home > A little about everything > Entogenesis - (origin) and the social system of the Eastern Slavs (Proto-Slavs) of the era of the Great Migration of the Peoples of the Early Middle Ages. Proto-Slavs origin and resettlement

Entogenesis - (origin) and the social system of the Eastern Slavs (Proto-Slavs) of the era of the Great Migration of the Peoples of the Early Middle Ages. Proto-Slavs origin and resettlement

History of the Proto-Slavs

The ancestors of the Slavs are considered to be tribes belonging to the carriers of the Balto-Slavic dialects. Long before our era, they separated from the representatives of the Germanic languages and remained in the eastern part of Europe. After several centuries, these tribes divided: two dialects emerged from the Balto-Slavic language - Slavic and Baltic. But the separation process is not over. The speakers of the Baltic language formed three large communities:

Western (it included the predecessors of the Yotvingians, Curonians and Prussian tribes);

Sredinnaya (the progenitors of Lithuania, Samogitians, Latgalians and Zemgalians turned out to be in it - the Lithuanian group);

Dnieper (this group includes representatives of the golyad and other tribes).

Slavic dialect in the period of IV-X centuries. also not escaped division. Scientists distinguish three language areas:

Southern (it includes the ancestors of the modern peoples of the Balkan Peninsula, including Bulgarians, Serbs and Croats);

Western (this area unites the ancestors of the inhabitants of the Central European part of the continent: Poles and Czechs with Slovaks);

Eastern (in this group were the ancestors of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples who occupied the eastern part of Europe).

Archaeological research does not allow us to accurately answer the question of which lands can be considered the ancestral home of the Slavic ethnos. According to some, these are the territories between the Vistula and Neman rivers, others believe that instead of the Neman, the Odra can be considered a certain border of these lands, while others find acceptable arguments about the origin of the Slavs in the areas between the Odra and the Dnieper. Research in the field of linguistics helps to shed some light on this issue. A toponymic analysis of the names of objects in this area allows us to determine the territory of the ancestral home of the Slavs as the land of Central and of Eastern Europe, bounded by the Odra from the west and the Dnieper from the east.

Most historians agree that the ancestors of the Slavs descended from tribes that came to these lands from the northern Black Sea regions as early as three thousand years BC. These tribes were mainly engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding.

Studies concerning the ancestors of the Slavs are based on the analysis of several archaeological cultures, among which are: Tshinetskaya (found in the territories between the Vistula and the middle part of the Dnieper, dates back to the second millennium BC), Lusatian and Pomeranian (now belong to the Polish territories, date back to the first millennium BC). Also, the conclusions of scientists are connected with the study of the Middle Dnieper, Chernoles and Late Zarubinets cultures discovered in the territories of the upper and middle reaches of the Dnieper.

Written references to the Slavic peoples, which can be considered reliable, the researchers found in the writings of Jordanes, a Gothic historian of the sixth century. There is similar evidence among the Arabs, dating back a century later. The early ancient Russian chronicles, which described the history of the Slavs, also date from the same period. Earlier sources contain information about the tribes of the Wends and Sclavens, but the uncertainty of these data does not allow them to be attributed to the Slavic ethnos.

The Slavs coexisted with many tribes, for example, together with their northwestern neighbors - the Germans and the Balts - they formed one Indo-European language group. Finno-Ugric tribes were neighbors on the northern and southwestern sides, and Scythian tribes, Sarmatians and Thracians on the southern side.

Society of the Slavic Ethnos

resettlement Eastern Slavs happened in two directions:

Part of the tribes developed land in the Dnieper basin, and then moved towards the upper reaches of the Volga;

The other part moved northward to Lake Ilmen, and then occupied the land near Beloozero and in the Volga and Oka basins.

The settlements of the Slavic tribes were mainly located near rivers and forests. This choice of places of life was due to the main occupations of the Slavs - agriculture and cattle breeding. Agriculture in these areas was based on the use of forest fallow. Plots of land were freed from the forest: trees were cut down, then stumps were uprooted and the remains were burned. After that, the land could be plowed up and used for several years. The ash obtained from the burning of fallen trees was an excellent fertilizer, which made it possible to obtain a good harvest in the first couple of years. It was possible to use such a site for about four years, then it was abandoned, and work began on another site. For five years, the abandoned site had time to rest and gain strength, but also did not have time to overgrow with forest again. After this period, they returned to such a site again for agricultural work. Growing mainly grain crops, among which the most important were rye, oats, barley and wheat.

Livestock breeding was the second most important, large and small animals predominated among domestic animals. cattle. Also, the Slavic tribes hunted, fished, and some also engaged in beekeeping - collecting wild honey. All these activities were due to the surrounding nature - the Slavs had forests for hunting, ponds for fishing, meadows for pastures at their disposal.

With the development of the production of iron and products from it, in the ethnos of the Slavs there has been a decrease in the importance of tribal ties and the collapse of the existing system. Tools of labor improved over time and now some families could provide themselves with the necessary products. As a result, due to these processes, individual tribes began to form not on a tribal basis, but on a territorial basis. Such formations could occupy lands with an area of up to several tens of square kilometers.

So, in the eastern parts of Europe, dozens of tribes were formed, among which were the glade (regions of the middle reaches of the Dnieper), northerners (the lands of the left Dnieper), Tivertsy and White Croats (regions along the lower and upper reaches of the Dniester, respectively), Volhynians (Carpathian lands), Krivichi (upper reaches of the Volga and Dvina), as well as streets, Drevlyans, Radimichi, Vyatichi (Oka basin) and Slovenia (near Ilmen).

The political structure of the society of the Slavs at the turn of the 7th-8th centuries. was based on a military-type democracy, when all men were considered warriors and had weapons. The entire adult population took part in solving common problems. In wartime, the princes led their people, and in peacetime this role was assigned to the elders. It is believed that signs of statehood among the Slavic tribes began to appear around the 10th century.

In the rubric and other articles in the rubric.

Origin and ancestral home of the Slavs

Most likely some Indo-European group of peoples, which is a union of Indo-European tribes, which later became the Proto-Slavs, Proto-Germans and Proto-Balts, settled in the territory, including all of Eastern and Central Europe. These are related by language ancient Indo-Europeans gradually began to diverge in their way of life, which led to the appearance of differences in languages. For example, ancient Slavs were obviously cut off from the sea just by the Germans and the Balts, which was reflected in vocabulary Proto-Slavic language, in which there were no names of marine animals. On the other hand, there is evidence that history of the Proto-Slavs took place exclusively on mainland Europe insulated to and from southern Europe, because in Proto-Slavic language there were no words for many southern plants.

Indo-Europeans historical roots of the Slavs

Based on excavations, archaeologists are increasingly inclined to believe that the Northern Black Sea region, with the adjacent lower reaches of the Dnieper, Don and Volga, was the ancestral home of all Indo-European peoples, where the horse was supposedly domesticated. Several millennia ago, the Black Sea, like the Caspian, was a Cimmerian lake, the level of which was hundreds of meters below the ocean level (the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov was only a lowland), which means that its water area was smaller, and vice versa, the coastal area was a fertile vast lowland. After a powerful earthquake that happened about 10,000 years ago, salt water gushed through the fault between the mountains, which today is called the Bosporus Strait. mediterranean sea, flooded the lands that have long been cultivated ancient Indo-Europeans. The catastrophe of the local civilization, caused by the rapid filling of the Black Sea lowland with the salty waters of the ocean, served as a source for the legend of Deluge described in the Bible as the parable of Noah's ark. It is likely that it was here (now at the bottom of the Black Sea) that some kind of civilization existed - ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans, not inferior in antiquity to Egypt and Mesopotamia.

First note concerns use of the concept of tribe to historical groups of people, which suggests that they have tribal relations. However, one must understand that long before the beginning of our era tribal relations almost everywhere have already been destroyed, since the period of seizures and displacements of peoples began, which cannot be carried out without the presence of proto-state relations when there is already a separation into a separate estate of a professional group of armed people (such as officers), who organize and manage the attracted ordinary members of the community, like soldiers, in defense and armed raids. This division into three estates is (1) the main civil authority in the person of an elder or leader (sometimes including a shaman), (2) military power in the person of a special military leader commanding warriors chosen from strong young men, (3) ordinary ordinary members - characteristic of the late state of tribal relations.
The confusion with the names of states with the names of individual "tribes" and nationalities on the border of their ecumene was started by ancient authors. Often such mixing leads to the inexplicable "disappearance" of entire peoples, when the name of the "tribe" disappears along with the state formation. This can only be explained by the recognition of the already accomplished decomposition of tribal relations in those state formations that the ancient authors called "tribes", while in reality these were the self-names of the first states, the names of which were easily replaced by others, which is impossible for the self-name of the tribe.
Second remark concerns raid motivations, which differ depending on the degree of development natural complex occupied by a group of people to which the term "tribe" applies. Where this complex is not fully developed and there are free lands, which is more common for mobile nomadic peoples, raids are motivated purely predatory: - to take away material values, since nomads always have such in short supply. Marxist history has confused such raids committed exclusively by military units of nomads, from resettlement, which is usually committed again by armed representatives, BUT behind which there is an influx of migrants. In the first case, the motivation is desire plunder, in the second - desire oust"tribes" already living there from their lands due to exhaustion of the natural complex at the old place of residence of the conquerors. At the same time, the robbers are usually less "cruel", since they only kill those who resist, while the settlers can destroy the entire former population, since they need the entire natural resource of the former local residents.

