Two Europeans
Let us try to look at the ethnic history of Russia from the points of view mentioned above. In those ages, when the history of our homeland and its peoples began, mankind inhabited the Earth very unevenly. Some peoples lived in the mountains, others in the steppes or deep forests, and still others on the shores of the sea. And all created very special cultures, different from each other, but related to the landscapes that fed them.
It is clear that the forest-dwellers could engage in productive hunting, for example, to harvest furs and, by selling them, get all that they lacked. But it could not be done neither by the inhabitants of sultry Egypt, where fur-bearing animals did not exist, nor by the inhabitants of Western Europe, where ermines were so rare that their fur went only for royal robes, nor by the steppe herders. But the steppe people had milk and meat in abundance, and they made a delicious and nutritious non-perishable cheese that they could sell. To whom? To the forest dwellers, who made wooden carts for the steppe dwellers to ride on. And most importantly, the inhabitants of the forests made tar, without which the wheels of the steppe carts would not turn.
The inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast had excellent fish and olives, and goats grazed on the slopes of the Apennines and Pyrenees. So, each people had its own way of doing things, its own way of sustaining life. Therefore, we must begin our study of the history of peoples by describing the nature and climate of the territories in which they live. The division into geographic areas is often arbitrary and does not always coincide with the division into climatic areas. For example, Europe is divided by an air border, corresponding to the isotherm of January, which runs through the Baltic States, western Belarus and Ukraine to the Black Sea. East of this boundary the average temperature in January is negative, winters are cold, frosty and often dry, while to the west wet, warm winters prevail, with slush on the ground and fog in the air. The climate in these regions is completely different.
Map of the Roman Empire at the Turn of the Fourth and Fifth Centuries and the Great Migration of Peoples
Map of Europe Nicholas Vishera
The great scholar, Academician A. A. Shakhmatov, who began a practical study of the Russian annals, studying the history of the Russian language and its dialects, came to the conclusion that the ancient Slavs originated in the upper Vistula, on the banks of the Tisza and on the slopes of the Carpathians.1 These are present-day eastern Hungary and southern Poland. So, our Slavic ancestors appeared and left their first trace in history on the borderland of two climatic regions (Western Europe – humid; and Eastern Europe - dry with a continental climate), and this territory is especially interesting to us.
The Goths.
During the Great Migration of the peoples the Slavs moved west, north and south as far as the shores of the Baltic, the Adriatic and the Aegean Seas. From the west their neighbors were Germanic tribes. In northeastern Europe, the so-called Balts were in contact with the Slavs: Lithuanians, Latvians, Prussians, and Jatvians. They are very ancient peoples who settled the Baltic territory when the glacier left. They occupied almost empty areas and spread out quite widely, from about today's Penza to Szczecin. To the northeast lived Finnish tribes. There were many of them: the Suomi, the Esti, and the "white-eyed Chud" (as one of these tribes was called in Russia). There lived Zyrians, Chud Zavolotsk and many other peoples.
Everything was, as already mentioned, quite stable up to the II century AD, when, as a result of the passionary push, the Great Migration of Peoples began. And it started like this. From the coast of southern Sweden, then called Gothia, three Gothic squadrons with their brave men-of-war, the Ostgoths, the Visigoths, and the Gepids departed. They landed at the mouth of the Vistula, ascended to the upper reaches of the Vistula, reached the Pripyat River, passed the Dnieper steppes and reached to the Black Sea. There the Goths, a people accustomed to seafaring, built ships and began to raid Greece, the former Hellas. The Goths captured cities and plundered them, and took the inhabitants captive. Greece belonged at that time to the Roman Empire, and the Emperor Decius - a terrible persecutor of Christians, a very good general and a brave man - acted against the Goths, who had already crossed the Danube and invaded Byzantium. The excellent Roman infantry, well trained, armed with short swords that were more comfortable in battle than long swords, faced the Goths, dressed in skins, who were armed with long spears. It would seem that the Goths had no chance of victory, but, to the surprise of contemporaries, the Roman army was completely defeated because the Goths, skillfully maneuvering, drove it into a swamp where the Romans were bogged down to their ankles. The legions lost their maneuverability; the Goths stabbed the Romans with their spears, preventing them from engaging. Emperor Decius himself was also killed. This happened in 251 AD.
notes (1) There are other versions of the origin of the Slavs. However, the corrections they make do not change the overall picture of our view. – Hereinafter, the author's note.
"Gothic Maidens". Miniature from the Tale of Igor's Campaign. List of 1912.
Map of Southeast Asia. 1620 г.
