The question of the ancestral home of the Slavs remains controversial. In the first millennium, the Slavs came into contact with other ethnic groups moving across the East European (Russian) Plain during the Great Migration Period. Between the first and ninth centuries, Sarmatians, Goths, nomadic Huns, Alans, Avars, Bulgars and Hungarians crossed the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region, heading west. Even though some of them were able to conquer the local Slavs, these peoples left few traces on the Slavic lands. In the Early Middle Ages, Slavic farmers, beekeepers, hunters, fishermen and shepherds spread widely across the East European Plain and to VIII century began to dominate this region. In the VIII and IX centuries. southern branch Eastern Slavs Russian tribes paid tribute to the Khazars, and later came under the influence of the Varangians.

In the V--VII centuries. the Slavs spread widely in Europe; their numerous tribes were geographically divided into southern, western and eastern, which faced different historical destinies. The Eastern Slavs flooded Eastern Europe in two streams. One group of tribes settled in the Dnieper basin in the territory of modern Ukraine. It then spread north to the upper reaches of the Volga, east of modern Moscow, and west to the valleys of the northern Dniester and Southern Bug through the territories of modern Moldova and southern Ukraine.

Another group of Eastern Slavs moved from Pomerania to the northeast, where they encountered the Varangians. Here they founded the important regional center Veliky Novgorod. The same group of Slavs subsequently inhabited the territories of the modern Tver region and Beloozero, reaching the habitat of the Merya people near Rostov.

By the 12th century, the territory of Kievan Rus from a conglomerate of Slavic and non-Slavic tribes, subordinated at different times by the Rurik dynasty, turned into an ethnically relatively homogeneous space. Further migrations of the ancient Russian people that emerged in this era were still directed primarily to the northeast, where the rare Finno-Ugric population could not provide significant resistance to this process. By the end of the pre-Mongol period, the Novgorodians and residents of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality had mastered Zavolochye, the Slavic population of which was rapidly arriving after the southern Russian principalities came under attack from the Mongol-Tatars. By the end of the Mongol-Tatar yoke, the Russian cities of Nizhny Novgorod, Khlynov, Cherdyn and Solikamsk settled on the Volga, Vyatka and in the Kama basin.

The reasons for the expansion of the Slavs in Europe are discussed by researchers within the framework of hypotheses. Among the versions most often voiced are a demographic explosion caused by climate warming or the emergence of new farming techniques, as well as the Great Migration of Peoples, which devastated central Europe in the first centuries of our era during the invasions of the Germans, Sarmatians, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, preparing the ground for the settlement of new aliens.

In Eastern Europe, the Slavs encountered mainly the Balts and Finno-Ugric peoples, whom they partially assimilated. The Balts, unlike the Finno-Ugrians, were at that time close to the Slavs both in language, culture and way of life. Some researchers believe that in this era there was still a continuous Balto-Slavic continuum, that is, these peoples had not yet completely separated. At the same time, during the period of expansion of the Krivichi in the Smolensk Dnieper region, the Tushemlinsk culture that previously existed in this region, the ethnicity of which archaeologists were divided in their views, was replaced by a purely Slavic archaeological culture, and the Tushemlin settlements were destroyed, since the Slavs were in the cities during this period haven't lived yet.

In general, during the era of Slavic expansion, in the 7th-8th centuries, many settlements appeared in Eastern Europe, then not yet inhabited by the Slavs. The same Tushemlin culture created a type of settlement-shelter that did not have a permanent population and served only as a shelter, a detinets, for protection from attacks. The cities of the Finno-Ugric tribes Merya and Ves, Rostov and Beloozero, served them as political centers, a place of residence for leaders and a meeting place for the militia. Staraya Ladoga apparently appeared as a fortified stronghold of the Scandinavians and was a fortress from the very beginning. Staraya Ladoga, Novgorod and Beloozero were the main strongholds for Rurik and his squad during the period of calling the Varangians.

Introduction

The history of any nation begins with the formation of a state. IN Russian Federation More than 100 peoples and nationalities live here. But the main state-forming people of our country are the Russian people (out of 145 million - 120 million are Russians). The Russian people - one of the largest peoples in the world - for many centuries played a leading role in the political, economic, and cultural development of the country. The first state of Russians, as well as Ukrainians and Belarusians, was formed in the 9th century. around Kyiv by their common ancestors - the Eastern Slavs.

Slavic people pagan migration

Slavs and the Great Migration of Peoples

The Slavs are the largest group of peoples related by origin in Europe. They spoke Slavic languages, part of the Indo-European language family.

In the 2nd millennium BC. e. The ancestors of the Slavs, who had not yet divided into separate nations, lived somewhere between the Balts, Germans, Celts and Iranians. The Balts lived to the northwest of the Slavs, the Germans and Celts lived to the west of them, the Indo-Iranian tribes lived in the southeast, and the Greeks and Italics lived in the south-southwest. The ancestral home of the Slavs is a wide area from the headwaters of the Odra, Vistula, Dniester, Pripyat rivers to the Dnieper and Desna.

The ancestors of the Slavs - the Proto-Slavs - were engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding. Arable farming became the main occupation of the Proto-Slavs; at the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e. they had already mastered the smelting of iron from swamp and lake ore. This circumstance dramatically changed their way of life, and allowed them to more successfully master nature, as well as wage defensive and offensive wars. Military attacks forced the Slavs to create tribal alliances, the first of which dates back to the 4th - 5th centuries. BC.

In the lands of the Slavs, where there were an abundance of rivers, lakes, and a well-branched water transport system, navigation, trade, and various crafts producing products for exchange rapidly developed. The region was rich in forests, the fur trade flourished there; Since ancient times, fishing has been an important branch of the economy here. In forest thickets, along river banks, on forest edges, where the Drevlyans, Vyatichi, Dryagovichi lived, rhythm economic life was slow, here people had a particularly hard time mastering nature, conquering every inch of land from it for arable land and meadows.

Every Slav was not only a diligent and persistent farmer, but also an experienced hunter. There was hunting for elk, deer, chamois, forest and lake birds. Already at this time, this type of hunting developed. Like prey for a fur-bearing animal.

From spring until late autumn, the Eastern Slavs were engaged in beekeeping. It gave enterprising fishermen a lot of honey and wax, which was also highly valued in exchange.

The constantly improving economy of the Eastern Slavs eventually led to the fact that an individual family, an individual house no longer needed the help of their clan or relatives.

Joint work to clear the forest and hunt large animals using primitive stone tools and weapons required great collective efforts. The plow, iron axe, shovel, hoe, bow and arrows, double-edged steel swords significantly expanded and strengthened the power of the individual, the individual family over nature and contributed to the withering away of the tribal community. This is how the right of private ownership, private property, was born.

The neighbors of the Eastern Slavs were the Western and Southern Slavs, as well as the ancestors of the Baltic peoples and Finno-Ugric tribes.

The pagan faith of the Slavs was closely connected with their way of life. The Slavs worshiped the spirits of nature, good and evil, retaining from primitive times the belief in the power of magical rituals. The supreme god was Perun, who sent rain and lightning. The annual cycle of rituals began on Christmastide, when a new “living fire” was produced.

In March, the arrival of spring was celebrated, the rebirth of nature - Maslenitsa. Rituals accompanied plowing, sowing; then came prayers for rain, and in August there were harvest festivals. Special rituals were performed at weddings, funerals, and preceded military performances.

The pagan Slavs erected idols and held feasts in honor of their gods. There were special sanctuaries for crowded tribal celebrations called “events.”

The formation of the Russian state is associated with the union of Slavic tribes called “Rus” or “Rus”. By the 9th century the dews united a number of Slavic tribal unions; the Kyiv princes led the fight against the nomads.

The whole life of a Slav was connected with the world of supernatural creatures, behind which stood the forces of nature. It was a fantastic and poetic world. It was part of the everyday life of every Slavic family.

Great Migration created grandiose critical situations in several European regions. Moreover, they have been aggravated by dramatic climate change in Europe.

From the end of the 4th century. AD there is a strong cooling, especially severe in the 5th century. (the coldest in the past two thousand years). The cooling caused intense moisture and a rapid increase in precipitation. Scientists believe that these changes were accompanied by transgression of the Baltic Sea, i.e., the advance of the sea onto land, rising groundwater, rising levels of rivers and lakes, swamping of large areas, flooding of fields and settlements, washing out of the fertile soil layer, etc. Huge disasters befell Jutland in particular; a number of Germanic tribes left their native places altogether. These formidable processes caused a constant outflow of population from the Vistula-Oder region. The Central European population shifted to the south and east. The migration of the population from the areas of Przeworsk and Wielbar (Gothic) cultures, in addition to moving to the middle Danube and further to the south, also moved to the east, in particular to the future Northern Russian lands.

If in the first half of the 1st millennium AD. the development of the Baltic and Finnish ethnic groups was still at the stage of the early Iron Age and hunting-gathering forms of activity, then from the end of the 4th - 5th centuries. in the territories of their settlement, under the influence of the migration of the Slavs, gradual changes in material culture occur, the number and range of household items of the Przeworsk and even Wielbar cultures increase (for example, sickles, stone hand millstones, etc., appear more advanced in shape). It was from this time that, in addition to grain crops such as wheat, barley, millet, rye and oats from the Vistula-Oder region appeared. Migrating Slavic settlers gradually developed the upper reaches of the Dnieper, the region of lakes Ilmen and Chudskoye, the interfluves of the Volga and Klyazma, and the regions of the Upper Volga. As a result of the invasion of the Huns, the achievements of the Chernyakhovites were destroyed, as well as part of the multi-ethnic population.

At the same time, significant groups of the population of the forest-steppe spaces on the left bank of the Dnieper survived and became the founders of a new life, the traces of which were called by archaeologists the Penkovo ​​culture, which has signs of continuity with the Chernyakhov culture. These were the Antes-Penkovites, whose life activity can be traced until the end of the 7th century. AD At the same time, even during the period of the Chernyakhov culture in the III-IV centuries. The Slavs begin to penetrate into the area between the Danube and Prut rivers.

On the “Pevtinger map” dating back to this time, it is noted that the “Wends” live here - this name was used by the authors of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages to designate the Slavs. Together with the Huns, some of the Chernyakhovites (apparently the Antes) penetrate into the middle reaches of the Danube.

In the V-VI centuries. There is a massive settlement of the Ant Slavs on the left bank of the lower Danube. According to a number of researchers, the impulses for migration to the middle Danube came from the middle Povislenie, from the areas of Przeworsk and partly Wielbar (Gothic) cultures.

In the VI-VII centuries. the Slavs already prevailed in both the Lower and Middle Danube. And the Middle Danube became the initial center of movement to the Balkans. Slavic invasions of the Danube region and the Balkans. An important phenomenon in European history in the VI-VII centuries. The Slavs began invading the territory of the Eastern Roman Empire, which led to the collapse of the slave system on the vast territory of the Balkan Peninsula.

Until the beginning of the 6th century. The Slavs are not mentioned in the works of Byzantine authors, but in the 6th century. the situation changed dramatically. The first attacks of the Slavs on the territory of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire began at the beginning of the third decade of the 6th century. and by the middle of the 6th century. have become widespread.

