roxolans(2nd century AD).
ABOUT ethnonym identification Rus with biblical rosh unlikely due to the legendary context of the mention of the latter in the Bible: “turn your face to Gog in the land of Magog, the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal...” (Ezek. ch. 38). The prophecy apparently speaks of all the nations north of Israel. The mention of the people is also legendary hros in Pseudo-Zechariah: following the ancient literary tradition, medieval geographers inhabited the borders of the land known to them with mythical tribes, such as the Amazons, Cyclops, etc. People growing up in the “Church History” of Pseudo-Zachariah were distinguished by their powerful build. They were so tall and their bones were so large that no horses could stand them, and people were forced to make military campaigns on foot. The fantastic nature of these ideas is obvious, as a result of which the identification of the names hros And Rus is currently rejected, although some researchers see here a hint of the agricultural, rather than pastoral, appearance of the people grew up, who is believed to have lived on the border with Khazaria (and the Slavs were precisely farmers).
E thymology of the ethnonym Rus from Indo-Iranian, or more precisely, Indo-Aryan languages, is developed by O.N. Trubachev. Based on data from ancient Russian literature and toponymy (Lukomorye chronicles of the 12th century; Blue Sea - Sea of Azov, Blue Water - Don, Russian Sea - Black Sea), the author admits that in the 5th-6th centuries the Slavs came to the shores of the Black and Azov Seas. The original ethnonym poc gravitated towards Taurida, the Azov region and the Northern Black Sea region; in Crimea in the 8th-9th centuries there must have been a special people dew, known to the Greeks. With the advent of the Slavs, this ancient foreign ethnonym was gradually saturated with new ethnic content. Indo-Aryan etymology of the ethnonym Rus HE. Trubachev confirms by comparison with the etymological meaning of the ethnonym kuman (Russian – Cumans)"Whitish, whitish-yellow." It is possible that there was a regional tradition (pre-Slavic and pre-Turkic) of calling the Northern Black Sea region the “White, Light Side”. Already previously named Rus derived from Iranian words meaning “light, brilliant” (cf. Ossetian ru-xs/roxs"light, bright", Persian ru-xs“shine”, etc.).
N some researchers have linked Rus with Russian word fair-haired(hair color). Rus at the same time, it is thought of as a collective name with the meaning “a crowd of red-haired, fair-haired people,” and the word formation here is the same as in the word black. The meaning of the ethnonym Rus in this case it would also approach the meaning of the ethnonym Cumans (Cumans), although color designations in the ethnonymy of the Turkic peoples have, as we previously saw, a more complex nature.
D Other researchers criticize this explanation: after all, there are no other Slavic ethnonyms that would arise from such external signs of people.
WITH there is another hypothesis of the autochthonous origin of the ethnonym Rus- and this time the ethnonym is firmly associated with the Middle Dnieper region - with the Ros River basin. The name of this river was compared with the ethnonym Ross. Linguistic analysis shows that this is not the case. The original form of the name Ros was - Rys, in indirect cases – on Rsi, according to Rsi etc. Residents of the banks of the Ros River are not named in the chronicles Rus, A porshans. Thus, it is clear that in the 10th century in the title Rys there was also a short voiceless vowel ъ, which became clearer under stress only in the 12th century. One can compare with this the name of the city and the river Rasha (the modern city of Orsha and the Orshitsa river) in the Ipatiev Chronicle.
G idronym Ros most likely derived from Indo-European ros- in the meaning of “water, moisture”, and various versions of this name make it possible to attribute it to the layer of hydronyms of the late Slavic period. However, hydronyms with roots grew-(as, indeed, rus-) there are a lot of them not only in the Middle Dnieper region, but also in other European territories. But there is no such single river Rus with which the tribe could be connected pyсь, and, moreover, in such a way that it occurs precisely from the banks of this river. But this is the only way to convincingly prove the local origin of the ethnonym. And an important detail: the original Slavic ethnonyms are formed according to a completely different model. The chronicler Nestor, carefully noting everywhere which ethnonyms of the Slavs owe their origin to rivers, does not say a word about the fact that the people Rus got its name from a river.