First, let's make a brief historical excursion to get acquainted with the pre-Scythian peoples known to us and the legendary Scythians who inhabited the territory of the Black Sea region in ancient times, which, according to some assumptions, was the ancestral home of the Indo-Europeans.

Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians

Cimmerians people

The first known in the territory of the South of Russia can be considered a people called Cimmerians- a pre-Scythian people, recorded by Assyrian texts in 714 BC. under the name of the people "gimirru", which appears in the area of the Assyrians from the region of the North Caucasus. Cimmerians Wikipedia:

Strabo speaks of Greater or Asiatic Scythia (meaning Siberia). About the Scythians, he says: "The ancient history of these peoples is truly unknown."

I will give a long quote from the article Ethnogenesis of the Slavs from Wikipedia, which shows the ideas of the historian Herodotus about the people who inhabited the southern lands of Russia in ancient times.

For the first time, the tribes that inhabited the lands north of the Black Sea were described in their fundamental work by the Greek historian of the middle of the 5th century. BC e. Herodotus. It is not known if it has formed by this time. Slavic ethnic group, but assuming the autochthonous nature of the Slavs in the interfluve of the Dniester and the Dnieper, Herodotus' information is the earliest and only written source over the next 500 years about possible ancestors of the Slavs under the name neurons.

neurons

According to Herodotus - the Northern Black Sea region was inhabited Scythians(self-name: chipped), and from the Southern Bug to the Dnieper (the region of the right Lower and Middle Dnieper) lived the so-called Scythian farmers(or borisfenites), and beyond the Dnieper began possession Scythian nomads. In the upper reaches of the Dniester and the Southern Bug lived tribe of neurons. Because of their habitats, which, according to archaeologists, coincide or are close to Slavic ancestral home, neurons are of particular interest to researchers history of the ancient Slavs.

from the west neurons bordered on the Carpathian Agathyrs, whose customs are “similar to the Thracian”, from the south with the Scythians-Borisphenites. To the north of the neurons, according to Herodotus, a deserted desert stretched. Also, in his opinion, the Dnieper north of the possessions of the Borisfenites (approximately from the Dnieper rapids) was uninhabited for at least 30 days of navigation. When the Persian king Darius at the end of the VI century. BC e. tried to conquer the Scythians, him and the Scythian troops passed through the lands of the neurons who fled from the war to the north. ABOUT Nevrachus Herodotus said little:
« At neurotic customs Scythian... These people, apparently, are sorcerers. The Scythians and the Hellenes living among them, at least, assert that each Nevr annually turns into a wolf for several days, and then again takes on a human form.". There are also versions about the participation of Scythian farmers in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, based on the assumption that their name is not ethnic (belonging to Iranian-speaking tribes), but generalizing (belonging to barbarians) character. Nevri Wikipedia characterizes briefly: Nevra, neurons(ancient Greek Νευροί) - an ancient people who lived in the upper reaches of Tiras and Gipanis.
Archaeologists find a geographical and temporal correspondence to the neurons in the Milograd archaeological culture of the 7th-3rd centuries. BC e., whose range extends to Volyn and the Pripyat River basin (north-west Ukraine and southern Belarus). There is no consensus on the issue of the ethnicity of the Milogradians (Herodotus neurons) - some scholars see them as Proto-Slavs(or Prabalts).

Greek colonization of the Northern Black Sea region

Probably, the penetration of the Greeks into the Black Sea basin had a very long history, which is confirmed by the existence among the Hellenic myths of the legend about the journey of the Argonauts under the leadership of Jason to Colchis for the Golden Fleece.

The ancient Greeks, who were skilled navigators, probably studied this region well in the II-I millennium BC, and Greek colonization of the Black Sea occurred from ancient times with the creation of small Greek settlements on the coast as centers of trade with local tribes, which later united into the Bosporus kingdom, the center of which was in the Kerch Strait region. We are talking about Greek colonies for the reason that the Greeks carried with them even to new settlements the closed social way of life of the Greek city, in which there was no place for foreigners. However, large cities were settlements already with a motley ethnic composition of the townspeople. The expansion and prosperity of the Greek colonies was facilitated by the Greek monopoly on the entire Mediterranean trade, which in some way protected the Greek colonies from plunder or allowed them to constantly recover after the raids that had occurred, since the peoples living nearby felt the need for trade exchange. Probably, there was a lot of written evidence about the peoples living next to the Greeks in these northernmost of their colonies, but subsequent numerous wars led to the plunder and desolation of the Greek settlements in the Black Sea region, retaining only mentions, such as, for example, of the extensive "Land Description" (author Hecateus of Miletus, end of the 6th - beginning of the 5th century BC), to which there are constant references in ancient and early medieval literature. Today, the most complete surviving written source about the peoples of the Black Sea region is Herodotus' "Scythian story" (5th century BC) from his famous "History" dedicated to the wars between Greece and Persia.

The memory of the ancient Greek colonies is preserved in modern Black Sea toponymy, when, after the annexation of these lands to Russia, many settlements received ancient names known from ancient writings: Sevastopol, Kherson, Odessa, Evpatoria, etc.

2. Origin and settlement of the Slavs.

The problems of the origin of peoples and ethnic communities are among the most difficult in historiography. The Slavs, according to most historians, separated from the Indo-European community in the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. The ancestral home of the early Slavs (Proto-Slavs), according to archaeological data, was the territory to the east of the Germans - from the river. Oder in the west to the Carpathian Mountains in the east (these are the northern slopes of the Carpathians, the Vistula valley and the Pripyat basin). From these places, the Slavs settled in all directions, throughout Eastern Europe.

The history of the Slavs goes back into the depths of time, and the first information about them is recorded in the oldest written sources. All of them, with reference to a certain territory, fix the Slavs only from the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. (most often from the 6th century), that is, when they appear on the historical arena of Europe as a large ethnic community.

Ancient authors knew the Slavs under various names: Wends, Antes, Slavins; but, above all, under the name of the Wends. For the first time this name is found in the Natural History of Pliny (mid-1st century AD). Pliny names the Wends among the peoples neighboring with a group of Germanic tribes - the Ingevons: "the lands up to the Vistula River are inhabited by Sarmatians, Wends, Scythians, Girrs." Most likely, these were areas in the Vistula river basin and, perhaps, more eastern lands.

By the end of the 1st century A.D. e. include messages about the Wends of Cornelius Tacitus. Tacitus indicates that the Wends lived between the peoples of the Peukins (the northern part of the Lower Danube) and the Fenns, who occupied the territory of the forest belt of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Urals. It is impossible to indicate the exact location of the Wends. It is also difficult to say whether the Wends of the time of Tacitus were Slavs. There is an assumption that the Wends at that time were assimilated by the Slavs and received their name. And if one can argue about the Wends of Tacitus, then the Wends of later authors are undoubtedly Slavs.

Thus, we can distinguish 2 signs of the similarity of the Wends and Slavs:

Wends at the turn of the 1st-2nd centuries AD occupied the territory on which, from the 7th century, we see really Slavs

The names of Venedi, Slavs, Slovenes contain consonant veins vyan

is that enough? Unfortunately, there is no common language and archaeological cultures.

More accurate information about the Slavs of the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. Now the Slavs are called by their name - Slovenes. Byzantine authors describe mainly the Slavs of the Danube and the Balkan Peninsula. Byzantine authors provide information about various aspects of the life and life of the Slavs.

More substantial information is available in the work of the Gothic Bishop Jordan. According to Jordan, the Wends are the Slavs. It can be seen from his work that in the 6th century the Slavs settled in a wide strip stretching from the Middle Danube to the Lower Dnieper.

Information about the Eastern Slavs is given to us not only by Byzantine authors, it is also contained in the descriptions of the largest Arab geographers of the 2nd half of the 9th-10th centuries. There is also semi-legendary information about the Slavs in the Scandinavian sagas, in the Frankish epic, and Germanic legends.

The places of residence of the ancient Slavs, called "ancestral homes", are determined ambiguously.