The attacks occurred along the entire northern border of the empire, which ran along the Danube. Attacking Byzantine lands, the Slavs could not at that time capture fortified fortresses; their raids were initially predatory in nature. Capturing booty and prisoners, the Slavs took them away and carried them to their lands north of the Danube. The situation became more complicated when in 565. A union of Avar tribes, who came from Central Asia through the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region, settled here in the Middle Danube and created their own state here - the Avar Kaganate. The rulers of the Kaganate subjugated the Slavic population of the Middle Danube region to their power. Campaigns began in the Balkans, in which Avars and Slavs participated jointly. Under these conditions, it became increasingly difficult for Byzantine military leaders to hold the line of defense on the Danube. Trying to get rid of raids, the Byzantine emperors were forced to pay tribute to the Avars. Together with the Avars, the Slavs of the Danube region achieved significant success, but in battles the Avars sent them forward and took away the best part of the booty. The Eastern Slavs-Antes did not submit to the Avars and launched attacks on the Eastern Roman Empire on their own.

At the beginning of the 7th century. a turning point came - the Byzantine defense system on the Danube collapsed, but this did not lead to the establishment of Avar power in the Balkans. The uprising of the Danube Slavs led by Samo in the 30s. VII century led to the weakening of the Avar Kaganate. Under these conditions, the Balkans were settled by masses of Slavic populations moving from the north. In the vast territories of the Balkan Peninsula (with the exception of fortified cities on the sea coast), Byzantine power ceased to exist, Slavic tribes settled even in the Peloponnese. Only at the beginning of the 9th century. At the cost of great efforts, the Byzantine emperors managed to establish their power over the territory of mainland Greece. Simultaneously with the improvement in the V-VIII centuries. climatic conditions, part of the Slavic tribes moved west, settling the lands previously abandoned by the Germanic tribes between the Oder (Odra) and the Elbe (Laba). This marked the division of the Slavs into three branches: western, eastern and southern.

“The Great Migration of Peoples” is the process of moving large ethnic groups (tribes) in Eurasia, in the 4th-7th centuries. AD, which led to a significant change in the ethnic and political map of Europe, in particular, the destruction of the Western Roman Empire and the creation of conditions for the formation of modern European peoples and their statehood. Similar processes, as you already know, occurred earlier, but it was this resettlement that played a serious role in the historical development of Europe.

Some researchers believe that it is advisable to expand the chronological scope of the “Great Migration”, because large-scale movements of tribes, mainly from east to west, began BC. (Sarmatians) and actually stopped only with the resettlement of the Magyars to their modern territory (Hungary). The process of resettlement of peoples also includes the movement of the Huns from Mongolia to the Volga (1st-2nd centuries AD), the movement of the Goths from the Baltic to the Black Sea, synchronous with them and subsequent movements of Germanic tribes to the west, and after them the Slavs to Elbe in the west and along the East European Plain in the East.

One of the main places in the “Great Migration” is occupied by the Hun invasion. The Xiongnu tribes (Huns) were a warlike nomadic alliance that formed on the northern borders of China in the 5th-3rd centuries. BC. The question of the ethnicity of the Huns is not a simple one.

Initially, they were dominated by proto-Turks (ancestors of the Turks and Mongols) and Manchu tribes. However, to the west and southwest of them lived Indo-European ethnic groups (Iranian and Tocharian): Western Mongolia, Northwestern China, Kazakhstan. In the north and northwest lived the Ugric peoples (Ural family): the Southern Urals and Southern Siberia. In the II century. BC. The Huns rushed to the west, subjugating neighboring ethnic groups. By the 2nd century AD The Huns reached the Volga, establishing control over the territory from this river to Mongolia, and represented a multi-ethnic union of tribes. The Alan tribal union, which controlled the territory between the Volga and Don, became a serious rival of the Huns in Eastern Europe. The Alans (ancestors of modern Ossetians), like the Huns, were nomads and until the 70s of the 4th century. restrained their onslaught on Europe. However, the Huns were able to subjugate the Avars, then they defeated the Goths and other peoples of the Chernyakhov culture.

The Huns and the peoples subordinate to them walked across Europe, for example, in the 5th-6th centuries. We meet Alans in Spain and North Africa. The center of the “Hunnic Empire” became Pannonia (present-day Hungary), where the Slavs had previously lived. The European Huns were already very different from their Mongol ancestors. Having formed the political elite, the Huns adopted features characteristic of a sedentary lifestyle from their subject peoples. In addition, the name of one of the most famous Hun leaders, Atilla, is translated from the Gothic language as “father” (elder), which indicated serious changes in both their social and ethnic appearance.

After the departure of the Hunnic tribes from the steppes adjacent to the border of China, an alliance of nomadic tribes was formed in Eastern Mongolia and Western Manchuria, which Chinese chronicles called the terms Xianbi or Wei. The most influential tribes in the alliance were the Zhuan-Zhuan and Khitan tribes. In the VI century. The Zhuan-Zhuan (in European sources, the Avars) began to move in the footsteps of the Hunnic tribes to the west. In the middle of the 6th century. they attacked Caucasian Albania, invaded Azerbaijan and Armenia, then went north. In 568, the Avars broke into Pannonia and created their own state - the Avar Kaganate. The Avars subjugate all the surrounding tribes, including the Slavs. With the beginning of the weakening of the Avar Kaganate, the first and last state association that almost completely controlled the Slavic world, the history of the Slavs in general ends and the history of individual Slavic peoples begins, and this is also the time when the formation of the East Slavic group began. Material evidence of the Avar period included finds dating back to the 7th century, found at the site of Khotoml in Belarus and other elements. iron armor Avar type. The first (still legendary) information about the history of the Slavs, which appeared on the pages of ancient Russian chronicles, dates back to approximately the same time.

Proto-Slavs lived in Central Europe and were in contact, first of all, with the proto-Germans and proto-Italics. The first uniquely Slavic culture is Prague (V-VI centuries), it is localized in Southern Poland and North-Western Ukraine.

Starting from the middle of the 6th century, the Slavs came to the attention of Western European chroniclers and eastern (Arabic-speaking) authors. The first indisputable reports about the Slavs as an independent ethnic group are contained in the work of the Gothic historian Jordan (first half of the 6th century), who twice mentioned the Slavs.

Document. “In this Scythia, the first people from the west to dwell are the Gepids, who are surrounded by great and most glorious rivers. After all, Tisia (modern Tisa) spreads across the north and its region, but from the south [it] is cut off by the great Danuvius himself, from the east by Flutavsius (Prut?), which, being swift and replete with whirlpools, frantically rolls into the waters of the Istra. In their [i.e. surrounded by rivers lies Dacia, fortified by the steep Alps [arranged] like a crown. On their left side, which slopes north from the source of the Vistula River, a large tribe of Veneti lives over vast areas. Although now their names change depending on the different clans and habitats, they are mainly still called Slavs and Ants. The Slavs live from the city of Novietun [traditionally identified with the city of Noviodun, modern. Isakcha, on the right bank of the Danube] and the lake, which is called Mursian [?], up to Danaster and in the north to Viskla; swamps and forests replace cities. The Antes, the most powerful of them, where the Pontic Sea makes an arc, extend from Danaster all the way to Danapra. These rivers are many crossings away from each other”; “After beating the Heruli (Germanic tribes who were defeated in 512 by the Gepids and Lombards and left the Middle Danube for their historical homeland, Jutland), Hermanaric also moved an army against the Veneti, who, although worthy of contempt because of their [bad ] weapons, but powerful in numbers, first tried to resist. But the multitude of those unfit for war means nothing, especially when, with the permission of the Lord, a numerous [well] armed army advances. They, as we said at the beginning of our presentation or in the catalog of peoples, having originated from one root, gave birth to three peoples, that is, the Veneti, Antes and Slavs, who, although now they rage everywhere because of our sins, then, however, they all submitted to the authorities Hermanarika.”

According to Jordan, the tribes of the Veneti, whose names changed “depending on different clans and habitats,” included peoples whom he called Slavs and Antes.

The historian limited the territory of Slavic settlement to the lower reaches of the Danube, the Dniester and the upper reaches of the Vistula.

Exercise. Name the Slavic tribes that The Tale of Bygone Years highlights and where are they located?

Document. Excerpt from the Tale of Bygone Years of the 12th century.

“For many times [after the “placement of languages”] the essence of Slovenia settled along the Dunaevi, where there is now Ugorsk [Hungarian] land and Bulgarian. And from those words, they wandered across the earth and lost their names, where they sat in which place. As if he came gray on the river with the name of Marav, and was called Morava, and was called a friend by the name of Marava. Aa these same Slovenes: Croats Belii and Sereb and Horutans. Volkh in the Slovenian who found another Danube, and sat in them and overpowered them, the Slovenian Obi passed on to the Vistula, and was nicknamed the Lyakhov, and from those Polakhs he was nicknamed the Polyane, the Lyakhov, the Druzii Lutichi, and the Mozovians, and the Pomeranians.

In the same way, the Slovenians came and sat down along the Dnieper and found themselves in the clearing, and the Druzians, the Drevlyans, sat down in the forests; and the friends sat between the Pripetya and the Dvina and fell into disrepute as Dregovichs; and they sat down on the Dvina and cursed the Polotsk people, for the sake of the river that flows into the Dvina, in the name of Polot, the Polotsk people got sick of it. The Slovenes sat near Lake Ilmer, and were called by their name, and made a city and built Novgorod. And the friends rode along the Desna, and along the Semi, along the Sula, and crossed the north. And so the Slovenian language disappeared...”

Due to the great migration of peoples in the IV-X centuries. The Slavs were divided into three main dialect areas:

1) southern (ancestors of modern Bulgarians, Slovenes, Macedonians, Serbs and Croats);

2) Western (ancestors of the Czechs, Slovaks and Poles);

3) eastern (ancestors of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians). The zone of particularly active cultural and linguistic ties between the Balts and Slavs was the region of the upper Dnieper, Western Dvina and Oka basins, inhabited by tribes of the Dnieper Balts and gradually developed by the Slavic-speaking population.

1 - approximate territory of the Slavic ancestral home;

4- Finno-Ugrians;

5- Germans.

At the moment of the beginning of the Slavic advance to the northeast, i.e. in the 7th - early 88th centuries, new states emerged in eastern Europe - the Khazar Khaganate (650), controlling the lower reaches of the Volga, the North Caucasus and Eastern Crimea, and Volga Bulgaria (670) in the middle reaches of the Volga. At the same time, the Baltic Sea began to turn into an area of ​​active trade contacts between the various peoples inhabiting its shores. Trading points emerged: Rolsvik and Arkona on the island of Rügen, Hedeby in Jutland, Helgö and Birka in Sweden, Wolin on the Odra, Stagrad in the land of the Obodrites, Ladoga (modern Staraya Ladoga) in the lands of the Novgorod Slovenes, founded in the middle of the 8th century. as a trade and repair pier. Slavs also play an active role in this community. In historiography, there is a widespread opinion about the initial unity of the East European Slavs and the settlement of the Eastern Slavs from a single center - the Middle Dnieper and Pripyat region. This theory also corresponds to the dominant concept in Slavic linguistics, according to which until the 13th century. the language of the Eastern Slavs was uniform and was not divided into dialects. Tribal differences were explained as a consequence of the mixing of the Slavs with the pre-Slavic population (Baltic substrate - in Belarus, Baltic and Finno-Ugric - in the “Russian” regions, Scythian-Sarmatian - in the territory of Ukraine).