The Goths became masters of the mouth of the Danube (where the Visigoths settled) and modern Transylvania (where the Hepidians settled). To the east, between the Don and the Dniester, the Ostgoths reigned. Their king Hermanaric (4th century), a very bellicose and brave man, had conquered almost all of Eastern Europe: the lands of the Mordva and Meri, the upper reaches of the Volga, almost all of the Dnieper, the steppes up to the Crimea and the Crimea itself.
The mighty state of the Goths perished, as it often happened, because of the treachery of their subjects and the ruler's cruelty. Hermanarich was abandoned by one of the leaders of the Goth tribe of the Wolverines. Intolerant of treason, the old king, terrified in his fury, ordered the wild horses to tear apart the chief's wife. "So terrible to kill our sister!" - the brothers of the dead, Cap and Ammius, were indignant. And so, one day at a royal reception they approached Hermanarich and, drawing their swords from under their clothes, pierced him. But they did not kill him: the guards had managed to stab them before. But Hermanarich did not recover from his wounds, was ill all the time and lost his rein. And at that time from the East came the terrible enemy - the Huns.
Huns and Huns (east and west?)
The ancestors of the Huns, the Huns, were a small people, formed in the IV century BC in the territory of Mongolia. In the 3rd century B.C. they were experiencing hard times, as the Xianbi nomads pressed on them from the east, and the Sogdians, whom the Chinese called Yuezhi, pressed on them from the west. The attempts of the Xiongnu (Huns) to take part in Chinese internecine strife were also unsuccessful. The unification of the country, known in Chinese historiography as the "War of the Kingdoms", was then underway in China. One of the seven kingdoms remained, killing two-thirds of the population. The Chinese, who took no prisoners, were not to be messed with. The Xiongnu turned out to be allied. The first Xiongnu shanyu (ruler) paid tribute to both eastern and western neighbors, and ceded the southern fertile steppes to China. But here the consequences of the passionary push that forms the ethnicity were telling.
A Xiongnu prince named Mode was not loved by his father. His father, a shanyu, like all Huns and all nomads, who had several wives, was very fond of his younger wife and her son. He decided to send the unloved Mode to the Sogdians, who demanded a hostage from the Huns. Next, the king planned to raid Sogdiana to push the Sogdians to kill his son. But Mode guessed his father's intentions, and when the shanyu began the raid, the prince killed his guardian and fled (back to his father). His escape made such an impression on the Xiongnu warriors that they agreed: Mode is worthy of much. The father had to put his unloved son in charge of one of the state's fiefdoms.
Riders. China, Northern Qi.
Guard of Honor. Li Xian's Tomb. China, Tang.
Mode began to train his warriors. He used a whistling arrow (a hole was made in the tip of the arrow and it whistled when shot, giving a signal). One day he told the warriors to watch where he shot the whistling arrow and to shoot their bows in the same direction. He did so and suddenly he shot an arrow at ... his favorite horse. Everyone gasped, "Why kill a beautiful animal?" But those who didn't shoot were beheaded. Then Maudet shot his favorite falcon. Those who did not shoot the harmless bird also had their heads cut off. Then he shot his beloved wife. Those who didn't shoot were beheaded. And then, during the hunting, he met the shanyu, his father, and he fired an arrow at him. The shanyu instantly turned into the likeness of a hedgehog - the way Maude's warriors stabbed him with their arrows. No one dared not to shoot. Mode became king in 209 BC. He made peace with the Sogdians but was pressed for tribute by a nomadic people from the east called the Dun-hu.
First, they wanted the best horses. A "thousand-legged horse" (li is a Chinese measure of length, roughly equal to 580 m) was a fancy name for a fast-footed stallion. Some Huns used to say, "You can't give up a racehorse." "It is not worth fighting over horses," Maude did not approve of them, and to those who did not want to give up their horses, he cut off their heads, as was his custom. Then Dun-hu demanded beautiful women, including the king's wife. To those who declared, "How can we give up our wives!" - Mode cut off their heads, saying: "Our lives and the existence of the state are worth more than women." Finally, the Dun-hu demanded a piece of empty land that served as the border between them and the Huns. It was a desert in eastern Mongolia, and some thought, "This land is not needed, for we do not live on it." But Mode said: "The land is the foundation of the state. Land must not be given away!" And he cut off the heads of the objectors. Then he ordered the warriors to march on the Dun-hu immediately. He defeated the Dun-hu because the Huns obeyed him uncontrollably, without fail.