The first who tried to answer the questions: where, how and when the Slavs appeared, was the chronicler Nestor, the author of The Tale of Bygone Years. He defined the territory of the Slavs along the lower reaches of the Danube and Pannonia. The process of resettlement of the Slavs began from the Danube, that is, we are talking about their migration. The Kiev chronicler was the founder of the migration theory of the origin of the Slavs, known as the "Danubian" or "Balkan" one. The Danube "ancestral home" of the Slavs was recognized by S.M. Solovyov, V.O. Klyuchevsky and others. According to V.O. Klyuchevsky, the Slavs moved from the Danube to the Carpathians. It was here, according to the historian, that an extensive military alliance was formed, headed by the Dulebo-Volhynians. From here, the Eastern Slavs settled to the east and northeast to Ilmen Lake in the 7th-8th centuries. Noriks are also mentioned in the story of PVL as the first Slavs. At present, enough is known to completely refute this version. Neither their language nor culture gives any reason to associate them with the Slavs. Because the correlation of Noriks and Slavs by a medieval historian could arise as a result of the fact that already in the 6th century Norik was the 1st province of Rome inhabited by the Slavs, and for some time the name of the inhabitants of the province was preserved behind this new population.

The origin of another migration theory of the origin of the Slavs, the "Scythian-Sarmatian", dates back to the Middle Ages. It was first recorded in the Bavarian chronicle of the 13th century, and later adopted by many Western European authors. According to their ideas, the ancestors of the Slavs moved from Western Asia along the Black Sea coast to the north and settled under the ethnonyms "Scythians", "Sarmatians", "Alans" and "Roksolans". Gradually, the Slavs from the Northern Black Sea region scattered to the west and southwest.

The third option, close to the Scythian-Sarmatian theory, was proposed by Academician A.I. Sobolevsky. In his opinion, the names of rivers, lakes, mountains within the location of the ancient settlements of the Slavs allegedly show that they received these names from another people who were here earlier. Such a predecessor of the Slavs, according to Sobolevsky, was a group of tribes of Iranian origin (Scythian root). Later, this group assimilated (dissolved) with the ancestors of the Slavic-Baltic living further north and gave rise to the Slavs somewhere on the shores of the Baltic Sea, from where the Slavs settled.

The fourth version of the migration theory was given by Academician A.A. Chess. In his opinion, the basin of the Western Dvina and the Lower Neman in the Baltic region was the first ancestral home of the Slavs. From here, the Slavs, taking the name of the Wends (from the Celts), advanced to the Lower Vistula, from where the Goths had just left before them in the Black Sea region (the turn of the 2nd-3rd centuries). Therefore, here (Lower Vistula), according to A.A. Shakhmatova, was the second ancestral home of the Slavs. When the Goths left the Black Sea region, part of the Slavs, namely their eastern and southern branches, moved east and south in the Black Sea region and formed tribes of southern and eastern Slavs here. So, following this "Baltic" theory, the Slavs were newcomers to the land, on which they then created their states.

There are a number of other theories of the migration origin of the Slavs and their "ancestral home" - this is the "Asian", which led the Slavs from the territory of Central Asia, where a common "ancestral home" for all Indo-Europeans was assumed, this is also the "Central European", according to which the Slavs and their ancestors turned out to be aliens from Germany (Jutland and Scandinavia), settling from here across Europe and Asia, up to India, - and a number of other theories.

In contrast to migration theories, the autochthonous - local origin of the Slavs is recognized. According to the autochthonous theory, the Slavs formed on a vast territory, which included not only the territory of modern Poland, but also a significant part of modern Ukraine and Belarus.

Autochthonous theory notes the complexity of the process of formation of the Slavs. Initially, small separate scattered ancient peoples took shape on a certain vast territory, which then formed into larger ones and, finally, into historically known peoples. Proto-Slavic, Proto-Slavic and proper Slavic periods are distinguished.

The ancestors of the Proto-Slavs, as a result of their cultural rapprochement, gave Slavdom. This process is traced by archaeologists to BC. e. from III millennium to I.

The Proto-Slavic period begins at the end of the 1st millennium BC. Cultural as well as linguistic community is established. A significant part of the Proto-Slavs was included in the orbit of the Scythian influence. In the VI-VII centuries. the period of Proto-Slavic history ends. The settlement of the Slavs in the vast expanses, their active interaction with other peoples led to the cultural differentiation of the Slavic world and the division of a single language into separate Slavic languages.

In the VIII-IX centuries. the period of proper Slavic history begins, the formation of unions, the formation of states. There is a folding of modern Slavic peoples.

Thus, there were 3 versions of the original settlement:

Danube

Carpathian

Boseyn of the Vistula River, which is preferred in modern historiography

Western - Elbe river basin,

Southern - Balkans

East - East European Plain.

The same special place in the life of the Slavic world during the great migration of peoples was occupied by relations with the nomadic peoples of the steppe. In the end of the 4th century, the Gothic tribal union was broken by the Turkic-speaking tribes of the Huns, who came from Central Asia, in whose subordination were the Slavs, according to Jordan.

In new places, tribes are called according to their place of residence, for example, if near the Bug River, then the name of the tribes is Buzhan, around Lake Ilmen, Ilmen Slavs. Or the leader's name. From the 6th-9th centuries, the Slavs settled along the East European plain along the rivers. The resettlement was intensive and was divided into 2 mechanisms: resettlement due to slash-and-burn agriculture, as a result of which the village moved every 15 years. And the resettlement of only the male part of the population.

The origin of the Proto-Slavs, their economic and social development, socio-political system, features of land ownership, way of life, customs, mores, religious beliefs. Formation of political proto-urban centers in the south and north of Eastern Europe.