However, both in Russian and Belarusian historiography there is another point of view that denies the homogeneity of the Eastern Slavs. Evidence from anthropology, dialectology, and language research serves as evidence for this theory. birch bark letters ancient period, which reflected a living spoken language that was not preserved in the monuments of ancient Russian literature. An analysis of Novgorod birch bark documents showed some similarity of their language with Western Slavic languages.

When analyzing bone remains obtained from mounds and city cemeteries of Ancient Rus', several anthropological types of the Eastern Slavs of the early period were identified.

However, it is advisable to note that these anthropological types of Slavs could be the result of the mixing of the Slavs with the pre-Slavic population of Eastern Europe, which ultimately led to the collapse of the initially united East Slavic community.

So, the southwestern part of the territory inhabited by the Eastern Slavs is characterized by a relatively broad-faced anthropological type (skulls from burials in Volyn and the southern regions of the Carpathian Polesie, Moldova, necropolises of Kyiv). Their closest analogues are identified among materials from medieval Slavic burials in Poland and the Czech Republic and Slovakia. It is likely that the localization zone of this type of remains is a consequence of the initial advance of the Slavs to Eastern Europe (Prippyat and the Middle Dnieper) from the territory of the Slavic ancestral home.

The second anthropological type of Eastern Slavism is localized in the Dnieper left bank and the Upper Oka basin. It is characterized by a medium or narrow face, which indicates the similarity of this anthropological type with the population of the 2nd-4th centuries, known from the Chernyakhov burial grounds. They were probably mainly Slavicized descendants of the Scythian (Iranian-speaking) population of the same areas. A similar anthropological type of the Slavs of the left bank of the Upper Dnieper and the upper Oka may have been a consequence of the settlement of the Slavs from the Middle Dnieper, as well as the result of the influence of the Finno-Ugric peoples.

On the territory of Belarus (in the Upper Dnieper region and in the Western Dvina basin) a third anthropological type of Eastern Slavism is revealed - the result of the assimilation of local Balts by the Slavs. The formation of this anthropological type in Eastern Europe dates back to the Bronze Age (Indo-European colonization and, as a consequence, the ethnogenesis of the Balts in this area).

The fourth anthropological type of Eastern Slavism is represented in the burial grounds of the Novgorod and Pskov lands. It is not connected with the anthropological structure of the Baltic-Finnish population who lived here in ancient times. The closest analogies to the skulls of the early medieval Slavs of these territories are found in the lands of the Baltic Slavs.

This is probably a consequence of the resettlement of the ancestors of the Novgorod Slovenes and Krivichi from somewhere in the Odra and Vistula basins. The possibility of the Western Slavs advancing in this direction is acceptable, because It was in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium that the Slavs from the Vistula basin occupied lands along the lower Elbe and the southwestern coast of the Baltic Sea.

Thus, from this point of view, Northwestern Rus', which preserved the ancient veche order for many centuries, absorbed not the Dnieper, but mainly the Western Slavic contingent of the population; The North and South had different traditions, and

The Old Russian state arose as a result of the unification in the 9th-10th centuries. two systems of Slavism.

Regardless of the centers of settlement, it is possible to establish the dynamics of the advancement of the Slavs in various regions of Eastern Europe.

In the V-VI centuries. The Slavs were localized in the Pripyat region and adjacent areas of the Middle Dnieper region.

By the middle of the 8th century. Slavic colonization in the north reached the border of lakes Ilmen-Ladoga-Onega-Beloye. In the movement to the north, according to one theory, the main participants were Western Slavs from the Vistula basin, according to another, Slavs from the Dnieper region. In the northeast, the Slavs reached the area on the right bank of the upper Volga.

In the 9th century. Slavs colonize Podvina and upper Ponemonie. In the southeast, the Slavs reach the upper reaches of the Don and Seversky Donets.

The Finnish (Ves, Merya, Meshchera, Chud) and Baltic (Golyad) tribes that found themselves inside this new Slavic area were subsequently completely assimilated. Moreover, if in relation to the Finnish tribes this process was completely peaceful, then in relation to the Lithuanian tribes this was not the case. Old Russian epics preserved information about the struggle of Ilya Muromets with the Nightingale the Robber, who did not allow either horse or foot passage through his forest. The nightingale is one of the totems of the Lithuanians, and the “forest of the robber nightingale” was located on the border of the Smolensk, Chernigov, Murom-Ryazan and Vladimir-Suzdal principalities. It was in this region that the Baltic tribe “Golyad” lived. It is worth noting that on the territory of Belarus, Balto-Slavic relations were predominantly peaceful. The Slavs, being more numerous and more organized, were able to include the Baltic tribes in their tribal unions, which were gradually assimilated by the Slavs, passing on to them some features of their spiritual, material culture and anthropological characteristics, which became one of the prerequisites for the ethnogenesis of the Belarusians.

Having occupied the territory along the border of the forest and the steppe, the Slavs came into contact with the steppe peoples (cattle breeders). The Slavs of the southeast begin to pay them tribute. Neighboring the Khazar state, the Slavs become acquainted with the very idea of ​​statehood. Through the Khazar Khaganate, products from the Arab Caliphate and Byzantium reached the southeastern Slavs (Polyans, Vyatichi). All this, according to the view of V.O. Klyuchevsky, contributed to the economic and political development of the Slavs. It is quite possible that Kyiv itself was originally founded at the beginning of the 9th century as the northern outpost of Khazaria. But it is worth keeping in mind that the Slavs did not neighbor the sedentary core of the Turkic Khazaria, but their allies and vassals - the Ugrians (Hungarians), nomads, with whom it was difficult to regulate relations.

The very emergence of Kyiv is associated with Slavic-Hungarian-Turkic contact. Kyiv as a settlement developed in the 9th century. as a result of the growth of 3-4 settlements in the 6th-9th centuries. In the 9th century. As a powerful Slavic center, Kyiv was under the rule of the Khazars and Hungarians.

The Hungarian Horde (an ally of the Khazars) included directly the Hungarians (Uralic family) and the Kun Turks (an ethnic group related to the later Cumans, Altai language family). The ethnonym of the Kun Turks is “Kü”, “Kuvu” in Turkic language also means "Swan". In addition, the swan as a totem is known in Turkic and Altai ethnonymy (self-names of peoples). Konstantin Bogryanorodny speaks about the existence of Lebedia, which was part of the area of ​​the Hungarian horde. After 830s under the onslaught of the Pechenegs, the border of the Hungarian coganate shifted to the middle Dnieper region, including the “Kyiv” Slavic settlements located on the border of the forest zone in its periphery, and founded one of the settlements there, which was named in accordance with the ethnonym of the founders “Kün”. The Eastern Slavs could pronounce its name as “Kyn”. The Normans who came here took the Slavic form of the name as a basis, and the name itself is recorded in Western European documents of that time: Cönogardia, Chungard, Chue, Koenugardt. In the 80s of the 9th century. The Hungarian horde passed through the Carpathians to Panonia, where they settled. And kooui, kui are mentioned in the Ipatiev Chronicle under 1151 and 1162. as allies of the Kyiv prince.

In conclusion, let us turn to the analysis of the socio-economic development of the Eastern Slavs in the V-IX centuries.

Written and archaeological data indicate that in the third quarter of the 1st millennium, the Slavs experienced a process of disintegration of primitive communal relations, which was caused by changes in economic life, primarily in the system of agriculture and land use, and the development of crafts. The historical situation (wars, resettlement) contributed to the process of disintegration of clan ties, the development of private ownership of the means of production and the formation of property and social inequality.

The main occupation of the Eastern Slavs in this era was agriculture and cattle breeding in combination with various types of crafts. The further north you went, the more important the fisheries were; In addition, in foreign trade, especially with the countries of the East and Byzantium, a special role was played by the export of furs, which at that time were rich in the taiga forests inhabited by the Slavs.

The faded remnant of these forests has survived to this day in the form of Belovezhskaya Pushcha, located on the border of Belarus and Poland.

The Slavs, like the Balts, knew such farming systems as fallow (in forest-steppes) and slash-and-burn (in forests). With the fallow system, the grass was burned on the site and the soil fertilized with ash was used until exhaustion. After this, the site was abandoned for 2-4 years, until the grass cover was completely restored. In the slash-and-burn system, trees were cut down and left to dry on the ground, then burned and uprooted. As with the shifting system, the site was used until exhausted, and then abandoned and a new one was cleared.

This organization of agriculture forced the Slavs to move to new areas from time to time, which made the development of increasingly remote lands inevitable. In the forest belt, cutting dominated until the 13th century.

However, the presence of these land use systems among the Eastern Slavs should not be taken into account. From the southwest to the northeast the Slavs brought arable farming. According to Soviet and German historians, fragments of the plow were found both in the forest-steppe zone (Ukraine) and in forest areas in fortified settlements (fortified settlements, in the center of which there were barns and other outbuildings where reserves of the rural districts and communities were stored) and villages ( unfortified settlements) along the course of large rivers and they date back to the 6th-9th centuries - the period of settlement of the Slavs in Eastern Europe. Thus, the Slavs mastered arable farming, which set them apart from the Baltic and Finno-Ugric massif.

The main agricultural crops of the Slavs were wheat, barley, and millet. With the advancement to the north and the spread of arable farming, the crops of rye and oats, which previously occupied an insignificant place, increased. As German and Scandinavian researchers note, it was the transition to growing rye in the forest zone that contributed to social progress in Northern and North-Eastern Europe, because Rye, not wheat, produced large harvests here.

Along with agriculture, the Slavs raised horses, cows, and pigs. It is worth noting that it was the Slavs who brought bow and harness harnesses to northeastern Europe, which they borrowed from Rome (harness) and eastern nomads (collar), and were almost the first in Europe to begin plowing on horses rather than oxen. This made it possible to significantly increase labor productivity.

The Slavs were engaged in hunting, fishing, beekeeping (collecting honey and wax from wild bees) and other types of gathering.

A trade route ran through the East European Plain, which was used by the ancient Greeks, who founded colonies in the Black Sea region. “The Tale of Bygone Years” (XII century) describes it this way: “The path from the Varangians to the Greeks and from the Greeks along the Dnieper, from the upper reaches of the Dnieper by portage to Lovot, about Lovot to Lake Ilen from it along the Volkhov to Lake Nevo from that lake to enter the mouth to the Varangian Sea (the Baltic along that sea to go to Rome, and from Rome to come along the same sea to Tsaryugorod (Constantinople), and from Tsaryagorod to come to the Pontic Sea (Black Sea) the Dnieper River flows in the wrong place. "This path became the main road of the Ancient Rus'.

One of the oldest was the Volga route, which led to Bulgaria and further along the Caspian Sea to Arab countries, but at this time it was controlled by Jewish merchants of the Khazar Kaganate.