Mode then went to war with China. It would seem that this war was unnecessary. The nomads lived in the steppe and the Chinese lived to the south, beyond their Great Wall, in a humid and warm mossy valley. But the Xiongnu had reason to attack China.
Mode's army surrounded the advance party of the Chinese, with which Emperor Liu Bang himself was present. The Xiongnu all the time shelled the Chinese detachment with their bows, not giving it a break. The Chinese emperor asked for peace. Some of Mode's nobles offered to kill the enemy, but Mode replied, "Fools, why should we kill this Chinese king - they will choose a new one. Let him live. The main body of the Chinese are in the rearguard - we have not yet fought them. So, Mode concluded a treaty of "peace and kinship" (198 BC) with this emperor, the founder of the Han dynasty. This meant that both sides would live without encroaching on each other's lands. The Xiongnu were used to wandering in the steppes, unaffected by the cold. The Chinese liked the mild climate of the Huang He valley and had no intention of going out into the steppe.
At that time, the Chinese had already learned how to make silk, a precious commodity of antiquity. An agreement was reached that the Huns would give the Chinese horses, and the Chinese would pay for the horses in silk. Silk in those days was badly needed by both sedentary peoples and nomads. People were plagued by parasitic insects, lice, the only escape from which was silk clothing. And if a hunka got a silk shirt, she no longer had to scratch all the time.
Fresco from the Tang Dynasty tomb of Li Xian
With the help of Sogdian merchants, the Romans also bought Chinese silk. They had the same problem. There was no soap in those days, so the Romans rubbed oil on their bodies, then scrubbed it off with scrapers along with the dirt and then steamed in a hot bath. However, the nasty parasites would reappear after a while. The Roman beauties, seductive and powerful, demanded silk tunics from their husbands and admirers. These tunics were insanely expensive, almost as expensive as gold. The Romans spent vast sums of money on silk, buying it from intermediary merchants in Iran and Syria, giving it to their wives and lovers, and ... They had no means to pay their soldiers. Soldiers revolted because of non-payment of wages. Emperors and nobles died in the fire of revolts, but this terrible policy that ruined Rome lasted another two hundred years (I-III centuries).
A very unpleasant situation was also in China. The Chinese paid with silk either for horses from the steppe people or for luxury goods from the Mediterranean. Corals, purple dye, precious jewels went to the nobility, and silk was taken from the peasants. Everyone wanted as much of the precious goods as possible so that they could sell them to please their wives and daughters. Naturally, the Chinese developed a system whereby everything was done, as we would say today, "through blat. All the wives and concubines of the emperor (and the emperor was entitled to a harem) began to sneak their relatives into the positions of rulers and chiefs. These relatives, once they got the right to rule some area, immediately began to clamp down on the peasants to get money for bribes.
Thane letting the birds go. Seventeenth-century watercolor.
Fresco from a tomb. China, Tang.
Their crimes, of course, could not remain a secret to the government: the Chinese were always writing denunciations on each other, and there were many literate people among them. The viceroys were executed from time to time. But they, foreseeing a bitter fate, buried treasures in the ground, informing the places to their children. So, the government, knowing well the manners of its countrymen, began to execute not only the criminal, but also his entire family.
It was not a crime, but a crime of the government. Thus, the silk trade proved disastrous for both Roman and Chinese empires.
Meanwhile, the Xiongnu and Chinese confrontation continued. Although China had a population of about fifty million and the Xiongnu (Huns) about three hundred thousand, the struggle caused by the nomads' need for silk, flour and iron objects was on an equal footing. The horses of the Chinese were much worse than those of the steppe nomads. Expeditions to the Hun's steppes usually ended in the death of the Chinese horse units. When the Chinese learned that there were "heavenly stallions" in Central Asia - thoroughbred horses similar to the Arabian breed - they sent a military expedition there. Having besieged the city of Guishan (in what is now Fergana), the Chinese demanded the best of the stallions. The besieged conceded and the Chinese, coming back with the loot, began to breed the new breed. Having succeeded in that, they began to make successful raids on the Xiongnu. Not only that, they persuaded their nomadic neighbors from the east, north, and west to oppose the Huns.
In 193 the Xiongnu Shanyu lost a decisive battle, fled to the west, and disappeared without a trace. The Xiongnu empire fell apart. Some tribes dispersed into the Southern Siberian steppes, others went to China, for at that time in the Great Steppe came a drought. The Gobi Desert in the north of China began to expand, and the Huns could move into the dried-up Chinese fields, where they formed sweethearted dry steppes. Part of the Xiongnu went to Central Asia and reached Semirechye (the area of modern Alma-Ata). Here settled "weak" Huns. The most desperate moved further west. They went through all of Kazakhstan, and in the 50s of the second century came to the banks of the Volga, losing most of their women. Those physically unable to endure such a transition, and of the men there survived only the strongest.