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Bibliography
1. Entogenesis - (origin) and social system of the Eastern Slavs (Proto-Slavs) of the era of the Great Migration of Peoples Early Middle Ages
a) Consider the initial stage of historical events at the end of the 5th - the first half of the 6th century AD. as the period of the Great Settlement of the Slavs in Eastern Europe:
The collapse of the ancient European linguistic community and the separation of the Balto-Slavic (or Proto-Slavonic) language from it dates back to the first half of the 11th millennium BC. However, the isolation of the Proto-Slavic language itself is attributed by most linguists only to the 76th centuries. BC. The isolation of the Proto-Slavs as an ethnographic (archaeological) whole is most often associated with those that arose in the 5th century. BC. on the territory of modern Poland, podklesheva and Pomeranian cultures.
In written sources from the beginning of the Christian era, separate references to the Proto-Slavs appear. This is mainly information from geographical descriptions (Natural History" by Pliny the Elder, "Germany" by Tacitus, "Geography of Ptolemy," Peutinger's table "), as well as the title of the Roman emperor Volusian (251-253)" Venedian "given to him for a trip to Dacia . Proto-Slavs appear in these references as "Wends".
The Hun invasion and the subsequent departure of the nomadic wave to the west had devastating consequences for the Eastern and a significant part of Central Europe. This is especially evident from the first decades of the 5th century. The remains of the Chernyakhiv population are preserved in the 5th century. only in the upper reaches of the Dniester and the Southern Bug, partly in the Prut-Dniester interfluve and, possibly, in the Middle Dnieper, where the rapprochement of the Chernyakhovites with the Baltic (or Balto-Slavic) Kievan culture is noted.
It is in these conditions that the formation of the Slavs proper as a special ethnic group probably takes place. Linguists attribute the formation of the common Slavic language to the 5th century. The speakers of this language, which initially did not include either the Antes remaining in Eastern Europe or the inhabitants of the northern Polish lands, called themselves the old ethnonym 4Slovene - "speaking".
From the middle of the 5th c. the settlement of the Slavs begins to the north from the Lower Danube along the line of the Carpathian Mountains. The tribes of the culture of the Carpathian mounds lived here, representing only a weak Romanization of the native Dacian population. Judging by the materials of settlements in Bukovina, the Slavs in the second half of the 5th century. in places they lived with them, partly mutually assimilating. In these eastern Carpathian regions, obviously, the Prague or Prague-Korchak culture, associated with the Slavs (Slovenes) of the 6th-8th centuries, is taking shape.
From the upper reaches of the Prut, the Slavs, carriers of ceramics of the Prague type, settled in the adjacent areas of the Upper Dniester basin. The Chernyakhov tribes still lived here. For some time, judging by archaeological data, the Chernyakhovites coexist with the newcomers, even within the same settlements. Another local substratum was the Kyiv tribes that settled in the Chernyakhiv lands.
As a result of the mixing of these three elements during the second half of the 5th century. the Penkovskaya (Prazhskopenkovskaya) culture is formed. It is reliably associated with the Slavic-speaking Ants of the 6th - 5th centuries.
The third group of the Slavic-speaking population takes shape as a result of the assimilation of the Germans and Balts by the Proto-Slavs in the north, apparently in Greater Poland between the Vistula and the Oder. This group, apparently, still retained the ethnonym "Wends", applied to its descendants by the Germans and the Baltic Finns. In any case, Jordan, translating Cassiodorus, reports from three ethnic groups descended from the ancient Wends - actually Wends, Slovenes and Ants.
At the end of the V - the beginning of the VI century. the first settlement appears (perhaps already fortified) on Starokievsky Hill. It became the foremost outpost of the Antic settlement in the Dnieper region, although it is problematic to confidently start the history of the city of Kyiv from here. In the Middle Dnieper region, Antian settlement captured the southern region of the ancient Kyiv culture. There are different points of view on the degree of participation of the "Kyiv" tribes in the formation of the Penkovo culture, but this participation itself is beyond doubt. This is especially true of the Penkovo monuments of the 11th century. on the left bank of the Dnieper. Their main cultural features, apparently, take shape in the Dnieper region at the end of the 5th century, in the process of synthesis of "Kyiv" and elements that came from the west.
On the main territory of the Kievan culture in the Podesene and the Upper Dnieper region, by the end of the 5th century. on the basis of the previous one, a new Kolochin culture developed. An opinion was expressed about its Slavic affiliation, associated with the hypothesis of the Slavic affiliation of the Kyiv monuments themselves. However, the Kolochin culture is much more closely connected with the Baltic culture of Tushemli-Bantserovshchina in the Upper Dnieper and adjacent areas than with the Prague-Penkovskaya. The influence of the latter is quite explainable by intercultural contacts. In general, the Kolochin culture is part of the Eastern Baltic cultural region.
On the social structure of the Proto-Slavic society by the middle of the 5th century. it's hard to judge. The only real source for us is the data of the language, which makes it possible to single out ancient common Slavic terms denoting social realities, and early borrowings of social terminology from other languages. Ethnographic data naturally reflect the reality of a much later period.
By antiquity, they can only be applied in comparison with archaeological material. The latter, due to the multi-ethnic nature of the cultures of the 4th - the first half of the 5th century BC. is of auxiliary importance for the study of the social system of the Proto-Slavs.
Nevertheless, by comparing the data of archeology and language, some general conclusions can be drawn about the nature of the Slavic society. The Slavs lived in a tribal system. The main unit of society was the community, which was based on the concept of blood relationship.
However, there was already a community based on mutual agreement (and not on kinship) - peace. It could include both one settlement and several. In the latter case, the community was closer in character to the tribe. The dominant word in Slavic usage in relation to both the tribe and the community was, it seems, the word "genus".
Proto-Slavs lived in unfortified village-type settlements (vesi, villages). They also built fortified “castles, which became a refuge in case of danger. There was social inequality in the society. Since ancient times, patriarchal slavery (the term slave is of Indo-European origin) has been known; captives became slaves. Perhaps, even in the Balto-Slavic era, a division of free community members into people "(full rights) and smerds (incomplete; the term had a pejorative meaning) developed. In the era of the tribal system, smerds could be called representatives of conquered tribes, who retained personal freedom and communal organization, but owed duties to the winners.
Under the conditions of that period, the line between people and smerds was inevitably very fragile; in the case of the subjugation of the Proto-Slavs by foreigners, it was generally erased.
Separate tribes gradually united into tribal unions. The Slavic name for such associations, intermediate between the "Slovene language" as a whole and individual "genera", is unknown.
b) Consider the second stage in the history of Slavic society, as the time of the beginning of the formation of statehood - Kievan Rus in the Middle Dnieper (VI-VII centuries) of creating a political association of the union of Slavic tribes "ROS" or "RUS" - "the people of heroes" ("super union" of four large unions of Slavic tribes - the middle of the 6th century AD The time of the beginning of the dynasties of the Kiev princes of the Middle Dnieper, as the events of the pre-Dvoryazh period of the three brothers - Kie, Schek and Khoriv.
The most valuable monument containing information about the beginning of the Russian state is the chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years, where did the Russian land come from and who in Kiev began to reign first and where did the Russian land come from", compiled, in all likelihood, by the Kiev monk Nestor around 1113. Nestor used earlier Russian chronicles, folk tales, monuments of Byzantine and West Slavic writing. He also carried out special surveys on certain questions of Russian history.
Next, Nestor tells how the city of Kyiv was created. Prince Kiy, who reigned there, according to Nestor's story, came to Constantinople to visit the emperor of Byzantium, who received him with great honors. Returning from Constantinople, Kiy built a city on the banks of the Danube, intending to settle here for a long time. But the locals were hostile to him, and Kiy returned to the banks of the Dnieper.
The first stage in the formation of Kievan Rus (on the basis of the surviving fragments of Nestor's Tale of Bygone Years, supported, as we have seen, by numerous materials of the 5th-7th centuries and retrospectively sources of the 12th century) is depicted as the formation of a powerful union of Slavic tribes in the Middle Dnieper region in the 6th century AD , a union that took the name of one of the united tribes - the people of ROS or RUS, known in the VI century outside the Slavic world as a "people of heroes".
Thus, the first historical event on the way to the creation Old Russian state Nestor considered the formation of the Polyan principality in the Middle Dnieper region. The legend about Kii and his two brothers spread far to the south and was even brought to Armenia. It is not known whether there really was a prince named Kyi or whether this is only an epic name derived from the city of Kyiv and referring to some prince who lived around the time of Justinian. But there is no doubt that the Kiev chronicler caught a very important milestone in the history of Eastern Slavs, noting the formation of tribal alliances, the emergence of princes who commanded significant masses of fellow tribesmen, the construction of fortresses - cities, from which feudal castles or cities subsequently developed.
The historical path of the further development of the Slavic tribes of Eastern Europe was outlined and predetermined by the situation of the 6th-7th centuries, when the Russian union of tribes withstood the onslaught of nomadic warlike peoples and used its advantageous position on the Dnieper, which was the way to the south for several dozen northern tribes of the Dnieper basin. Kiev, which held the key to the Dnieper highway and was sheltered from the steppe raids by the entire width of the forest-steppe zone ("and there was a great forest and pine forest near the city"), became the natural center of the process of integration of East Slavic tribal unions, the process of the emergence of such socio-political values that already went beyond framework of the most developed primitiveness.
The second stage in the historical life of Kievan Rus was the transformation of the Dnieper union of the forest-steppe Slavic tribes into a "super union", which included several dozen separate small Slavic tribes (elusive to us), united in four large unions. What the union of tribes in the 9th century was like, we can see on the example of the Vyatichi: here, relations of domination and subordination were born independently, from within, a hierarchy of power was created, such a form of tribute collection was established as polyudye, associated with foreign trade, there was an accumulation of treasures. Approximately the same were other unions of Slavic tribes that had "their reigns."
Linking the emergence of Kiev with the beginning of East Slavic statehood, the chronicler Nestor wrote down a folk legend about three brothers - Kyi, Shchek and Khoriv, who founded the city in the land of "wise and meaningful" glades and named it Kiev in honor of their elder brother. In order to dispel doubts about the authenticity of the identity of Kyi, Nestor had to make his own investigation, according to which Kyi was a prince of Polyana, went to Constantinople and was received with honors by the Byzantine emperor.
For a long time, this chronicle story, the attitude of followers to which (both in terms of reliability and in terms of Slavic origin Kyi and his brothers) was most often skeptical, was the only source in resolving the issue of the time of the origin of Kyiv. It is not surprising, therefore, that historians have come to the most contradictory conclusions, attributing (contrary to the completely clear indication of the annals of the Slavs of Kyi) the foundation of Kiev to the Sarmatians, Goths, Huns, Avars, and Normans. So, V.N. Tatishchev wrote: “Kiy, Shchek, Khoriv and Lybid are not Slavic names, but they seem to be Sarmatian, because the people were Sarmatian before the invasion of the Slavs.” The very name Kyiv comes from the Sarmatian word “kivy”, which means stone mountains. The news about the founding of the city by Prince Kiy, according to the historian, was an invention of the chronicler, stemming "from ignorance of this name." V. N. Tatishchev attributed the emergence of Kyiv to the time before the “coming of Christ”.