There were also land routes, for example, sources call the land route from Kyiv to the west through Vladimir, Cherven to Krakow and further to the Czech Republic. Kyiv was also connected by land road to the Carpathian region, where salt was mined.

As for the family structure of the Slavs in ancient times, we can state the unconditional power of the father (head of the family) over his household. In addition, the Slavs were polygamists before the adoption of Christianity. The status of a woman should be divided into “girl status” and “wife status.” The girls enjoyed great freedom. For example, chronicle information indicates that they could meet with young people of other families at games, had the opportunity to confer with them to escape, the very fact of a girl’s flight with a man meant getting married regardless of the will of the head of the family. As for the position of wives among the Slavs, foreign writers are surprised at the attachment of Slavic women to their husbands, whom they followed even to the grave. It is likely that the Slavs, like the Germans, had the belief that a man can more easily achieve bliss in the future life if he comes there accompanied by a woman, but the widespread practice of “accompanying” wives of their deceased husbands among the Eastern Slavs has not been recorded. In addition, despite the wife’s subordinate position, her role as a mother was high, enjoying the honor and respect of her children, which is reflected in Russian fairy tales and epics.

The material basis of the East Slavic culture was richer than that of the Finnish tribes, whose territory the Slavs colonized in the northeast. The Slavs brought a bread oven to the north, but transformed it into the main element of the home (instead of a hearth-fireplace).

Archaeological sources indicate that in the VI-IX centuries. The Slavs lived in semi-dugout dwellings with log frames or in above-ground pillar buildings that made up settlements and fortifications.

Similar monuments were found in the Dnieper region, the Bug region, the Dniester region, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.

There are numerous examples of ceramics decorated with scratched and relief designs.

The most characteristic motifs of the ornament were associated with the cults of the Sun (circle, cross, swastika), water and rain (wavy and mesh patterns), and lightning (zigzags). Jewelry art is represented by iron and bronze brooches with engraved and cast patterns, and women's jewelry.

The religious ideas of the Slavs were also reflected in individual works of monumental sculpture (for example, in the Zbruch, Shklov and other idols). The most common type of sculpture of the Slavs were images of gods erected in the center of the sanctuary, often having several faces and characterized by static and undifferentiated forms.

Based on written sources of the 6th-12th centuries, archaeological and ethnographic information, some features of ancient Slavic mythology and religion are revealed. Even after the baptism of Rus' (988), the Slavs retained remnants of ancient beliefs: they worshiped natural phenomena and the souls of the departed, ancestral, and household spirits. Ultimately, these beliefs, together with Christianity, formed the basis of traditional culture (folklore).

The most ancient forms of religion include family-tribal cults of ancestors - “parents”, these include the cult of the Family and Women in Childbirth, which are also associated with fertility. Another ancient layer is the worship of objects and phenomena of the immediate environment that were woven into human life (fetishism and animatism). Echoes of such beliefs were the worship of, for example, stones, trees, and groves. The cult of stone fetishes is very ancient, and on the territory of Belarus “sacred stones” survived until the beginning of the 20th century. In addition, Belarusian folklore has recorded the endowment of surrounding objects with supernatural properties (from a harrow and stove to a broom and pots). Totemism was also widespread - the belief in the origin of the human race from an animal progenitor. For example, the Dnieper Slavs worshiped sacred animals - wild boars; among the Slavs of the forest belt, one of the totem animals was the bear. A type of cult of ancestors in the form of animals associated with totemism is werewolfism. Thus, in Russian epics there are examples of turning into a falcon, ant, wolf, swan, duck, frog. In Belarusian legends, the image of a “vaukalak” (wolf-man) is often found, which is often a neutral rather than a negative character, and the ritual of werewolf was preserved in Belarusian folklore until the beginning of the 20th century. The separation of the spirit-double from the object to which it is inherent, along with totemism, gave rise to belief in the souls of the dead, as well as the cult of ancestors. Invisible spirits—the souls of ancestors and relatives, doubles of fetishized objects and phenomena, objects of totemic cult—gradually “fill” the world surrounding the ancient Slav. It is no longer the object itself that is the object of veneration.

Worship refers to the indwelling spirit. It is not the object itself, but precisely its spirit (“anima”-spirit, soul) that has a positive or negative influence on the course of events and on the destinies of people.

Animistic beliefs brought the Eastern Slavs closer to the next stage - polytheism, i.e. faith in gods.

Among the East Slavic gods the following are known: Volos or Veles - the god of livestock, trade and wealth; among Belarusians he is also the patron of the afterlife; Horse, Yarila - various incarnations of the Sun; Stribog is the god of wind, whirlwind and blizzard; Mokosh is probably the wife of Perun, who originates from the “mother of damp earth,” the goddess of fertility, water, and later the patroness of women’s work and maiden destiny; Simargl is the only zoomorphic creature in the pantheon of ancient Russian gods (a sacred winged dog, possibly of Iranian origin). Simargl is a lower-order deity who protected seeds and crops. The thunder god Perun gradually rises. Perun - the Indo-European god of war, lightning, patron of masculinity, prince, squad, rises in the Slavic pantheon as princely power rises and the formation of the state. In 980, the Kiev prince Vladimir carried out a religious reform - a pagan pantheon was built from deities already known to us. This was an ideological action, with the help of which Vladimir tried to “sanction” and streamline the hierarchy of deities by placing Perun above them, which testified to the desire to provide an ideological basis for the social hierarchy and establish the primacy of the prince over everyone. Thus, Kyiv, being a political capital, also claims to be a religious center.

Thus, during the “Great Migration of Peoples,” conditions arose for the colonization of Eastern Europe by the Slavs, which coincided with the disintegration of their tribal system due to relatively high level development of productive forces, which ultimately led to the creation of the Old Russian feudal state, the formation of a powerful East Slavic ethnos, whose dominance in Eastern Europe became increasingly stronger over the centuries.

The historical destinies of three initially different peoples - the Rus, the Slavs, the Wends - turned out to be so closely intertwined that in the region of Eastern Europe they eventually began to represent a kind of single whole.

The process of unification (assimilation) took place on the basis of the Slavic element, but ethnic differences persisted for quite a long time, in particular, these differences were reflected in the Tale of Bygone Years. The unified whole of three peoples became the main component of the emerging in the 9th-11th centuries. ancient Russian people. At the same time, the presence of various ethnic groups greatly influenced the form and character of the state of Kievan Rus and the people who inhabited its territory.

Currently, most peoples of Europe speak Indo-European languages. The very name of this group of languages ​​indicates the areas of their ancient distribution - Europe and Hindustan. For a long time, Indo-European tribes also occupied the territory Central Asia, a significant part of Asia Minor and Western Asia. In turn, tribes that spoke other languages ​​penetrated into Europe or remained in it. A remnant of a very ancient non-Indo-European population are the Basques living in Spain. Since ancient times, in the northeast of Europe there lived tribes that spoke languages ​​of the Uralic group, and later Finno-Ugric tribes. The latter currently include the Finns, Karelians, Komi, Mari, Mordovians, and in Central Europe - the Hungarians, who came here from the Urals at the end of the 9th century. Around the beginning of our era, Turkic tribes also began to penetrate into the steppes of the Black Sea region from the east, often mixed in the east with the Ural and Indo-European tribes.

The question of the time of origin of large linguistic groups of tribes remains controversial, since the patterns of linguistic and social development in that distant era. We can only say that they are closely related to each other. As a rule, the intensity of social development accelerates linguistic changes. But other factors also influence. Thus, the identification of special dialects is inevitable if tribes occupy vast territories. Contacts with tribes of other languages ​​further accelerate isolation. On the other hand, much depends on the strength of the tribal system. In certain periods, attachment to tribal traditions is stronger than connection with the occupied territory. Different tribes could stay on the same territory for a long time without mixing with each other.

One more pattern can be noted. Very often, traditions (including language) are better preserved by the breakaway part of the ethnic group. They can be especially strong in isolation (for example, somewhere on an island). Isolation can also be achieved artificially: the population sticks to its traditional community either because some majority is encroaching on its rights, or because the community provides its members with certain advantages.

The most ancient eras of human life are currently accessible mainly to archeology and anthropology, and to a lesser extent to linguistics (mainly the names of rivers and other places) and ethnography. The written history of peoples begins with the era of the formation of class society and states, although historical and geographical works usually include peoples who have not yet entered this stage.

The first people of the Northern Black Sea region, known from written sources, are the Cimmerians.

The Cimmerians made campaigns in Asia Minor and Asia Minor. They participated in the destruction of Troy in the famous Trojan War (XIII or XII centuries BC), that is, they were already allies of Greek cities at that time, apparently being interested in trade with them. In the 7th century BC. The Cimmerians were driven out of the Black Sea region by the Scythians who came from the east. Various sources have preserved information about the retreat of the Cimmerians to Asia Minor, the Caucasus and Western Europe along the Danube Valley. The Cimmerians penetrated into Western Europe before.

Archaeological traces of the presence of the Cimmerians in Western Europe are found in different places from Italy and southern France to northwestern Europe. Is it possible to connect the Cimmerians with any later European ethnic group? There is no answer to this question yet. In ancient writings there were statements about the common origin of the Cimmerians, the Chimers - one of the branches of the Celts (currently this name is reserved for the Welsh) and the Chimers, who lived at the turn of our era in the north of the Scottish Peninsula. In the Irish sagas, a version has been preserved that this group of the Celtic population came “from Scythia”, from the territory between the “Red” (as the Black Sea is called in the sagas) and the Caspian Sea, and this population went west for many generations along the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to Spain , and then moves to Ireland. Legends about migration from Eastern Europe were also known to another group of the Celtic population - the Picts living in Scotland. In northern Europe, the Normans preserved legends about “blooming Asia.” True, the Scandinavian Normans removed themselves from Asia Minor, from near Troy. But the French Normans - the Normans who settled in the north of France (in Normandy) - had a version that in the 2nd century. Rollon brought him out of the Don. This version could have been borrowed by the Normans from the Alans, an Iranian-speaking tribe, who had previously arrived here, and indeed from the Don.

There have long been two major trends in science. Some scientists explain almost all features of culture and social development by local conditions - the so-called autochthonists, others - by migrations and borrowings. In reality, both things happened. But the ratio of these factors changed over different periods. For centuries people could live in one place, and then suddenly start moving. “Suddenly” - that’s how it seems to us now. And then there were compelling reasons for relocation. Sudden or almost sudden climate change, overpopulation, pressure from warlike neighbors, changes in economic methods and many other reasons that are now obscure to us could prompt the population to leave their homes and look for new places to settle. If the previous conditions do not change, then legends about the graves of ancestors, etc., remain in the memory of the people, as was noted among some Celtic and northern tribes. But beliefs could also change, and with the assimilation of other beliefs, other people’s traditions could be assimilated. That is why very contradictory tales about one’s own origin often lived in people’s memory. In modern times, the keepers of history - the priests - could have composed some more beautiful version. Thus, among most peoples of Europe, the memory of migrations went back to the Trojan War. But this war actually led to large population movements: a significant part of the Trojans’ allies had to leave Asia Minor and move to remote areas of Europe.