The Xiongnu quickly settled in new places, convenient for cattle breeding, where no one touched them. They acquired women when they raided the Alans, and by uniting and becoming related to the Vogul (Mansi) people, they created a new ethnic group, the Western Huns, as little like the old Asian (Eastern) Huns as Texas cowboys are like English farmers. These Western Huns (for simplicity we shall just call them Huns) went to war with the Goths.
Turkic and Mongolian fabrics and jewelry
Warrior from the tomb of Qi Shi Huang-ti
First, the Western Huns completed the defeat of the Alans, exhausting their forces with endless warfare. The state of the Huns expanded and occupied the expanse between the Ural (Yaik) and Don rivers. The Goths tried to hold on to the frontier of the Don, but they were already exhausted by the grueling battle with the Slavs. So, when the Huns came to the rear of the Goths through the Kerch Strait, the Crimea and the Perekop, the Goths fled. The Ostgoths submitted to the Huns, the Visigoths crossed the Danube and ended up in the Roman Empire. The loss of Gothic power gave the Slavs freedom of action. But the memory of the former domination of the southern Russian steppes by the Goths, who had once captured the Slavic leader Bozh and crucified 70 Slavic elders, this memory survived.
Let us return to the Goths, who took refuge in Byzantium. They professed Christianity according to the Aryan rite,(2) while in the Eastern Roman Empire Nicene orthodoxy prevailed. Union and friendship did not work out. The Romans demanded that the Goths crossing the Danube surrender their weapons, and they agreed. However, when imperial officials began to extort the Goths, demanding bribes from them, taking their wives, children and property, it turned out that the Goths retained enough weapons to revolt. In 378 at Adrianople, the rebels fought the Romans, defeated them, killed Emperor Valentus and came to the walls of Constantinople. Although the city was well fortified, the Goths had every chance to take it. However, the Romans were aided by a strange event.
The Roman army had a detachment of mounted Arabs. The horsemen were circling around the Goths who were on foot. One of the Goths fell behind, and an Arab rider overtook him, struck him with his spear, and knocked him down. Then, jumping off his horse, cut his enemy's throat, drank blood, threw his head back and ... howled. The terrified Goths thought it was a werewolf. They retreated from Constantinople and set out to plunder Macedonia and Greece. Even Theodosius the Great could not easily subdue them. But we will stay ready to settle accounts with the Roman Empire and return to Eastern Europe to the Slavs and Russians. (3)
(2) Arianism is the teaching of the Alexandrian priest Arius (256-336) that God the Son (Christ) is not equal to God the Father, but only like Him. This doctrine was condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325.
(3) There are various hypotheses about an origin of Russ which in different languages was called differently: Ruten, Dews, Rugs. The author is inclined to see them as a tribe of ancient Germans.
Territories occupied by the Scythians and Slavs. VII-III centuries BC.
The Slavs took part in the Gothic-Hun war and, naturally, on the side of the Huns. Unfortunately for the Huns and Slavs, the great leader and conqueror Attila fell ill and died in 453. He was left with 70 children and a young widow who had not even lost her innocence. The question of an heir arose: all Attila's sons laid claim to their father's throne, and the conquered tribes supported different princes. Most of the Huns sided with the leader Ellak, but the Hepidians and Ostgoths opposed him. In the battle of Nedao (the Slavic name of the river is Nedava) the Huns were defeated and Ellak died (454). Attempts by the Huns to fight the Byzantines led to their defeat on the Lower Danube. To the east, in the Volga region, the Huns were defeated (463) and subdued by the Saragurs. Part of the surviving Huns went to the Altai, others went to the Volga, where, mingling with the natives, they formed the Chuvash people. The place of action was left empty.
Birth of the Kiev power.
In the 6th-8th centuries the Slavs, a strong and vigorous people, had great success. The population multiplied not so much through monogamous marriages, but through captive concubines.
The Slavs spread to the north, northwest of Russia, where they were called Veneads (a word still preserved in Estonian). In the south they were called the Sklavins, in the east called the Ants. The Ukrainian historian M.Y.Braichevsky established that the Greek word "Ants" means the same as the Slavic "Polyans". The word of the feminine gender "polyanitsa" meaning "bogatyrsha" was preserved. But the word Polane in the same meaning is not used today, because the Turkic word bogatyr has displaced it from use.