E There are other explanations for the ethnonym Rus: for example, supporters of the Japhetic theory N.Ya. Marr connected the Russians and the Etruscans, which is completely impossible either historically or linguistically. There is no point in dwelling on other similar explanations; they are just as unconvincing. Currently, only the “northern” hypothesis (in the West Finnish version) and the “southern” hypothesis (except for the version based on the connection with the hydronym Ros) origin of the ethnonym Rus mostly compete with each other. Each of these hypotheses has its own strengths and weaknesses, with the West Finnish version being the best linguistically substantiated so far.
1.3. Northern or Polabian-Pomeranian hypothesis
WITH There is another extremely interesting “northern” hypothesis that needs to be discussed. It concerns the issue of the so-called Baltic Rus', about the Russians and Rugs, about the island of Rügen, about the ancestral home of the Slavs and their migrations.
R We are talking about the “Pomeranian-Pomeranian” hypothesis, which assumes that the ethnic term Rus originally existed on Western Slavic lands (the basins of the lower reaches of the Laba, Odra, Vistula and the basins of the Neman and Western Dvina). Pomeranian Rus placed in different places of the specified territory, for example, in the region of the Slavic tribe of the Vagr, near the border of the Carolingian state. But most researchers associated this Rus with the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea; in German the island is called Rugen, in Latin it was designated as Rugia, in Polish Rana from the ancient Slavic name Rujana, etc. Among the West Slavic tribes wounds (ruzhan, rushans, ruyans, rus(s)s, rugs) were known for their bravery. At the same time, medieval historians were familiar with the tribe rugia, which they attributed to the Germans (Goths), immigrants from Scandinavia.
P N.S. undertook an experiment to prove the existence of Baltic Rus' and determine its location based on reports from contemporaries in Western European and Arab sources in the 10th-13th centuries. Trukhachev. First of all, he sought to explain the variety of names of the indicated West Slavic tribe. Rushana And rugi(Rugiani, Rugi) - forms of names inherited from Germanic rugov, who, during the migration of Germanic tribes to the south in the first centuries of our era, left their homeland, but its name - Rugia - was fixed in the memory of neighboring peoples. Name wounds(Rani) comes from the actual Slavic name of the country Rana. The term Rutheni, used in sources in relation to wounds, is explained by the fact that German authors tried to phonetically reproduce the self-name of the tribe Rusyns.
N o in German sources of the 10th century, the Kievan Rus were also sometimes called Rugs, although the Germans knew the true self-name of the Russians back in the first half of the 9th century: they appear in ancient German manuscripts Rhos And Ruzzi. Attaching to Kyiv Russians the same designation that they are accustomed to apply to the Baltic ranam (Rusyns), German sources thereby identified them with each other. “The variant of the name Rugi is not at all phonetically similar to other variants that united the Kievan and Baltic Rus (for example, Rutheni). The possibility of accidental phonetic similarity between the names of Kievan Rus and Baltic Rus is thus eliminated, and we gain the right to unite the Eastern and Baltic Rus into one ethnic group. The same tribe of the Kyiv and Baltic Rusyns is also confirmed by the Russian chronicle: it identifies them, applying the same name to both Rus", writes N.S. Trukhachev.
N Some researchers believe that the identification of ethnonyms rugi And Russians in the works of medieval German authors was not at all an accidental error. Sometimes the same author uses terms Rugia And Rus' (rugs and russ) were unambiguous and interchangeable. N.S. Trukhachev believes that this was a conscious act of ethnic identification, although it did not at all mean that German sources considered the Kievan Rus to come from the island of Rügen. A similar identification has been observed since the 10th century and for several centuries, with Baltic Rus' clearly localized on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, sometimes right on the island of Rügen. Even after the Baltic Rus died out at the end of the 14th century, sources continued to call their country Rus.
D alley N.S. Trukhachev makes an attempt to compare the news of Arab authors about the “island of the Rus” with data from Western European sources, the description of which, in his opinion, is in no way suitable for geographical objects in Eastern Europe and, on the contrary, is very suitable for the island of Rügen.