The process of class formation that took place in each of the tribal unions was ahead of the process of further integration, when under the rule of a single prince it was no longer a "principality" that united about a dozen primary tribes, but several such unions - principalities. The emerging new grandiose association was in the direct, mathematical sense, an order of magnitude higher than each individual union of tribes like the Vyatichi.
Obviously, Rus' (according to Nestor, “the glade now called Rus”) stood at the head of the tribal union that developed in the Middle Dnieper region, its name gradually replaced the names of other tribes and spread already in the 6th-7th centuries. almost the entire forest-steppe zone of Eastern Europe, occupied by Slavic agricultural and non-Slavic nomadic tribes that settled on the ground.
Conclusion:
The unification of all East Slavic tribes in a single state contributed to their socio-economic, political and cultural development, significantly strengthened them in the fight against a common enemy. The cultural values created by the genius of the ancient Russian people have withstood the test of time. They became the basis of the national cultures of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples, and the best of them entered the treasury of world culture.
At the end of the 5th century two interconnected events take place, which are the answers to the question of the chronicler-monk of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery Nestor: “Where did the Russian land come from, who in Kiev began first to reign, and where did the Russian land come from”? (“The Tale of Bygone Years”):
1. The great resettlement of the Slavs to the south, beyond the Danube, to the Balkan Peninsula, when the Slavic squads conquered half of its territory from Byzantium.
2. Foundation of Kyiv on the Dnieper during the reign of Kyi. The city played a special role in the life of the Slavic world. Why? All major rivers of the Dnieper basin converged to Kyiv, standing on a high mountain. The rivers Berezina, Sozh, Pripyat, Desna carried their waters here, to the Dnieper. The basins of these rivers covered the lands of the Drevlyans, Krivichi, Radimichi, and Northerners. And all this space, all the ways from it to the south “to the Greeks”, to the Black Sea, were locked up by a fortress on the Kyiv Hill. In other words, Prince Kiy became the owner of the Dnieper River and all its tributaries.
Kievan Rus was also of great historical importance for many non-Slavic peoples. The advanced achievements of Rus' in the field of social, economic and cultural development became the property of Lithuania, Estonians, Karelians, Vesi, Mary, Murom, Mordovians, Turkic nomadic tribes of the southern Russian steppes. Some of these peoples were ethnically and politically consolidated as part of the Old Russian state.
2. Economic and social development of the Proto-Slavs, their socio-political system, the level of social development; the formation and development of communal life, customs, features of the East Slavic land tenure of the 7th-8th centuries, their customs, beliefs and other trends in the historical life of the Slavic society of the late 5th-7th centuries - early 8th centuries.
In the VII-VSH centuries. among the Slavs, agriculture is developing, tools of labor (plow, ralo) are being improved, in the south slash-and-burn agriculture is being replaced by arable farming. In agriculture, they begin to use the horse. The increased productivity of labor favored the transition of the Slavs from the tribal to the neighboring community, within which not the entire clan, but each family individually, ran its own independent economy.
Along with agriculture, there is a handicraft specializing in the manufacture of various types of products. The growth of domestic and foreign trade is associated with the development of handicrafts. Trade routes went along the rivers, on the banks of which cities were founded. The large cities of Kyiv, Ladoga (which Novgorod very quickly outgrew) stood on the most important trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks." This route went from the Baltic Sea along the Neva and other rivers to the Dnieper, along the Dnieper to the Black Sea and further to Constantinople.
Rice. 1 - Occupations of the Eastern Slavs of the V-VIII centuries.
The Slavs bred cattle and horses. Huge, dense forests abounding natural resources contributed to the development of all kinds of crafts. Hunting was done by the ordinary population, as evidenced by archaeological finds.
The rivers of Eastern Europe abounded in fish, which the Slavs caught in various ways: they set traps, speared them, etc. Fish was an important part of the diet of the Eastern Slavs.
The description of the crafts would be incomplete, if not to name beekeeping - the extraction of honey from wild bees.
As for the craft, its development also depended on natural conditions, more precisely, on those sources of raw materials that our ancestors could have at their disposal. The iron-working craft, and consequently the processing of metal, has become widespread. The raw material here was swamp ore, which is deposited on the roots of marsh and lake plants. Sailing on rafts, miners used special scoops to get ore from the bottom of reservoirs. The raw iron process was used to produce iron from ore. In special forges, the ore was restored - it was brought to a pasty state, and then these so-called \"crits\" were processed by blacksmiths.
Cities were built as trading and military settlements, at the same time forming as tribal centers. Trade and craftsmen permanently residing here appear in the cities.
The increased social differentiation allowed the tribal nobility to stand out, which, in turn, relied on armed detachments - the squad. Now the nobility with the retinue not only went on campaigns, but also began to put things in order in the tribe. She seized lands, imposed tribute on the population, concentrating the control of the tribe in her hands. Military booty and tribute were a source of enrichment and, consequently, strengthening the power of the prince and nobility.
In the VI-VIII centuries. the craft of the Slavs begins to separate from agriculture. Grads and graveyards appear - the centers of small districts and prototypes of future cities. Conditions are being created for the development of regular exchange not only between tribes, but also on the borders of the territory inhabited by the Eastern Slavs. Initially, the functions of money are performed by cattle, furs, amber, foreign (Roman, Arab and Byzantine) coins.
Development material production led to the folding of the prerequisites of the class system among the Eastern Slavs. The collapse of tribal families and the emergence of a neighboring community contributed to the freedom of exit and the acceptance of new members into the community. This made possible the existence of elements of patriarchal slavery. It was more pronounced among the Slavic tribes living in the south, that is, on the borders with the Greek city-states.
Slavery was temporary. Roman historians write about the possibility of redemption and return to their homeland or remain free from the Slavs. The main sources of slavery are captivity and legal proceedings (debt, self-sale, birth from a slave). The Slavs did not have such a mass source as the purchase of slaves. However, the slaves were not so much labor force how many export goods.
The spread of slavery was hindered by the community and unfavorable natural, climatic and geographical conditions. Low labor productivity with an extensive type of economic growth, the seasonal nature of agricultural production, as well as the abundance of undeveloped territories, creating opportunities for escape, meant that a large concentration of slaves was inappropriate. The social inequality arising in the community acquired the character of a feudal class society, which at that time was established among many peoples of Europe and Asia. The priesthood played a significant role in society.
The Eastern Slavs waged "numerous wars with their neighbors, repelling the onslaught of nomadic peoples. At the same time, they made campaigns in the Balkans and in Byzantium. Under these conditions, the role of the military leader, the prince, who was often the main person in the management of the tribe, increased enormously.
Birichs were a kind of tribal "administration". These were the persons who were in charge of the collection for sacred needs, the birom, and lived at its expense. Gradually, their functions expand, they are more closely connected with the power of the sacred leader. Judicial proceedings were carried out by the community members themselves on the basis of customary law. The most severe punishments were extradition to the injured party and expulsion from the clan. The supreme power in the community and tribe at that stage, of course, was largely in the hands of the veche - the people's assembly. If we draw an analogy with later village gatherings, we can assume that the ancient Slavic veche included heads of families (almost exclusively older men). The youth was deprived of the right to vote (most likely, deliberative) - hence the word "lad" `one who is forbidden to speak (in the council).
The head of the tribe was the leader. The term "leader" is ancient native Slavic, but in the period under review it was no longer used directly as a title. He was replaced by others. These are titles denoting priestly sacred (“lord”) and military (“voivode”) power and, finally, the term “prince” borrowed from the Western Germans (in the Przeworsk era). Its German prototype meant at first an elected military leader, while the Slavs perceived it as the title of a ruler endowed with sacred power, partly a synonym for "lord." The long-standing traditions of the co-government of the sacred “king of peace” and the “king of war” in Slavic society are not ruled out.
Rice. 2 - The social system of the Eastern Slavs of the V-VIII centuries.
Slavic culture of the 5th-7th centuries developed under various external influences. It was undoubtedly influenced by the cultures of neighboring tribes - the Baltic, Scythian-Sarmatian, Dacian, Germanic, and partly Hunnic-Bulgarian. There was also some influence of ancient civilization. Traces of all these influences are felt to one degree or another in the archaeological material of the "Prague" era, and in the common Slavic language.
The ancient Slavs did not have a written language in the proper sense of the word; according to the Brave Chernorizets, before they got acquainted with foreign alphabets, they used "features and cuts." These signs were used both for the transmission of information and for divination. An analogue of the "features" are linear signs on the later village counting tags. "Cuts" can be compared with the conventional icons of carved calendars that survived in rural environment until the new time. The same conventional icons could also be used as signatures. They were a type of "drawing writing", pictography. The closest analogue to late ethnographic material is the calendars of the Chernyakhov era applied to ritual vessels. Thus, this method of preserving information has already developed in the Proto-Slavic era.
You can quite well imagine the religious and mythological ideas of the Proto-Slavs. To a large extent, they date back to the Balto-Slavic and further - the Indo-European era.
The pantheon was headed by the Heavenly Father, the personification of heaven and heavenly light (Baltic Dievas, Slavic Div). Later, the Proto-Slavs degraded this image. It can be associated with Iranian influence. The ancient Iranian devas, or daivas, Alanian dauags were considered the younger generation of gods. The Slavic name "Div" is transferred, respectively, to the characters of the lower mythological levels. The functions of the supreme deity were inherited for some time by the Genus, which embodied the idea of a tribal organization of society. The Old Russian “Word about how the filthy worshiped idols” speaks of the veneration of the Family and women in labor “before” supreme god Perun.
Pagan holidays were closely connected with the agricultural calendar. In the organization of a cult significant role played pagan priests - Magi. The head of the pagan cult was the leader, and then the prince. During the cult rituals that took place in special places - temples, sacrifices were made to the gods.
Pagan beliefs determined the spiritual life of the Eastern Slavs, their morality. The Slavs did not have a mythology that explains the origin of the world and man, tells about the victory of heroes over the forces of nature, etc.
Conclusion:
Among the Slavs of the pagan era, there is already an inequality of social groups, as evidenced by archaeological excavations: in clothing, jewelry, weapons, home furnishings. Each tribe was a separate principality and it was independent of other principalities, had its own name, its own territory, its own authorities and its own system of law. Consequently, before the Varangians, the ancient Russian people already had their early statehood.
In the VI-VIII centuries. The slaves of the Eastern Slavs were mostly prisoners captured in the war. At that time, the Slavs had customary law, according to which it was forbidden to enslave their fellow tribesmen, for example, for debts, etc. Slaves from prisoners of war were used mainly in the household, in the most difficult work. There was no fundamental difference between a free community member and a slave. Slavery among the Slavs had a patriarchal form, when slaves do not form a class, but are considered junior incomplete members of the family.
Thus, among the Eastern Slavs there was a sharp differentiation (stratification) of society, it came close to the formation of the state.
In the VI - the middle of the IX century. The Slavs retained the foundations of the communal system: communal ownership of land and livestock, the arming of all free people, the regulation of social relations with the help of traditions and customary law, and veche democracy.