This war apparently coincided with large population movements in Europe caused by other reasons, and the spread of a new funeral rite - cremation - to Central Europe is associated with the influence of Asia Minor, where this rite (and corresponding religious ideas) originated much earlier. And toponymy indicates a significant movement of population: linguists note the coincidence of a large number of geographical names along the triangle: north-west Asia Minor and adjacent areas of the Balkan Peninsula - north-west of the Adriatic - south-eastern coast of the Baltic, although toponymy does not allow establishing the time when these movements occurred.

Another large wave of resettlement occurred in the 8th-7th centuries. BC. It was apparently associated with the invasion of the steppes between the Volga and Danube by numerous Scythian tribes. But there is a version that the Cimmerians also left the Black Sea steppes before the appearance of the Scythians for some internal reasons (possibly climatic). Shortly before the beginning of our era, the migration of tribes from the sea coast of northwestern Europe begins. One of the reasons for this migration was the subsidence of the land. The climate in this part of Europe changed more noticeably than in more southern regions. In Scandinavia for comparatively a short time it changed from glaciation to almost subtropics, and the Baltic Sea either flooded the coastal areas or turned into a closed shallow lake.

Period from IV to VI centuries. AD received the name “Great Migration”, since almost all the peoples of Europe moved away and a grandiose redrawing of the ethnographic map took place, accompanied by a colossal movement of different tribes and peoples. It is during this period that the foundations are laid modern peoples Europe. But from the ashes of the great migration, in some cases, it is possible to extract ancient traditions that survived turbulent times.

The Slavs appear on the historical map only in the 6th century, but are one of the most archaic Indo-European peoples. Obviously, they either did not come to the attention of ancient authors, or were known to them under other names. The main part of the information from this period is the fourth book of Herodotus, a Greek historian of the 5th century. BC. Herodotus is often called the "father of history." This is not entirely true. He had predecessors in the cities of the Asia Minor coast of the Aegean Sea. Herodotus himself used, in particular, the work of the historian and geographer of the 6th century. BC. Heka-thea. Both also used information received from priests - the traditional guardians of the historical memory of peoples. But Herodotus is especially interesting because he himself visited the Northern Black Sea region and gave a description of Scythia largely as an eyewitness. In the book “Herodotus Scythia” B.A. Rybakov gave the highest assessment of the Greek historian’s integrity. In this book B.A. Rybakov is precisely trying to find the Slavs on the northern outskirts of Scythia. He connects with the Slavs one of the versions retold by Herodotus about the origin of the Scythians. Supported by B.A. Rybakov and the previously put forward version of O.N. Melnikovskaya that the so-called Milograd culture of the 7th-2nd centuries. BC. was Slavic and that it was the tribes of this culture that Herodotus called by the name “neurs”. It is also noteworthy that the forest-steppe culture of the 9th-8th centuries. BC. (the so-called Chernolesskaya), which developed back in Cimmerian times, coincides in its configuration with the archaic layer of Slavic toponymy. In general, the picture turns out to be such that during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, the Slavs hid under different names and were part of materially different cultures.

But archaeological and anthropological data convince us that the population of the forest-steppe zone did not leave their lands along with the Cimmerians. The ancient population also survived in the Azov region (Meotians, Sindians, etc.), which, by the way, could belong to the Indo-Aryan branch. Another thing is that we do not know how far Slavic or other local languages ​​​​extended west into Central Europe and where these languages ​​even originated. The same Trzyniec culture mentioned above is half a millennium older than the Chornolis culture and extends to the center of Europe, and the appearance of the bell-shaped beaker culture in Central Europe dates back to a time even half a millennium earlier.

Herodotus, more than any of his predecessors, paid attention to the customs of different tribes, which is why he is rightly considered the “father of ethnography.” In its own way, this was natural. The development of class society and statehood in Greece alienated the Greeks from the “barbarians” and made more noticeable the differences between their customs and those preserved by peoples with a still strong tribal system. And the listeners of his “History” were now surprised to learn about such strange customs, which were to a large extent characteristic of their own ancestors.

It must be remembered that customs, even the most seemingly ridiculous ones, most often were companions of certain beliefs. Herodotus tried to understand precisely the religious origins of the heyday, strange for the Hellenes. Ancient Greece customs of different peoples, naturally, paying attention primarily to exotic features. At the same time, he is also inclined to doubt the correctness of individual stories if they turn out to be too different from what he constantly had to deal with. And he did not believe not only that, for example, people with goat legs exist, but also that the Phoenicians actually circumnavigated Africa by sea. It seemed incredible to Herodotus that the sun would suddenly begin to shine from the other, northern side, since there was no concept of the equator. But now we can thank him for such valuable information, the reality of which he himself did not believe.

Herodotus's History, like all works of that time, was intended to be read before the public. Therefore, it contains many individual stories that are entertaining for the listener.

In addition to Herodotus’s “History,” this section contains information from ancient authors about the Veneti-Venedi. This information is not as complete as the story of Herodotus, but these are precisely the messages that are used in research about the beginning of the Slavs.

As was said, in German medieval literature “Wenets”, “Weneds”, sometimes “Vandals” were called either all Slavs or their Baltic part. The Baltic and Polabian Slavs themselves called themselves “Vends” until the 18th century. The question of their identity, however, encounters an obvious contradiction: the area of ​​​​the initial settlement of the Wends does not coincide with the territory of the reliably known Slavs. Tribes of the Wends already walked along the shores in Roman times the Baltic Sea, where the Slavs came only in the 6th century. But later the name of the Baltic Sea as “Venet” is assigned to only one part of it - the Gulf of Riga, that is, again, an area where the Slavs did not reach. And “Venet” this sea The water area was also named by the 16th century authors Olaus Magnus and Herberstein.

In addition to the problem of the relationship between the Veneds and the Slavs and the reasons for their later mixing, there is also the problem of the relationship between different ethnic groups called “Venetas”. Once upon a time the Veneti (Eneti) lived on south coast Black Sea in Asia Minor, where their remains were also found by a geographer of the 2nd century. BC. Strabop. These Veneti, according to legend, moved wholly or partially to Europe, where in the time of Julius Caesar there were three groups of tribes with this name: the Veneti on the Brittany peninsula in Gaul, the Veneti in the valley of the Po (Pad) River (their memory lives on in the name of the city of Venice), as well as the already mentioned Baltic Veneti. There is little data on the British Veneti, making it difficult to make any comparisons with other groups of Veneti. As for the Veneti of Asia Minor and the Adriatic, as well as the Veneti of the Baltic, we can to some extent talk about their connection. Both the Romans and the Adriatic Veneti considered themselves immigrants from Asia Minor who left their native places after the fall of Troy. Perhaps these legends were the reason that the Veneti never fought against the Romans.

In the ancient tradition, interest in the Adriatic Veneti was mainly associated with the fact that Baltic amber entered the Mediterranean through them. The amber deposit was associated with the Eridanus River, which was identified either with the Po, or with the Rhone (Rodan) in southern Gaul, or with the northern river Rulon (presumably the Neman). Back in the 4th century. BC. The northern countries were visited by Pythias from Massilia (Marseille), who reached the “twinons” who supplied amber. Many did not believe the notes of Pythias. Viv. AD Pliny the Elder wrote a whole study on amber, where he examined different versions of the location of the legendary Eridan River. In his time, it was already known exactly where amber was mined: under Emperor Nero (54-58), a special embassy was sent to search for the amber river, which reached the amber shores and returned with the richest gifts from the Baltic coast.

In the literature, many different groups of Veneti-Venedi are considered as tribes of different origins. But the Veneti themselves, it seems, had legends about their connection with the Asia Minor Veneti. The leader of the Veneti in Homer's Iliad is named Pylymenes. Titus Livi, a Roman historian at the turn of the new era and a native of Adriatic Venice, calls it “Palemon.” Palemon was revered by the Adriatic Veneti and perhaps also by the Baltic Veneti. It is noteworthy that this name was borne by the legendary ancestor of the dynasty of Lithuanian princes. This name is Greek (means “fighter”, “struggling”), therefore, brought to the Baltic states from the south. In later tradition, Palemon was considered the nephew of Nero, which may have reflected the memory of the Roman embassy of the era of Nero. Along the coast of the Baltic Sea, legends were spread about the construction of cities here by Julius Caesar Augustus. Nero was the last of the Julius family (all of them bore the name Julius Caesar Augustus), and this family especially persistently emphasized its kinship with the Trojans.

The consciousness of kinship may also explain the curious fact that it was through the Adriatic Veneti that Baltic amber was traded. Pliny the Elder reports that Venetian women had amber in abundance, and they used it not so much as jewelry, but as a remedy for a number of female diseases.

There is no written data about the time of the appearance of the Wends “along the shores of the Bay of Veneds”. But it is interesting that it was during the era of the Trojan War that a clearly alien population appeared in this territory, noted by anthropologists along the coast. This population differed from the local Baltic in a narrower face, and now their descendants form a fairly large part in the coastal population of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Famous anthropologist N.I. Cheboksarov, who studied the composition of the Baltic population in 1952, identified this specific group as “Poptic,” that is, Black Sea. It has also long been noted that in the so-called Pomeranian culture (VII-II centuries BC) “face urns” are common - funeral urns with a stylized image of a human face on them. Similar urns were previously known in Troy. Later they are also found among the Etruscans in Italy.

The question of the relationship between different Veneti groups has not yet been resolved.

The Great Migration of Peoples - the era in which the seemingly eternal Roman Empire perishes, perishes ancient world and the Middle Ages begin, which seemed gloomy to some, and healthy to others. The era of the Great Migration is usually dated to the 4th-6th centuries. AD In fact, it began earlier: from the end of the last millennium BC, some peoples from the coast of the North and Baltic Seas rushed south, and various, mostly Iranian-speaking, tribes from the east (Sarmatians, Alans, Roxalans) were constantly advancing. The Celts and Germans are pushing each other out from the same territories, now moving towards the borders of the empire, now going far to the north or east, the remnants of the once vast Thracian world are settling in broken groups. Nothing is known at all about many tribes and languages, since they had no direct heirs.

And yet, the era of the great migration differs from its predecessors. It differs not so much in the scale of migrations, which covered vast territories, but in the conditions in which they took place. At the turn of our era, tribes and peoples were often driven by one kind of natural disaster or another, perhaps overpopulation and poverty. In the 4th century. peoples were removed from their homes, unable to withstand the first tests of wealth. In the II-IV centuries. In the Black Sea region, a vibrant and rapidly progressing Chernyakhov culture is taking shape. Ethnically variegated, it appears rather monotonous over large areas. This is evidence of broad cultural and economic ties. It is not for nothing that scientists talk about the process of formation within its framework of a new nationality, as well as statehood. In Central Europe, along the borders of the Roman Empire, similar cultures emerge as part of the so-called “Celtic Renaissance” - the revival of some Celtic traditions in the face of the weakening influence of Roman cultures. The beginning of the era of the Great Migration is usually associated with the invasion at the end of the 4th century. to the region of the Middle Danube of the Huns and tribes allied with them or subordinate to them. Most of the population that occupied the Northern Black Sea region, the population that previously made up the Chernyakhov culture, goes here. A number of tribes from the coast of the Baltic and North Seas are also moving here. Here different languages ​​mixed and collided, but it was not the languages ​​that divided the tribal alliances.