WITH the existence of Pomeranian Rus', accepted by N.S. Trukhachev and others, is questioned by the Polish historian H. Lovmiansky. Trying, however, to explain the use of the ethnonym Rutheni “Russians” in relation to the Baltic Slavs, Lovmiansky notes that the similarity of names ruyans (wounds) or rugi For the Russians it started quite late and suddenly. He suggests that the desire to identify the Russians and the Rugs was characteristic of Kyiv, Russian historiography, which influenced the scientific works of Western authors. German sources, for example, call Princess Olga the Queen of the Rugs. The identification of Russians and Rugs occurred in Kyiv, but not in the Slavic environment, since the terms Rugia, rugi unknown to Russian chronicles. This happened in the Norman environment after Oleg’s arrival in Kyiv, that is, not earlier than the end of the 9th century. The Normans knew about the Slavs who lived on the island of Rugia, and they brought the words together in consonance Russians And ruzi(plural from rug).
1.4. Version by V.I. Yashkichev
IN version of researcher V.I. Yashkichev is based on “... the linguistic law of series, which reflects the opposition according to the economic and cultural type,” as he himself says.
P According to Yashkichev’s thought, ethnonyms that arise according to an economic-cultural type reflect very accurately either the leading branch of the economy of a given people, or the way of life associated with it. “Sea inhabitants” call themselves this not only because they live by the sea, but also because all their work activities are connected with it. This ethnonym is aimed at distinguishing the people from their surrounding neighbors.
P We present one way of forming an ethnonym, which is very important for us, since it can be considered as an analogue of the formation of the name of the city of Rusa. There is an island nation in the Pacific Ocean called SAMOA. It turns out that this name arose from the first letters of the name of the leader Satia Moaatoa.
E Tnonyms, as a rule, do not arise by chance, but are determined by socio-political and economic factors, culture, and the language of the emerging nationality. Taking into account these patterns, V.I. Yashkichev proposes a hypothesis about the origin of the names Rusa, Russian, Rus.
IN In his research, Yashkichev clearly concentrates the Slavs in the Ilmen region, describing favorable natural conditions and the advantageous geographical location of the area. “The Ilmen region had access to all border seas: several waterways led to the Baltic Sea: through the Volkhov and Ladoga, through Lake Peipus and Narva and through the Western Dvina. To the Caspian Sea along the Volga, and to the Black Sea-Azov basin along the Dnieper. All the main rivers of the European part of Russia originate here. In the Ilmen region there are limestones and clays. Fine quartz sand is an excellent raw material for the glass industry, and clays, marls and limestones are for porcelain and earthenware. Let us also note the iron bog ore, which was of great importance in ancient times for the production of iron.
AND natural conditions and geographical location played an important role in the formation of the Russian ethnic group. Important, but not decisive. According to our version, the decisive role in the emergence of the Russian ethnic group was played by salt - table salt. It was the production and sale of salt, control over salt sources under favorable natural and geographical conditions that determined the rapid development of the Russian ethnic group and constituted the content of its economic and cultural type.”
D Next, the researcher describes in his work the difficult technology of extracting table salt and its significance in the life of the Ilmen Slavs. Salt mines were concentrated in the Ilmen region, in Staraya Russa. And the extraction of this valuable product - salt, could not but affect the occupations and life of the rural population surrounding Staraya Russa. “Supplies by the peasants of Staraya Russa and Novgorod districts for the salt mines of Staraya Russa of boiling firewood, boiling wood, canvas, matting and other materials and equipment were the main income of the peasant population of these counties. They occupied the vast majority of the population of Starorussky district and a significant part of the peasants of the Novgorod district.”
I Shkichev continues: “...salt has been mined in Russa since time immemorial, and our goal is to try to find out the role of this fishery at this first stage. It can be assumed that it was salt making that played a very important role in the formation of the Russian ethnic group and in the development of Russian statehood. Almost all residents of the Ilmen region felt their involvement in this fishery. The sale of salt, its exchange for furs, wax and other goods, the initial accumulation of capital, the organization of trade caravans to the Caspian Sea and further, to the Black Sea, to Byzantium, to the Baltic and to Western Europe - all this created a stable system. The people involved in it began to be called Russians.
Z The purpose of salt is well known to our people: in difficult times they store it up, and greet dear guests with the most valuable thing they have - “bread and salt.”