Trade and war among the Eastern Slavs, alternately replacing each other, increasingly changed the way of life of the Slavic tribes, bringing them close to the formation of a new system of relations.
The Eastern Slavs underwent changes caused by both their own internal development and the influence of external forces, which together created the conditions for the formation of the state.
3. Formation of the first political proto-urban centers in the early 9th century. in the south and north of Eastern Europe as the time of the birth of the Old Russian statehood of the Eastern Slavs
a) Centers of the beginning of the 9th century Truvorovo settlement; Sarskoye settlement. Varangian brothers: Rurik, Sineus, Truvor, their political direction.
The 9th century is dated to the news of written sources about the appearance of the first major political formations in the East Slavic lands, where such a need is long overdue, but the objective process of the birth of the state was complicated by the influence of external forces. By the 9th century for the life of Europe in the early Middle Ages, the search for new trade routes to the East became important, since with the establishment of the Arab Caliphate on the eastern, southern and western coasts of the Mediterranean Sea (second half of the 7th - early 8th centuries), the terms of trade in this region deteriorated sharply, where ran the old, traditional trade routes. Part of the population of Scandinavia, which at that time was also experiencing a crisis of the tribal system, was actively involved in the search for such paths, which caused for centuries unending aggression against the west of Europe by formidable Viking detachments. Those groups of the population that did not find opportunities for social elevation seized the chance to achieve it, taking part in the search for trade routes to the East, leading through the territory of Eastern Europe. For Scandinavian merchants and pirates, this was the only prospect, since the way to the west in late VIII- the first half of the ninth century. closed by the powerful Carolingian Empire with a well-established organization of the coast guard.
The first most important evidence of change was the appearance in the territory of this region after a long chronological break of proto-urban centers and not only in the south, but also in the north of Eastern Europe. Examples of such centers of the 9th century. Truvorovo settlement in the Pskov region, Khotomel in Volyn, Sarskoye settlement near Rostov the Great can serve.
The features of the proto-urban center, which distinguished it from the surrounding rural settlements, can also be characterized by the example of the Sarsk settlement, which was the center of the Finno-Ugric ethnic group living in the eastern part of the forest zone - Meri. The ancient settlement was the only fortified center in the entire territory of the Meryan land.
Late tradition indicates Novgorod as the northern center, but in the 9th century. this city did not yet exist, but the name itself allows us to assert that there was another, older center. Obviously, it is about him that the Arab sources speak, calling him Slavia. She was also inter-ethnic. This proto-state formation united Slovenes, part of the Krivichi, Baltic-Finnish and East Baltic tribes living in the area of Lake. Ilmen.
Similar processes took place in some other Slavic regions: in the west in the Bug region (Chervensky grads), in the northeast in the Volga region - Arsu (the region of Rostov and Beloozero) and in the northwest in the vicinity of Polotsk. The process of unification of the East Slavic centers took place with the leading role of the northern and southern associations. Late chronicle tradition gives preference in some cases to Kyiv, in others to Novgorod. This is probably the result of the later (in the 12th century) rivalry between Kievan and Novgorodian chronicles.
The formation of these proto-state formations took place under different political conditions, although at approximately the same time, which indicates the natural, self-conditioned nature of the creation of the Old Russian statehood.
About the contacts of the inhabitants of Scandinavia - the Normans with the Eastern Slavs, who were in this period, as shown above, at the stage of formation of political entities and proto-states, important information is contained in the so-called Varangian legend, or "The Tale of the Calling of Princes", which has come down to us as part of the most ancient surviving ancient Russian annalistic codes (the Initial code of the end of the 11th century - in the text of the Novgorod I chronicle of the younger version and in the Tale of Bygone Years of the beginning of the 12th century). The "Legend" in a legendary form preserved information about the formation of a large political association in the forest zone of Eastern Europe. It tells about the appearance in this part of Eastern Europe of the Varangians - the military squads of the inhabitants of Scandinavia (Normans), who levied tribute from the East Slavic tribal unions of the Krivichi and Slovenes and the Finno-Finnish tribes neighboring them - Meri and Chudi. They are "a tribute to the dayah by a Varangian from her husband for a white veveritsa" (i.e., for a squirrel skin). Varangians "violence deyahu Slovene, Krivich and Merya and Chud." Having united, they "stand up against the Varangians and I drove out across the sea and began to rule for themselves."
Three brothers, Varangians, arrived from Scandinavia at the invitation with a retinue. The eldest of them - Rurik - sat down as a prince in the tribal center of Slovenes in the region of the future Novgorod and became the ancestor of the princely dynasty that then ruled in Russia.
b) The role of the Normans in the origin and formation of statehood in the Lands of the Eastern Slavs "Norman theory" of the XVIII-XX centuries by German scientists G. Bayer, G. Miller, A. Schlozer. Anti-Normanists: N.M. Karamzin, M.P. Pogodin, S.M. Solovyov and others. origin, essence and meaning; supporters and opponents of the issue of calling the Varangians in the creation of statehood in Rus'.
Presence in Eastern Europe in the 9th century. Normans, their participation in the creation of new political entities here raises the question of what was the role of the Normans in the origin "and formation of statehood on the lands of the Eastern Slavs and the Finno-Ugric tribes closely related to them in the historical development. This issue was the subject of long and fierce discussions in In the scientific literature of the 18th-20th centuries, polar points of view were put forward - from the assertion that the Old Russian state was formed due to the conquest of the East Slavic lands by the Normans, to the assertion that there were no Normans at all in Eastern Europe in the 9th century.
In the middle of the XVIII century, the question of the origin of the state was not yet associated with the emergence of social classes and irreconcilable contradictions between classes. It boiled down to the ethnic origin of the ruling dynasty. Neither Lomonosov nor Miller doubted the calling of Rurik and his brothers; only the question is debatable whether Rurik was a Norman or a Slav, and where he came from. If Bayer and Miller believed that the Varangians led by Rurik came to Novgorod from Scandinavia and were Normans, then Lomonosov believed that they came from the southeastern shores of the Varangian (Baltic) Sea. Here, between the Vistula and the Dvina, lived the Slavic tribe Rus, called in 862 to Novgorod.
Miller deduced the origin of the name Rus from the term Rossaline, which the Finns called the Swedes. Lomonosov considered it incredible that Novgorod would begin to call the newcomers Varangians, and then themselves, with a Finnish word. He drew attention to the similarity of the name Russians and Roxalana - an ancient people who lived between the Don and the Dnieper, from where part of this people spread to the north, reaching the Baltic Sea and Lake Ilmen. The name of the ancient city - Staraya Russa testifies that "before Rurik, the people of Russ or Ross lived here, or in Greek called Roxalans."
Of the arguments given by Lomonosov in favor of the opinion about the southern origin of Rus', his indication of the presence of toponyms with the root -ros- in the south (for example, the tributary of the Dnieper - the Ros-river) is still used.
The opinion of M.V. Lomonosov about the origin of the Russians from the Russians did not survive in science. Miller wrote that in ancient times the word Rus appeared. And the word Russians arose and came into use recently and cannot serve as proof of this opinion. Lomonosov's thesis about the arrival of Rurik in Novgorod land from the southeastern Slavic coast of the Baltic did not hold out in science either.
In modern historiography, the dispute between anti-Normanists and Normanists includes several complex and important issues: 1) about the role of internal causes and the role of foreigners (Varangians) in the process of formation and development of the ancient Russian state; 2) about the degree of Norman influence on the development of social relations and culture, and to answer this question, data from archeology, linguistics, cultural monuments are involved (Soviet historians noted the relative weakness of the Norman influence, compared with Byzantine and Tatar); 3) about the origin of the name Rus, the Russian people, and this terminological issue, which is of wide interest, still has less scientific significance than the first two.
The first seeds of citizenship and culture, in his opinion, were thrown by the Varangians, who called the Slavs behind them into the historical arena. In the “History of Russia from ancient times” S.M. Solovyov raises a number of important problems of Russian historical process. Little touching on the issue of ancient population Eastern Europe, Solovyov does not dwell on the problem of the origin of the Slavs. In accordance with the historiography of his time (going back to the chronicle tradition), he considered the Slavs to be newcomers from Asia to the banks of the Danube, where they arrived for a long time, after which they settled in the places of their later residence. This incorrect point of view was revised in the writings of subsequent scientists.
Solovyov considered the establishment of the power of the newcomer Varangian kings in them as the initial event in the political history of the Eastern Slavs. “The calling of the first princes,” Soloviev writes, “is of great importance in our history, there are events of the all-Russian, and Russian history rightly begins with it.” Thus, he accepted the provisions of the "Norman theory" of the emergence of the Russian state. This was an erroneous position, just as Solovyov's opinion about the relatively late development of the Slavs (since the 9th century) must be recognized as erroneous. It has now been found out that the first state formations among the Eastern Slavs arose as early as the 6th century.
But Solovyov expressed a number of sound judgments on the nature of the Norman influence on Rus', judgments that ultimately undermined the roots of the "Norman theory." He rightly points out that the Varangians do not stand higher than the Slavs on the steps public life and quickly merged with them. He also notes that it is impossible to talk about the influence of the Scandinavian languages on the language and legislation of the Slavs, that the princes - the descendants of Rurik were no longer pure Normans. A conscientious study of the sources led Solovyov to the conclusion that the question of the nationality of the Varangians in Rus' was losing its importance in our history. This is the concept of S.M.Soloviev.
Karamzin N.M. in his “History of the Russian State” describes in the first volume in the chapter “On the peoples who from ancient times considered in Russia. - About the Slavs in general” the most ancient period of Russian history. According to the reports of Greek and Roman writers, he says, “a great part of Europe and Asia, now called Russia, in its temperate climates was from time immemorial inhabited, but by wild peoples, plunged into the depths of ignorance, who did not mark their existence with any of their own historical monuments.”
Conclusion:
The arrival of detachments of Norman warriors contributed to the strengthening of the role and importance of the squad in East Slavic society, and thanks to this, in Eastern Europe, this conflict was resolved in a fairly short historical period in favor of the princely power and squad. But the princely squad formed during this struggle was only partially Norman.
The socio-historical action, expressed in the calling of the Varangians, laid the foundations for the formation in Kievan Rus state system collective management - the prince with his family, the nobility and squad, different from the medieval Western European, as well as the traditions of the veche system of Veliky Novgorod and Pskov.
The formation of a major transcontinental trade route objectively became one of the important factors (if not the decisive prerequisite) for the emergence of East Slavic statehood in the north of Eastern Europe. The framework of the political structure created by the proto-state formation was open trade and craft settlements (OTRP) such as Ladoga, Rurik's settlement or Gnezdova.
Thus, domestic and foreign historical evidence, linguistic analysis and archaeological finds unequivocally testify to the existence of Eastern Slavs in the settlement zone in the last quarter of the 9th century. two proto-state formations - Dnieper Rus and Ilmen Rus. Both formations were tribal confederal associations, which included mainly Slavs, Ugrofins, Balts and Scandinavians.
proto-Slavs landownership proto-urban religious
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11. Soloviev S.M. History of Russia since ancient times. T.I. M., 1988.