The Huns carry a lot of mysteries within themselves. It is generally accepted that these are the same tribes that Chinese chroniclers called “Rong” even before our era. But the name “gun” can refer to different tribes, because in the Ural languages ​​it means a person, a husband in general. Europe also had “its own” Huns - this was the name of one of the largest Frisian tribes off the coast of the North Sea, and after the name of this tribe the region occupied by them was called Gunnaland. These Huns were known throughout the north of Europe, and the northern names Gunar, Gundobad, Gunderix, etc. are obviously associated with them.

The Huns in the Black Sea region were first mentioned around 160 by Dionysius Periegetes, and two decades later, the largest geographer of that time, Ptolemy, placed them between the Bastarnae and Roxalani off the coast of the Borysthenes - Dnieper. The Huns, therefore, were originally part of the union of tribes that made up the Chernyakhov culture, long before the Turkic-speaking tribes appeared here. Many Roman and Byzantine authors of the 4th-5th centuries. place the homeland of the Huns in the “north”. Priscus of Pania, who traveled to the Huns in the 5th century, pointed out that they had different languages. Actually, the “Hunnic” language differed from the language of the tribal elite of the Huns. In the Hunnic language, in particular, the drink was called “medos”, and the food was called “strava”. “Honey” as a drink is known not only to the Slavs. "Strava" apparently points to the Slavs. In Ancient Rus', this word generally denoted food, allowance, and later also taxes paid in food. The word lived in dialects until very recently.

It is assumed that the Huns' own language was Turkic. There are individual Turkic names in the names of the Huns, but they are few. Most of the names of the Hunnic leaders, including At-tila, are Indo-European. The “Hunnic” name of the Dnieper River “Var” is one of the main designations for water (river, sea) in Indo-European languages.

Attila managed to create a huge union of tribes from the Black Sea to the Rhine. But this alliance turned out to be extremely fragile. The Romans managed to blow it up from the inside, as a result of which Attila was defeated in the famous battle of 451 on the Catalunian fields in Gaul (modern France). Two years later, he died under mysterious circumstances, and soon, as a result of another clash of barbarian tribes on the Danube, the Huns were again defeated - this time by their former allies - the Gepids. According to Jordan, they returned back to the east, to the Black Sea region. With them were, obviously, some of the allies who remained loyal to them, including one group of Rugians (the other part of the Rugians sided with the Gepids). The collapse of the Hunnic state led to the creation of a number of barbarian kingdoms along the Roman borders. In 476, the Western Roman Empire fell, and a little later, the kingdom of the Ostrogoths arose on the territory of Italy. Meanwhile, in the vast expanses from Illyria to the Dnieper, Slavic tribes are beginning to move, who will soon find themselves on the coasts of the North and Baltic seas, the Adriatic, the Aegean Sea, populate the Balkans, including a number of islands of the Mediterranean Sea, penetrate in large groups into Asia Minor, and assimilate many peoples into in some cases and assimilate themselves in others. Where did they live before, what names did they hide under? Historians, as has been said, argue about this. Widespread Slavic speech in the 6th century. testifies to the large number of Slavic tribes and, therefore, a very wide primordial territory on which these tribes grew. The archaic structure of the Slavic languages ​​also testifies to their great antiquity. But in the VI century. they are clearly growing due to the inclusion of other languages ​​and other peoples. Among the latter, apparently, one of the most significant were the tribes of the Veneti, who lived in Roman times along the southeastern coast of the Baltic, and from the first centuries of our era, in larger or smaller groups, rushed south, to the Danube and Dnieper regions, so that the Jordan, To the historian, they seemed to be one of the branches of the Slavs.

In the next era in Europe, the collapse of previous tribal formations ends and the formation of new ones begins ethnic communities- nationalities. As a result of the great migration of peoples, many ancient languages ​​ceased to exist altogether, and now it is even difficult to separate them into known language groups. Quite soon, the Gothic language, one of the most popular in the era of the Great Migration, disappears, if only because the Goths headed many tribal unions in different territories. Only in the Crimea, where a small group of Goths settled and where they never dominated, would their language survive until the late Middle Ages. Also, only a small group of Wends-Venet and, perhaps, the Ruten of the Eastern Baltic would retain their own language until the 13th and even the 16th century. Most of them had long before dissolved into other tribes and nationalities, mainly Slavic-speaking ones.

Scientists believe that the process leading, after several centuries, to the formation of the ancient Russian nationality and statehood, begins around the 6th century. In addition to the Slavs, participants in this process included many other tribes of Central and Eastern Europe - Baltic, Finno-Ugric, Iranian, partially Turkic, perhaps also Indo-Aryan, Germanic, Thracian, Veneto-Illyrian and Celtic. It is now not always possible to determine their specific gravity. But we must keep in mind that the differences in the description of customs and beliefs visible in different sources may relate precisely to the diversity of origins.

Jordan, who lived in the 6th century, writes about many things as an eyewitness. Talking about the previous history of the Goths and the tribes and peoples associated with them, he relies on some earlier written sources, as well as on oral tradition. Jordan is one of the first to mention the Slavs, and he knows some legends leading to the 4th century. It is at Jordan that the Venets, Sklavins and Antes are considered as related tribes. It is Jordan who contrasts the Goths and the Rugs, not counting the latter Germanic tribe. We do not necessarily have to believe Jordan when, for example, he classifies the Wends as Slavs: he obviously did not know Slavic speech. But we cannot but trust him when he excludes the Wends and Rugians from the number of Germanic tribes, since the Germanic languages ​​were well known to him.

Jordan, in relation to the events of the 4th century, also mentions the Rosomon tribe somewhere in the Dnieper region, which can be deciphered as “the people grew.” A people with this name is mentioned in the Black Sea region by one Syrian source of the 6th century. "Rus" in connection with the events of the 6th century. also named in two eastern sources of later times. Whether they reflected the events of the 6th century, or whether later authors transferred the later situation into the past, is now difficult to decide. But this information can be compared with others reproduced in the described sources.

Many geographical names found in Jordan are difficult to decipher. The fact is that, along with traditional Greek ones, he also knew contemporary names that belonged to the tribes that inhabited the Black Sea region in the 2nd-5th centuries. According to tradition, most of Europe is divided at the Jordan into Germany and Scythia, which border at the sources of the Danube - Istra and the Vistula - Vistula basin. The eastern coast of the Baltic in most geographical works of the Middle Ages is included in Scythia, which is why sometimes the Baltic Sea itself is called the Scythian Sea. The Scandinavian tribes themselves are sometimes called “northern Scythians.” And this again means not that they really were Scythians, but that they were not originally Germans, who penetrated into this area only at the beginning of our era, and the Suevi, apparently, came here after the collapse of the Hunnic union.

Procopius of Caesarea is the largest Byzantine historian of the mid-6th century. characterized the Slavs. His data is considered the most reliable and thoughtful. The Byzantine historian pointed out that the Slavs do not know fate. Indeed, the idea of ​​fate, so significant for most Mediterranean and Western European peoples, is completely different among the Slavs. The pagan worldview knows both inevitable fate - fate, and changeable fate - fortune. Slavic paganism accepted only the second. This circumstance will later affect the form of Christianity: Catholicism places more emphasis on predestination than Orthodoxy, which spreads mainly to Slavic lands. Astrology, palmistry, and kabbalism, which are so close to the West, will not become widespread in Rus'. The difference noted by Procopius of Caesarea, on the one hand, encourages us to look for some formative conditions for the Slavs that are different from the Roman-Greek world, and on the other hand, to take a closer look at the peculiarities of the attitude towards fate, for example, of the Slavs and Rus.

In Procopius of Caesarea we also find interesting data about the Varinas, or Varnas, a tribe that would later be Slavicized and become the Slavic-speaking Varna tribe, but at the time of the Byzantine chronicler still retained all of its ethnographic and linguistic features. In addition to Procopius, Jordan’s predecessor, the Gothic historian Casspodorus, also mentioned the Varini. Casspodorus pointed out, in particular, that Theodoric, the creator of the Ostrogothic state in Italy, called the king of the Varns his son and received weapons from him - double-edged, wide, oblique swords with curved edges. The Varnas themselves brought weapons to Italy and were rewarded from the royal treasury. This mention is important because it may indicate the area where swords that were famous in Europe and beyond were produced. Some information about the Varins is also available from the historian of the 6th century. Agathia. The latter reports on the participation of a detachment of Varins in the campaign of the Byzantine commander Narsess against Italy. Varnov, therefore, in the 6th century. in Byzantium they were quite well represented.

Theophylact Simocatta lived in the first half of the 7th century. The “History” reflects the events of the era of Emperor Mauritius (582-602). The given description indicates the spread of Slavic colonization to the coast of the Baltic and North Seas. Also noteworthy is the use of guslar musicians as messengers. Among all peoples at the stage of military democracy, bards-song-makers enjoyed the highest respect and authority as guardians of the traditions of the people.

“The Life of Saint Severin” reflects the events that took place on the territory of that same Norik, from where the chronicler led the Polian-Rus and Slavic tribes in general. Severin (d. 482) - “apostle of Noricus”, a prominent and influential figure during the fall of the Western Roman Empire, who, as can be seen from the “Life,” provided certain support to Odoacer, who came either from the Rugi or from some tribe related to them and overthrew in 476, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The author of the Life, Eugippius, was a student of Severinus and wrote, although several decades after the events themselves (in 520), but mainly as a direct witness and eyewitness. It is the “Life of Severin” that is the most significant source on the history of Rugiland in the 5th century, since Yorick, at least in its northern part, was part of it or was the area of ​​​​actual domination of the Rugi kings. Later, this area was called Rugia or Russia, and it is believed that its heyday as a special region within the Holy Roman Empire or in the sphere of its claims occurred in the 12th-13th centuries.

After the clash with the Goths, most of the Rugs from the Baltic states came to the Danube. Roman sources mention them as foederati allies from the beginning of the 4th century. In the 5th century The Rugi are part of the Hunnic state, retaining their own kings. After the death of Attila (453), the Rugians were drawn into strife, splitting, as a rule, into opposite camps. As a result, individual groups of them had to be evicted from the Danube region. In the struggle for Northern Italy, Odoacer and Theodoric at the end of the 5th century. The Rugs were both on the side of one and on the side of the other, although in general the Goths were considered one of the main enemies of the Rugs, apparently since the time of their clashes in the Baltic states.

It is as a result of numerous splits, strife, and external invasions that different groups of Rugians settle in remote areas or form alliances with other tribes. And almost everywhere the very name “rugi” is later replaced by the name “rusa”, which forces us to pay close attention to all mentions of both.

The most difficult source to understand and use is the saga of Thidrek of Berne. The saga is not a chronicle. It contains songs and tales that have lived among the people for hundreds of years, and they were not even recorded in the places where these songs originated and where the actions depicted in them once took place. Just as epics about heroes who defended Kyiv lived most of the time in the Onega or Pechersk North, so the German epic was preserved in Iceland and Norway.