IN The important, determining role of table salt in the formation of a cultural and economic type, and, consequently, in the formation of an ethnic group, is reflected in Russian folklore. For example, in the fairy tale “Salt” there is a dream of “pure Russian salt”, as a wealth that would be good to take, like river sand, and not to be obtained by complex and expensive “digestion”, as well as the confidence that any people, having become accustomed to salt, he will no longer be able to switch to unsalted food.
IN Proverbs and sayings on this topic are expressive. For example: “We cook salt, but we ourselves sit in need,” “not eating salt,” and others.
« P similar thoughts,” says V.I. Yashkichev, “should lead us to formulate a hypothesis about the origin of the Russian ethnos and its ethnonym, based on economic and cultural characteristics.” Toponyms and hydronyms with the root “rus” are found in the Ilmen region at least 16 times - like nowhere else in Russia. In 5 cases, these places had salty springs from which salt was extracted in ancient times, including the famous Rusa springs.
D Another important question: was Ancient Rus' familiar with the abbreviation? The answer will be quite definite: yes, it was familiar, since many original Slavic names - Vladimir, Svyatoslav and others - were formed using it. As for the importance of table salt, we add to what has already been said that the Moscow princes wanted to have this strategically important and very valuable product for their own. In Moscow, in the Volkhonka area, a well more than 100 meters deep was drilled, but no salt was found.
U Reading the importance of salt production, its role in economic activity, as well as the patterns of formation of ethnonyms, in particular the features of the territory and the use of abbreviations, we propose to consider the name of the city of Rusa as an abbreviation - the result of merging the first sounds of words SALT CREEK. Thus, RUSA- this is the name of the territory where salt was obtained from a salty source, which played such an important role in the economic development of the Russian ethnic group. Something similar has already happened. Let's remember Brazil and Samoa. What name should the population of Priilmenia receive? The neighbors of this population, and a noticeable part of it, were the Finno-Ugric tribes. Their self-names, as we know, are expressed in the feminine and singular form: “all”, “yam”, “zhmud” and so on. Therefore, it was natural for them to call the population living in the territory RUS - Rus'. At the same time, it is well known how in the Russian language adjectives are formed that refer to the population living in a certain place: Kursk - Kursk, Ryazan - Ryazan, Moscow - Moscow. It is natural to appear to designate residents RUSSIAN adjective RUSSIAN.
E that hypothesis is consistent with the opinion of linguists. Of course, the words CREEK, SALT- these are words from the Slavic language. But a word made up of the initial sounds of these words may end up among foreign-language ethnonymic formations. We emphasize that the transition RUSA – Rus' corresponds to the West Finnish version of the “northern” hypothesis.
AND so, the original meaning of the name RUSSIANS was that it designated people involved in salt extraction, its sale, exchange, protection and all related sectors of the economy. Subsequently, this original meaning was lost, and the name passed on to the people, in the formation of which the economic and cultural principle, the role of which was mentioned a little higher, played an important role. The specificity of salt production contributed to high rates of growth of productive forces. This is a vivid example of how an ethnonym, which arose according to an economic-cultural type, very accurately reflected the leading or conspicuous branch of the economy of a given people. In addition, he recorded a territorial feature denoting an outstanding local feature - a salty spring.
« E that powerful, inexhaustible source gave its name to both the area and the people. It became the basis of an extensive, ramified economic system, possessing all the attributes of a state. In the emergence of this system one can see the origins of ancient Russian statehood. It is important to understand how the name was spread and consolidated Rus', RUSSIANS. Why did ever wider sections of the population, with different ethnic compositions, accept it as their own? We are talking about the formation of the territory of the ancient Russian state. Apparently, this is, first of all, due to the fact that the basis of the Russian community is not so much ethnic as economic ties. Very wide sections of the population felt their involvement with them: not only salt workers, but also miners, since cooking salt requires a lot of iron, “metallurgists”, iron workers, fuel producers, fuel delivery workers, carpenters, saddlers, and so on. Let us note that the products of service specialties brought to life by the salt industry had independent significance. For example, Russians brought swords to overseas countries for sale. In addition, there were farmers, fishermen, hunters, cattle breeders who fed salt workers, shipbuilders and many, many other people. An ethnos was formed - a people in a territory where the population was in one way or another connected with salt. It is clear that the arrival of “guests” - merchants not with weapons, but with goods - is always a holiday for the local tribes. Especially in those days when any trade expedition was a difficult and dangerous undertaking. The people who participated in this trade also felt involved in this system. The system included everyone who considered themselves involved in ensuring the great cycle of “salt - handicraft products - furs - overseas goods.” First of all, it is a system of trading posts, which over time turned into cities. Trade took place in them, a permanent garrison lived in them, including local, but already “Russian-speaking” residents. They also felt involved in the system and expressed this by calling themselves Russians. Over time, the system developed, the territory covered by it grew - Great Rus' grew.