12. Textbook. Russian history. Ed. Orlov A.S., Georgiev V.A., Georgieva N.G., Sivokhina T.A. M., 2003.

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Antes and Slavins

Until now, historians and archaeologists have put forward a variety of theories about who the Slavic ancestors could be. The ethnogenesis of this people took place in an era from which there are almost no written sources left. Specialists had to restore the early history of the Slavs to the smallest grains. Byzantine chronicles are of great value. It was the Eastern Roman Empire that had to experience the pressure of the tribes, which eventually formed the Slavic people.

The first evidence of them dates back to the 6th century. Slavic ancestors in Byzantine sources were called Antes. The famous historian wrote about them. At first, the Ants lived in the interfluve of the Dniester and Dnieper in the territory of modern Ukraine. During their heyday they lived in the steppes from the Don to the Balkans.

If the Antes belonged to the eastern group of Slavs, then to the west of them lived their kindred Slavs. The first mention of them remained in Jordan's Getica, written in the middle of the 6th century. Sometimes the Sclaveni were also called Veneti. These tribes lived on the territory of modern Czech Republic.

social order

The inhabitants of Byzantium believed that the Slavic ancestors were barbarians who did not know civilization. It really was. Both the Slavins and the Antes lived under democracy. They did not have a single ruler and statehood. The early Slavic society consisted of many communities, the core of each of which was a certain clan. Such descriptions are found in Byzantine sources and are confirmed by the findings of modern archaeologists. The settlements consisted of large dwellings in which large families lived. In one settlement there could be about 20 houses. Among the Slavs, a hearth was common, among the Antes - a stove. In the north, the Slavs built log cabins.

Customs corresponded to cruel patriarchal mores. For example, ritual murders of wives were practiced at the grave of a spouse. Slavic ancestors were engaged in agriculture, which was the main source of food. Wheat, millet, barley, oats, rye were grown. Cattle were bred: sheep, pigs, ducks, chickens. The craft was poorly developed compared to the same Byzantium. Basically, it served domestic household needs.

Army and slavery

Gradually, a social stratum of warriors emerged in the community. They often organized raids on Byzantium and other neighboring countries. The goal has always been the same - robbery and slaves. Ancient Slavic squads could include several thousand people. It was in the military environment that governors and princes appeared. The first ancestors of the Slavs fought with spears (less often with swords). Throwing weapons, the sulica, were also widespread. It was used not only in combat, but also in hunting.

It is known for certain that slavery was widespread among the Ants. The number of slaves could reach tens of thousands of people. Mostly they were prisoners captured in the war. That is why there were many Byzantines among the Antes slaves. As a rule, the Antes kept slaves in order to get a ransom for them. However, some of them were employed in the economy and crafts.

Avars invasion

In the middle of the 6th century, the lands of the Ants came under attack from the Avars. These were nomadic tribes whose rulers bore the title of kagan. Their ethnicity remains a subject of controversy: some consider them to be Turks, others to speak Iranian languages. The ancestors of the ancient Slavs, although they were in a subservient position, noticeably crowded the Avars in their numbers. This relationship has led to confusion. The Byzantines (for example, John of Ephesus and completely identified the Slavs and Avars, although such an assessment was a mistake.

The invasion from the east led to a significant migration of the population, who had previously lived in one place for a long time. Together with the Avars, the Antes first moved to Pannonia (modern Hungary), and later began to invade the Balkans, which belonged to Byzantium.

The Slavs became the basis of the army of the kaganate. The most famous episode of their confrontation with the empire was the siege of Constantinople in 626. The history of the ancient Slavs is known from brief episodes of their interaction with the Greeks. The siege of Constantinople was just such an example. Despite the assault, the Slavs and Avars failed to take the city.

Nevertheless, the onslaught of the pagans continued in the future. Back in 602, the Lombard king sent his shipbuilding masters to the Slavs. They settled in Dubrovnik. The first Slavic ships (monoxyls) appeared in this port. They took part in the already mentioned siege of Constantinople. And at the end of the 6th century, the Slavs laid siege to Thessaloniki for the first time. Soon thousands of pagans moved to Thrace. Then the Slavs appeared on the territory of modern Croatia and Serbia.

East Slavs

The unsuccessful siege of Constantinople in 626 undermined the forces of the Avar Khaganate. Slavs everywhere began to get rid of the yoke of strangers. In Moravia Samo raised an uprising. He became the first Slavic prince known by name. At the same time, his fellow tribesmen began their expansion to the east. In the 7th century, the colonialists became neighbors of the Khazars. They managed to penetrate even into the Crimea and get to the Caucasus. Where the ancestors of the Slavs lived and their settlements were founded, there was always a river or lake, as well as land suitable for cultivation.

The city of Kyiv appeared on the Dnieper, named after Prince Kyi. Here a new tribal union of polyans was formed, which, among several other such unions, replaced the ants. In the 7th-8th centuries, three groups of Slavic peoples were finally formed, which still exist today (western, southern and eastern). The latter settled on the territory of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and in the interfluve of the Volga and Oka, their settlements ended up within the borders of Russia.

In Byzantium, Slavs and Scythians were often identified. This was a serious Greek error. The Scythians belonged to Iranian tribes and spoke Iranian languages. During their heyday, they inhabited, among other things, the Dnieper steppes, as well as the Crimea. When the Slavic colonization got there, regular conflicts began between the new neighbors. A serious danger was the cavalry, which was owned by the Scythians. The ancestors of the Slavs for many years held back their invasions, until, finally, the nomads were swept away by the Goths.

Tribal unions and cities of the Eastern Slavs

In the northeast, the neighbors of the Slavs were numerous Finno-Ugric tribes, including the whole and Merya. The settlements of Rostov, Beloozero and Staraya Ladoga appeared here. Another city, Novgorod, became an important political center. In 862, the Varangian Rurik began to reign in it. This event was the beginning of Russian statehood.