The saga of Thidrek Bernsky has been known in Russia for a long time, and at the beginning of this century, under the leadership of the famous philologist A.N. Veselovsky also translated into Russian those parts of it that deal with “Russians” and “Viltins”. However, it is rarely used in literature, and again because the material it contains does not fit into the main opposing concepts of Normanism and Anti-Normanism. But the saga is interesting because the idea of ​​the “Russians” in it is, as it were, the quintessence of understanding them and everyone’s attitude towards them German world from south to north. It indisputably indicates that the “Russian” world was conceived as external in relation to the German one.

The above-mentioned Tidrek of Bern is the founder of the Ostrogoth kingdom, Theodoric, whose residence was in Verona, which was called Bern among the Germanic tribes. Around 471, Theodoric led the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, and in 488-493. The Ostrogoths led by him conquered Northern Italy from Odoacer. Here Theodoric reigned until his death in 526.

As often happens, Theodoric’s popularity began to increase against the backdrop of the subsequent decline of the Ostrogothic state, which ceased to exist altogether in 540. The Goths recalled the past greatness of the state association created under their supremacy, and the local Roman population, against the background of the lawlessness of the Byzantine administration, recalled the time of Theodoric as almost ideal from the point of view of social justice. The legends about Thidrek-Theodoric arose, naturally, where the remnants of the Germanic tribes who came with the king to Italy lived or retreated. The Danube region - Bavaria, Austria - remained such an area for a long time. Even at the beginning of the 11th century, as the Quadlinburg Annals report, in southern Germany almost every peasant knew songs and tales about Thidrek. And ultimately, the saga becomes one of the most popular in all German lands, and Thidrek himself appears as a pan-German hero.

As in all other epic tales, in the saga events shift in time, and heroes who lived in different periods are united as contemporaries. Thus, Attila is called Thidrek’s contemporary in the saga, although he died around the time Thidrek was just born. Thidrek's stay under the patronage of Attila reflects another fact: the Ostrogoths occupied Lower Pannonia before their resettlement in Italy. It was here, on the territory of the former power of Attila, that Thidrek was proclaimed king over the Ostrogoths. The saga as a whole maintains a favorable attitude towards Attila, and this also reveals the idea of ​​him characteristic of the tribes living in the region of the middle and upper Danube. The Franks and some other tribes had a sharply negative attitude towards Attila.

The saga mentions some historically reliable persons. Bleda, Attila's brother, acts in it; real face. The real person is Erka, the wife of Attila, according to the saga - the daughter of the Russian king (in the sources - Kerka). The Huns had polygamy, reflected in the saga. Many other names are unknown from written sources. The preface to the saga entry states that names vary depending on the languages ​​and territories where the saga is spoken. The name Thidrek itself points to the north instead of Theodoric (the saga was recorded in Norway). But the ethnographic situation reflected in the saga largely dates back to the era of the migration of peoples.

The saga of Thiedrek (Dietrich) of Berne served as one of the main sources of the famous “Song of the Nibelungs”. In the north, it was especially popular precisely because Attila was considered a native of Friesland, the king of which, according to the saga, was his father Milias. The name of Attila sounded for many centuries along the Baltic coast, where he was recognized as the first prince of the Pomeranians. This version, as was said, cannot be considered completely groundless: the Frisian Huns were known in the north, with whom the events that unfolded in the 5th century were associated. on the Danube. It is no coincidence, obviously, that the names of the Huns were of the same type as the names of the tribes that were recognized as Germanic. Jordan himself considered Gothic names to be Hunnic in origin. And the name Attila is still preserved among the Celtic peoples (in particular in Scotland), meaning “father”, “father”.

The most mysterious things in the saga are the plots associated with the participation of the Russians and the Viltins. The identification of the Viltins with the Vyaltsy or Lyutichs - one of the largest Slavic tribes of the Vendian, or Venedian group - seems most natural. The time of the appearance of this tribe off the southern shores of the Baltic - the era of the great migration of peoples - is also historically reliable. The saga reflects the period when Slavic tribes dominated there politically. Their rivals were not the tribes of the northern group of Germans, but the Russians. It is the Russian dynasty that ultimately establishes itself among the Viltins.

What “Russians” could we be talking about in relation to the events of the 5th-6th centuries? The geography of Tidre-ka-Theodoric's campaigns and political activities is generally known. He was a hostage for some time and then served in Byzantium. From a young age, he was the leader of the Ostrogoths in Pannonia, then fought with Odoacer for Italy, where the last decades of his life passed. Of course, he had never been to Eastern Europe. Did not return there after moving to the Danube and Attila. Meanwhile, according to the saga, the Russians are not an episode, but a permanent political partner of Thidrek and the Huns. The prologue of the saga points to "Russia" next to Swabia and Hungary on the way from the south to Vindland, that is, the land of the Baltic Slavs. In the saga, Rus' is most often called Rugiland. And it is obvious that what is meant first of all is the territory of Rugiland, later Russia, as well as those Baltic regions that sources also call Rugiia or Russia. The war between the Rugs and the Goths in the territory from the Danube to Northern Italy occupies a prominent place in the history of this entire region. And for the North German tribes, the fight against the Rugs-Russians off the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic was no less significant. At the same time, the “Russian people” are clearly distinguished from both the Scandinavians and the continental Germans.

It is somewhat puzzling that the saga does not mention Odoacer, the fight with whom for Italy is one of the most striking episodes in the biography of the Gothic leader. In the literature it was suggested that his place was taken by Germanarich, the hero of the early Gothic epic, who died in the Black Sea region as a result of a clash with the Rosomons. For some reason, the storytellers had to belittle the hero of the most ancient songs, glorifying Thidrek. But the Russian king Ozantrix, who fell, according to the saga, at the hands of his relative Thidrek, could have taken on some of Odoacer’s traits.

As for Odoacer, he becomes the hero of Slavic historical tales of the late Middle Ages, and he is most often called the “Russian” kvyaz. At the same time, the descendants of Odoacer later became counts of Styria, in the 12th century. they were also dukes of Austria and had a certain weight in the Bohemian and Czech nobility. Perhaps this circumstance prompted the storytellers not to mention Odoacer (Ottokar), not to pit Thidrek against the hero, also popular among a significant part of the Danubian population.

The name of another Russian king, Osantrix's brother Valdemar, may have been inspired by events of later Russian history, in particular the Slavic Russian epic dedicated to Vladimir the Saint. But the Huns and later the Goths had a similar name, Vladimir. It is possible that, as usual, the same name acquired different sounds, the same one that German authors explained from the Slavic languages ​​as “possession of the world.” The Russian Voldemar in the saga dies directly at the hands of Thidrek. If we take into account that all of Theodoric’s activities are concentrated in the territory of Northern Italy and the Danube region, Valdemar’s movement to the east can be associated not with Thidrek’s campaigns, but with the direction of migration of the Rugians.

It is noteworthy that in the 13th century. Another German poem was known, dedicated to Ortnit, the nephew of Ilya, a Russian on his mother’s side, and this offspring of the legendary Russian kings rules in Garda, in Lombardy (Northern Italy). In this case, it does not matter how historically accurate the content of the poem is. It is important that the presence of “Russians” in Lombardy did not surprise German storytellers even in the 13th century. On the other hand, in the story about the fall of Constantinople in 1204, the Novgorod chronicler recalls that one of the leaders of the crusaders was from Bern, “where the filthy evil Dedric lived.” In Novgorod, therefore, they also remembered Tidrek, and they remembered him as the sworn enemy of Rus'.

The saga of Thidrek of Berne is known from a number of prints. Only a fragment was translated into Russian. The translation was made by students of Academician A.N. Veselovsky at the beginning of our century. In the printed text, the reading of individual toponyms or country names was unified and brought closer to the original (say, Rutsiland, and not Russia or Rus'), and some outdated, difficult-to-understand phrases were also replaced. In the saga itself there are contradictions associated with repeated editing and combining different versions.

“Danish History” by Saxo Grammar (d. 208) has not been translated into Russian. It attracted few specialists either. The story usually used is about the Danish campaign on the island of Rujanu (Rügen) in 1168, which Saxo described as an eyewitness. Numerous information about Rus', Ruthenia, and Ruthenes from the first part of the work remains, as a rule, beyond the sight of historians and philologists. The fact is that the first books were written by Saxo based on materials from oral tradition, historical tales, and sagas. And just as in the saga of Thidrek of Bern, the “Russians” of this part of the “Danish History” do not fit into the usual Normanist and anti-Normanist schemes: the Normanists are not satisfied with this information because we are clearly talking not about the Swedes, Goths, Danes and Norwegians, but anti-Normanists cannot explain why the capital of this Rus' - Rotala - is located on the eastern coast of the Baltic (Rotalia province in Estonia), and the names of the Ruthenian “kings” do not find analogies anywhere.

Meanwhile, Rus' in the Baltic is known to many sources of the 12th-13th centuries. The English chronicler Matthew of Paris (d. 1259) reports on the wars that the Danish king Valdemar II (1202-1241) waged “in Frisia and Ruscia” for the sake of converting both to Christianity. Wars with both constitute an important theme in Danish chronicles and epics, and usually we are talking about pagans, who by the 13th century. were preserved only on the islands and the eastern coast of the Baltic. Another English author of the 13th century, Roger Bacon, mentions the “great Russia”, which encircles Leukovia - Lithuania “on both sides” of the Baltic Sea.

Information about the Ruten-Rus in different regions of the Baltic states can be found already in documents of the 10th century. And later they are mentioned in sources UNTIL THE 16TH CENTURY OF THE RUTES LIVING IN THE NORTH OF THE POLES; mentions in the middle of the 12th century. successor to the chronicle of Otto of Freispingen. The authors of the Life of Otto of Bamberg, Herbord and Ebon, who accompanied the bishop when he was in the 20s, talk a lot about them. baptized Pomeranians. The Rutens remained pagans and considered Christians their enemies. The chronicle of Peter of Dusbourg, written at the beginning of the 14th century, mentions the Ruthenians, who appeared at the mouth of the Neman shortly before the arrival of the German knights there, that is, at the turn of the 16th-13th centuries. It is not reported where they came from. But one can think that these were Ruthenians who left the island of Rügen after its capture by the Danes. In papal bulls of the 13th century. Livonia, in which Catholic dioceses were established, is called “Russia”. In the middle of the 14th century. in a number of regions of Estonia there was an uprising against the German feudal lords. It was most successful in Rotalia, especially on the island of Ezel. The organizers and main fighting force of the rebels were the “Russians.” In later Swedish sources, Rotalia is repeatedly called “Russia”. The region of Vik, adjacent to Rotalia, was also included in “Russia”. Later, documents mention “Russian villages” in this area.

The texts of Saxo Grammar have many similarities with the plots of the saga of Thidrek of Berne. It is noteworthy that the capital of Rotalia-Russia, Rotala, had a namesake on the Danube, where Rugiland and later Russia - Ruthenia were located. Some of the names of the Ruthenian leaders in Saxo Grammaticus are clearly of southern origin, and the mention of the “Hellespontians”, related to the Ruthenians, is completely amazing, since the Hellespont is a province in Asia Minor, adjacent to the Troas, that is, in this toponymic detail a real or legendary connection with Asia Minor and Troy.