H Through distant “overseas” expeditions the world learned about RUSSIAN. Their annual trade expeditions through the Kerch Strait led to the emergence of new geographical names (if not among local residents, then among foreign geographers) associated with Russia: Kerch - “city of Russia”, Kerch Strait - “river Russia”. The section of the Black Sea near Tmutarakan is the “Russian Sea”.
N Less important was the “path from the Varangians to the Greeks” - to Byzantium. How to briefly answer the question - where did the caravan come from, what kind of people arrived with goods? The creative genius of the people found the most succinct and accurate answer: we are from Rusa, we are Russian. Those who asked, of course, had no idea what this meant and what role salt played in the development of this trading power.
AND One more circumstance - who caught your eye first of all among all the numerous participants in the caravan? Of course, the guards were warriors, and the Varangians, as a rule, served as guards. From this, local residents could conclude that the Russians are Varangians. The Russians were primarily interested in the north and east of the European part of the country as a source of expensive furs (sable, silver fox) - territories inhabited mainly by Finno-Ugric tribes. This circumstance, as well as the fact that the most striking figures in the Russian caravans were the guards - the Varangians - can explain why Swedes are still called in Finnish "ruotsi"- a derivative word from the ethnonym "Rus"».
T This is, in general terms, the hypothesis expressed by V.I. Yashkichev in his work, which is called “Russian ethnicity. Origin of the name and origins of statehood.”
CONCLUSION
IN In conclusion, I would like to say the following. Every person in any country needs to remember and know the history of their people, their country. Each of us must know and protect the cultural traditions of our nation. As for us Russians, we have the richest historical and cultural roots. Since the time of Saint Prince Vladimir, our people have become Orthodox. Orthodoxy significantly influenced the formation of such an ethnic community as the Russians. Orthodoxy among our people has a thousand-year-old national tradition. For many years, Orthodoxy has been the national idea of our people. The formula of this idea was famously expressed by the outstanding Russian writer and writer F.M. Dostoevsky. He spoke about a Russian person like this: “Russian means Orthodox.” And we, the descendants of our ancestors, need to remember and study, as mentioned above, the historical and cultural traditions of our people, as some life-giving juices necessary for our moral, spiritual growth and formation.
1.
Jordan. About the origin and deeds of the Getae. / Per. E. Ch. Skrzhinskaya. – St. Petersburg, 1997, p. 68, 85. Cornelius Tacitus. Works in 2 volumes. T.I. Annals. Small works. / Translation by A.S. Bobovich. – L.: “Science”, 1969, p. 372.
2.
3.
4.
Ageeva R.A. What kind of tribe are we? Peoples of Russia: names and destinies. Dictionary-reference book. M.: “Academia”, 2000, p. 268.
5.
Golyad is an ancient Baltic tribe that lived in the river basin. Protva (the left tributary of the Oka, flowing into it between Tarusa and Serpukhov). – Approx. Ageeva R.A.
6.
7.
http://geo.1september.ru/2002/10/4.htm: The name of our country (toponymy) // According to the book: R.A. Ageeva. Countries and peoples: origin of names. – M.: “Science”, 1990.
8.
9.
The entire text of this hypothesis is reproduced from: http://geo.1september.ru/2002/10/index.htm: The name of our country (toponymy) // According to the book: R.A. Ageeva. Countries and peoples: origin of names. – M.: “Science”, 1990.
10.
When compiling this subchapter, materials from the book were directly used: http://www.russa.narod.ru/books/etnos/001.htm: Yashkichev V.I. Russian ethnicity. Origin of the name and origins of statehood. M., 2000.
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