The cities of the Eastern Slavs appeared mainly in places where the Path from the Varangians to the Greeks ran. This trade artery led from the Baltic Sea to Byzantium. Along the way, merchants transported valuable goods: ambergris, whale skin, amber, marten and sable furs, honey, wax, etc. The goods were delivered on boats. The path of the ships ran along the rivers. Part of the route ran on land. In these areas, the boats were transported by portage, as a result of which the cities of Toropets and Smolensk appeared on the ground.

The East Slavic tribes lived apart from each other for a long time, and often they were at enmity and fought among themselves. This made them vulnerable to neighbors. For this reason, at the beginning of the 9th century, some East Slavic tribal unions began to pay tribute to the Khazars. Others were heavily dependent on the Varangians. The Tale of Bygone Years mentions a dozen such tribal unions: Buzhans, Volhynians, Dregovichi, Drevlyans, Krivichi, Polyana, Polochan, Severyans, Radimichi, Tivertsy, White Croats and Ulichi. A single culture for all of them developed only in the XI-XII centuries. after the formation of Kievan Rus and the adoption of Christianity. Later given ethnos divided into Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians. This is the answer to the question of whose ancestors are the Eastern Slavs.

South Slavs

The Slavs who settled in the Balkans gradually separated themselves from their other tribesmen and made up the South Slavic tribes. Today their descendants are Serbs, Bulgarians, Croats, Bosnians, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Slovenes. If the ancestors of the Eastern Slavs inhabited mostly empty lands, then their southern counterparts got the land, in which there were many settlements founded by the Romans. From the ancient civilization there were also roads along which the pagans quickly moved around the Balkans. Before them, Byzantium owned the peninsula. However, the empire had to cede the land to strangers due to constant wars in the east with the Persians and internal turmoil.

In the new lands, the ancestors of the southern Slavs mixed with the autochthonous (local) Greek population. In the mountains, the colonialists had to face the resistance of the Vlachs, as well as the Albanians. The outsiders also clashed with the Christian Greeks. The resettlement of the Slavs to the Balkans ended in the 620s.

Neighborhood with Christians and regular contacts with them had a great influence on the new masters of the Balkans. The paganism of the Slavs in this region was eradicated the fastest. Christianization was both natural and encouraged by Byzantium. First, the Greeks, trying to understand who the Slavs were, sent embassies to them, and then preachers followed them. Emperors regularly sent missionaries to dangerous neighbors, hoping in this way to increase their influence on the barbarians. So, for example, the baptism of the Serbs began under Heraclius, who ruled in 610-641. The process went on gradually. The new religion took root among the southern Slavs in the second half of the ninth century. Then the princes Rashki were baptized, after which they converted their subjects to the Christian faith.

It is interesting that if the Serbs became the flock of the Eastern Church in Constantinople, then their brothers the Croats turned their gaze to the West. This was due to the fact that in 812 the Frankish emperor Charlemagne concluded an agreement with the Byzantine king Michael I Rangava, according to which part of the Adriatic coast of the Balkans became dependent on the Franks. They were Catholics and, during their short reign in the region, baptized Croats according to their Western custom. And although in the ninth century Christian church was still considered united, the great schism of 1054 noticeably alienated Catholics and Orthodox from each other.

Western Slavs

The western group of Slavic tribes settled vast territories from the Elbe to the Carpathians. She laid the foundation for the Polish, Czech and Slovak people. To the west of all lived Bodrichi, Lutichi, Lusatians and Pomeranians. In the 6th century, this Polabian group of Slavs occupied about a third of the territory of modern Germany. Conflicts between tribes of different ethnicity were constant. The new colonialists pushed the Lombards, Varins and Rugs (who spoke

Curious evidence of the presence of the Slavs on the present German soil is the name of Berlin. Linguists have figured out the nature of the origin of this word. In the language of the Polabian Slavs, "burlin" meant a dam. There are many of them in the northeast of Germany. That's how far the ancestors of the Slavs penetrated. Back in 623, these same colonists joined Prince Samo in his uprising against the Avars. Periodically, under the successors of Charlemagne, the Polabian Slavs entered into an alliance with the Franks in their campaigns against the Khaganate.

German feudal lords launched an offensive against strangers in the 9th century. Gradually, the Slavs who lived on the banks of the Elbe submitted to them. Today, only small isolated groups remain of them, including several thousand people each, who have retained their own unique dialect, unlike even Polish. In the Middle Ages, the Germans called all neighboring Western Slavs Wends.

Language and writing

To understand who the Slavs are, it is best to turn to the history of their language. Once upon a time, when this people was still united, they had one dialect. It received the name of the Proto-Slavic language. There are no written records left of him. It is only known that it belonged to an extensive Indo-European family of languages, which makes it related to many other languages: Germanic, Romance, etc. Some linguists and historians put forward additional theories about its origin. According to one of the hypotheses, the Proto-Slavic language at some stage of its development was part of the Proto-Balto-Slavic language, until the Baltic languages separated into their own group.

Gradually, each nation developed its own dialect. On the basis of one of these dialects, which was spoken by the Slavs who lived in the vicinity of the city of Thessalonica, the brothers Cyril and Methodius created Slavic Christian writing in the 9th century. Enlighteners did this by order of the Byzantine emperor. Writing was necessary for the translation of Christian books and sermons among the pagans. Over time, it became known as Cyrillic. This alphabet today is the basis of the Belarusian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Russian, Serbian, Ukrainian and Montenegrin languages. The rest of the Slavs who converted to Catholicism use the Latin alphabet.

In the 20th century, archaeologists began to find many artifacts that became monuments of ancient Cyrillic writing. Novgorod became the key place for these excavations. Thanks to the finds in its vicinity, experts learned a lot about what the ancient Slavic writing and culture was like.

For example, the so-called Gnezdovskaya inscription, made on a clay jug in the middle of the 10th century, is considered the oldest East Slavic text in Cyrillic. The artifact was found in 1949 by archaeologist Daniil Avdusin. A thousand kilometers away, back in 1912, a lead seal with a Cyrillic inscription was discovered in an ancient Kyiv church. The archaeologists who deciphered it decided that it means the name of Prince Svyatoslav, who ruled in 945-972. It is interesting that at that time paganism remained the main religion in Rus', although Christianity and the same Cyrillic alphabet were already in Bulgaria. in such ancient inscriptions help to more accurately identify the artifact.

The question of whether the Slavs had their own written language before the adoption of Christianity remains open. Fragmentary references to it are found in some authors of that era, but these inaccurate evidence are not enough to draw up a complete picture. Perhaps the Slavs used cuts and features to convey information using images. Such letters could be of a ritual nature and used in divination.

Religion and culture

The pre-Christian paganism of the Slavs developed over several centuries and acquired independent unique features. This faith consisted of the spiritualization of nature, animism, animatism, the cult of supernatural forces, the veneration of ancestors and magic. The original mythological texts that would help lift the veil of secrecy over Slavic paganism have not survived to this day. Historians can judge this faith only from the annals, chronicles, testimonies of foreigners and other minor sources.

In the mythology of the Slavs, traits inherent in other Indo-European cults can be traced. For example, in the pantheon there are wars (Perun), the god of the other world and cattle (Veles), a deity with the image of Father-Heaven (Stribog). All this in one form or another is also found in Iranian, Baltic and German mythology.

The gods for the Slavs were the highest sacred beings. The fate of any person depended on their complacency. In the most important, responsible and dangerous moments, each tribe turned to its supernatural patrons. The Slavs had widespread sculptures of gods (idols). They were made of wood and stone. The most famous episode associated with idols was mentioned in chronicles in connection with the Baptism of Rus'. Prince Vladimir, as a sign of acceptance of the new faith, ordered that the idols of the old gods be thrown into the Dnieper. This act was a clear demonstration of the beginning of a new era. Even despite the Christianization that began at the end of the 10th century, paganism continued to live, especially in the remote and bearish corners of Rus'. Some of its features were mixed with Orthodoxy and preserved in the form of folk customs (for example, calendar holidays). It's interesting that Slavic names often appeared as references to religious views (for example, Bogdan - “given by God”, etc.).

For the worship of pagan spirits, there were special sanctuaries, which were called temples. The life of the ancestors of the Slavs was closely connected with these sacred places. Temple premises existed only among the western tribes (Poles, Czechs), while their eastern counterparts did not have such buildings. Old Russian sanctuaries were open groves. Rites of worship to the gods were held at the temples.

In addition to idols, the Slavs, like the Baltic tribes, had sacred boulder stones. Perhaps this custom was adopted from the Finno-Ugric peoples. The cult of ancestors was associated with the Slavic funeral rite. During the funeral, ritual dances and chants (trizna) were arranged. The body of the deceased was not interred, but burned at the stake. Ashes and the remaining bones were collected in a special vessel, which was left at a post on the road.

The history of the ancient Slavs would have been completely different if all the tribes had not accepted Christianity. Both Orthodoxy and Catholicism included them in a single European medieval civilization.

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