By the 6th century, the Slavs occupied Volyn (Volynians) and the southern steppes up to the Black Sea (Tiberians and Ulics). Slavs also occupied the basin of the Pripyat, where Drevlyanis settled, and southern Belorussia, where Dregovichi ("Dryagva" - swamp) settled. In the northern part of Belorussia settled the Western Slavs - the Venedi. In addition, already in the 7th or 8th century two other Western Slavic tribes, the Radimichi and Vyatichi, spread south and east to the Sozh, a tributary of the Dnieper, and to the Oka, a tributary of the Volga, settling among the local Ugro-Finnic tribes.
For the Slavs it was a calamity to be in the neighborhood of the ancient Russians, who made it their custom to raid their neighbors. At one time the Russes, defeated by the Goths, fled partly to the east, partly to the south, to the lower Danube, from where they came to Austria, where they became dependent on the Heruli of Odoacer (the fate of this branch is of no interest to us). Part of the Russians who went east occupied three cities, which became strongholds for their further campaigns. These were Kuyaba (Kiev), Arzaniya (Beloozero?) and Old Russ. The Russes plundered their neighbors, killed their men, and sold captured children and women to slave merchants.
Trade with the ancient Slavs
The Slavs settled in small groups in the villages; it was difficult for them to defend themselves against the Russes, who turned out to be terrible robbers. The prey of Russ was everything valuable. And valuable then were furs, honey, wax and children. The unequal fight lasted long and ended in favor of the Russians, when then came to power Rurik.
The biography of Rurik is not simple. By "profession" he was a Viking, that is, a hired warrior (pirate). By birth a Russian. It seems he had ties with the southern Baltic. He supposedly went to Denmark, where he met with the Frankish king Charles the Bald. Then in 862 he returned to Novgorod where he seized power with the help of an elder called Gostomysl. (We are not sure whether "Gostomysl" is a proper name or a common noun for someone who "thinks", i.e. sympathizes with the "visitors" who are newcomers.) Soon a rebellion broke out in Nov-town against Rurik, led by Vadim the Brave. But Rurik killed Vadim and once again subjugated Novgorod and the surrounding areas: Ladoga, Beloozero and Izborsk.
There is a legend about Rurik's two brothers, Sineus and Truvor, which arose as a result of a misunderstanding of the words of the chronicle: "Rurik, his relatives (sine hus) and his vigilantes (thru voring)". Rurik put his cohorts in Izborsk, sent his relatives to the White Lake, and himself in Ladoga, where the Varangian settlement was, sat down in Novgorod. Thus, by subordinating the surrounding Slavs, Finno-Ugrians and Balts, he created his power.
The settlement of the Slavs in the IX century.
В. M. Vasnetsov. Vikings
According to the annals, Rurik died in 879, leaving a son, whose name was Igor, or Ingvar in Scandinavian, i.e. "the younger one". Since Igor, according to the chronicler, was "detek velmi" ("very young"), on Rurik's death the power was taken over by a voivode (Councilor) named Helgi, that is Oleg. "Helgi was not even a name, but a title of a Scandinavian leader, meaning both "sorcerer" and "military leader." Oleg and his warriors set out on the great route from the Varangians to the Greeks: from Novgorod southward along the river Lovat, where there was a crossroads, and further along the Dnieper, occupying Smolensk in the process. Varangians Oleg and young Igor came to Kiev. There lived the Slavs and stood a small Russian team of Askold. Oleg lured Askold and the leader of the Slavs Dir to the bank of the Dnieper and there treacherously killed them. After that Kievers submitted to the new rulers without any resistance. It happened in 882 Oleg occupied Pskov and in 883 betrothed baby Igor to Pskov's Olga. Olga is a female gender of the name Oleg. Here again we are likely to encounter a title without knowing the real name of the historical person. It is likely that Olga, (Helen) like Igor, was a child at the time of her betrothal.
By the ninth century, the split of Slavic unity resulted in the creation of new, previously non-existent peoples. Slavs mingled with Illyrians to create Serbs and Croats, and in Thrace, mingling with nomadic newcomers gave rise to the Bulgarian ethnos. Some Slavic tribes penetrated into Greece and Macedonia, reaching the Peloponnese, which they called Moreia (from the word "sea"). The growing passionarity of the Slavs scattered them all over Europe.
Prince Rurik. An engraving from 1805.
Prince Oleg. Engraving 1805.
Prince Igor. An engraving from 1805.
Princess Olga. Engraving 1805.
К. V. Lebedev. The murder of Askold and Dir by Oleg
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