The legendary ancestor of the Danish kings, according to Saxo Grammar, is Hading, who is succeeded by his son Froton. The gradual “oldening up” of genealogy in the Middle Ages, often achieved through the alignment of private tribal genealogies into a single series, led to the fact that Hading had to be pushed back somewhere into the third millennium BC. In fact, the events described hardly took place earlier than the 7th-8th centuries, when they either returned to these territories or arrived again ethnic groups, scattered during numerous “battles of nations” in the 5th-6th centuries. By the way, in the territory of the South-Eastern Baltic this tide is also reflected in material culture: finger brooches and some other attributes of clothing and equipment of the Danube type appear. But whether this was a return or an escape from enemies and relatives is now difficult to establish.

The names of the Ruthenians were never Germanic. But the early names of the Danes were not such either. The name Phroton is known among the Illyrians (Fronto) and the Gauls (Fronto). This may be due to the ancient Illyrian-Venetian influence, which prompts Denmark to be included in the area originally occupied by the “northern Illyrians.” Celtic influence also remained here for a long time. Famous Danish king of the 10th century. Gorm was condemned by German chroniclers for persecuting Christians, and they explained his name from the German “worm” - worm. In fact, this is a Celtic name meaning “noble”, “noble” (from gorm - blood). The names of the nobility in Europe necessarily meant social superiority. Therefore, interpretations similar to those given by the German chroniclers are simply impossible. All this means that in the 10th century. Even in the territories assimilated by the Germans, non-German ethnic traditions were preserved, going back centuries.

“The Tale of Bygone Years” is the main source on the history of Ancient Rus', a monument that most fully absorbed the ideas and ideas of the era of the formation of the Ancient Kievan state. In the literature, this name is also equivalent to the conventional name - Initial Chronicle. This name arose at the beginning of the last century, when it was assumed that this was precisely the original chronicle, written at the beginning of the 12th century. monk of the Pechersk Monastery Nestor. Later it was established that the chronicle, basically repeated in most later chronicle compilations, is also a collection of previous historical works, legends, and documents. Several different hypotheses have been proposed about the sources and time of composition of its various parts. The most popular is the A.A. scheme. Shakhmatov (1864-1920) who, however, over the course of two decades of studying chronicles, constantly changed his understanding of both the essence and stages of chronicle work, and not even his last opinion was reflected in the literature. For example, he constantly hesitated in determining the author of the Initial Chronicle (Nestor or Sylvester) and establishing the composition of the original edition.

According to L.L. Shakhmatov, the original chronicle began under Yaroslav the Wise (the oldest Kiev code dated 1039). Soviet scientists M.P. Tikhomirov, L.V. Cherepny, B.A. Rybakov pointed out the possibility of keeping a chronicle already during the reign of Vladimir, shortly after the adoption of Christianity. And indeed, in the chronicle, 996 is, as it were, the completion of some story about previous times. Under 997, apparently later, the legendary legend “about Belgorod jelly” was added. And then, until the end of Vladimir’s reign, only individual brief information, drawn from synodics or funerary inscriptions.

Later chroniclers did not simply rewrite the previous text. They added something, left something out. The chronicle remained a field of ideological struggle, an arena of struggle between rival political groups, princely families and clans. Therefore, the text until 996 was not completely preserved in the form in which it was once written, and in the chronicle presentation within these chronological limits there are later insertions reflecting the views of another era.

Naturally, the question of the original composition of the ancient chronicle is of fundamental importance. Scientists have different opinions in this regard. Everyone recognizes that the ancient text did not know the legend about the calling of the Varangians, that the latter was included in the chronicle either in the 11th or even in the 12th century, although in the north it, of course, could live for a long time and beyond the boundaries of the chronicle tradition. The original text, apparently, did not even know the division into years. According to the chronicle text within the 10th century. It is noticeable how the chronological outline is introduced from the outside, breaking the coherent presentation. And this circumstance may be of fundamental importance. The fact is that “story” and “chronicle” are different genres. A story presupposes a coherent presentation of a specific topic, while a chronicle is a record of heterogeneous events that occurred in a particular year. In practice, this means that the title “The Tale of Bygone Years” could refer to an undated legend about the beginning of Rus' and the first Kyiv princes, while the authors of the late 11th and early 12th centuries. kept a “chronicle”, distributing various materials by year.

It is especially important to correctly date the ethnographic introduction of The Tale of Bygone Years. The fact is that it talks about the most ancient period of Slavic-Russian history. If we assume, as is often done, that the introduction was written only in the 12th century, then its value as a source is minimal. It’s a different matter if we are talking specifically about the introduction of Polyan-Rus into the original history, which clearly was primarily of interest to the compiler of the Tale. In this case, the chronicler could deal with traditions and legends that were still very much alive.

The ethnographic introduction, like the entire chronicle text, also bears traces of repeated editing. It is easy to verify this by noting that the ethnonyms “Rus”, “Varyags”, “Chud” have different contents even in neighboring texts. But the main outline of the presentation should still be attributed precisely to the end of the 10th century, when the first historical work dedicated to the beginning of Rus' was created. Such a conclusion could also follow from a general view of the tasks of the first work: to tell where the Russian land came from, and about the first Russian, Kyiv princes. There is also direct evidence that allows us to attribute the work of the first chronicler precisely to the end of the 10th century. These data are all the more important because they are associated with the texts that are most significant in content.

Much has been written on the “Varangian problem”; there are many different conjectures in the literature about who was called “Varangians” and why. And it is precisely in the initial part of the ethnographic introduction that the only direct indication is given where the Varangians live. The chronicler says that “Lyakhov, Prusi, Chud” will be “settled” by the Varangian Sea. This message already contains a lot of information. Firstly, the chronicler knows of only three large ethno-state formations near the Baltic coast. The predominance of Prussia in the Lithuanian lands dates back precisely to the 10th-11th centuries. Secondly, and this is the main thing, Pomerania became part of the Polish state only at the end of the 10th century, in 907 the bishopric was created in Kolobrzeg. But already around 1010 it fell away again and was again included in the Polish state and baptized only in the 20s. XII century

The inclusion of Pomeranians and Lyutichs into the Lyash tribes may also date back to this time. The power of the Polish prince extended to the Lutichians for only a few years; subsequently they were never part of the Polish state; moreover, the feuds between the Poles and the Lutichians ultimately became one of the main reasons for the general defeat of the Baltic Slavs in the fight against the advance of the German feudal lords. It is also noteworthy that in the list of Slavic tribes given as set out in the Slavic Charter, the most western ones - the Obodrites and the Vagrian-Varins - are not included. Obviously, because these particular tribes were considered “Varangians” in the narrow sense of the word. The chronicler clearly indicates the western limits of the settlement of the Varangians: the land of Voloshskaya and Agnyanskaya. The Angles are the western neighbors of the Varins. In the 9th century. The Angles who lived in the southern part of the Scottish Peninsula and the neighboring Varins were given a special “Pravda”, as if a version of the legislation in force in the Frankish Empire. Until recently, the Danish province bordering the lands of the Baltic Slavs was called Angeln. The Holy Roman Empire, which arose in 962 as a kind of successor to the old Roman Empire, could also be called “Volosh land”. Among the Western Slavs, it was the Italians (possibly the inhabitants of Northern Italy, which was part of the new empire) who were called “Volokhs”. Just at the end of the 10th and beginning of the 11th century. the territory of Vagria and the region of the Obodrites were part of the Saxon “Mark of Warings,” that is, the Varangian mark. This mark was liquidated around 1018 due to the expansion of the power of Cnut the Great, the Danish king, into this territory, who also united England and the South Scandinavian lands under his rule.

Part two. Great Immortals of the East

The Great Migration destroyed the ancient world, building the Middle Ages on its ruins. Despite many versions, it is still not clear what was the main reason for the movement of the barbarians, where the Huns came from, and who the Proto-Slavs were.

Reasons for the movement is ready

The Great Migration of Peoples, contrary to popular belief, began not with the invasion of the Huns, but with the movement of the Goths, who migrated from the territory of Central Sweden, which was then called “Gothia,” to the Black Sea coast in the 2nd-3rd century AD. In the process of migration, more and more new tribes joined them: Gepids, Borans, Taifals, Heruls, Vandals, Skyrs. They left only destruction in their path, and became the first to capture and ravage Rome under the leadership of King Alaric.

The Roman-German Wars for the first time called into question the continued existence of the empire. Having firmly established itself in the Central Danube lowland, which from now on became the center barbarian world, they regularly went on new military campaigns against their powerful neighbor. One of the most successful conquests was the strategically important province of Dacia, between the Danube, Tissa, Prut and Carpathian rivers, which later became one of the main springboards for German invasions of the Empire.
But what was the very reason that gave rise to this bloody migration, which lasted, de facto, half a millennium: from the 2nd to the 7th centuries AD.

In fact, there is still no consensus among historians on this matter, so it is customary to single out a combination of factors.

First, according to the Gothic historian Jordanes, in the second century the Goths living in Scandinavia were faced with the problem of overpopulation. According to legend, the Gothic king Philimer decided to move to another region along with his families: “When a great crowd of people grew there, and only the fifth king after Berig, Philimir, ruled, he decided that the army of the Goths along with their families should move from there. In search of the most convenient areas and suitable places for settlement, he came to the lands of Scythia, which in their language were called Oium.”

Obviously, overpopulation alone could not raise such a powerful horde of barbarians, consisting not only of the Goths, but of many other tribes. According to researchers, an important role was played by the general cooling or “climatic pessimum of the early Middle Ages,” which was gaining momentum just at that time. Temperatures dropped, but the climate remained excessively humid. Even worse, the glaciers were increasing - there were fewer forests and less game. The people were threatened with starvation, and infant mortality increased.

Changing weather conditions are quite often the root cause of important historical events. And the climate pessimum early Middle Ages just accompanied the entire history of the great migration, reaching its peak in 535-536.

And, of course, don’t forget about human factor. On the eve of the great migration, significant changes occurred in the economic life of the Germans and Slavs. As a result, the stratification of society increased. An upper class emerged from the middle class and was not involved in productive labor. They were a tribal elite that needed prey to maintain their status, a role for which the Roman Empire was ideally suited.

Where did the Huns come from?

In the autumn of 376, the peoples who settled the territories from the Middle Danube Plain to the Black Sea coast began to move. Throughout the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, alarming rumors spread about certain wild and cruel barbarians who eat raw meat and destroy everything in their path. Soon, envoys from their yesterday's enemies, the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, came to the Romans with a request to settle on the territory of the empire.
The main reason for this concern was the Hun hordes that broke into Europe. At that time no one knew who they were or where they came from. One of the Roman historians, Ammianus Marcellinus, believed that they came from the Maeotian swamp, that is, from Sea of ​​Azov. Modern researchers associate them with the Xiongnu people, who inhabited the steppes north of China from 220 BC to the 2nd century AD. These were the first tribes to create a vast nomadic empire in Central Asia. Subsequently, some of them reached Europe, mixing along the way with Turkic, Eastern Sarmatian and Ugric tribes, which formed a new Hunnic ethnic group.

Their invasion is considered one of the main factors that marked the beginning of the great migration, more precisely, its second wave. The long journey that led to such catastrophic consequences was apparently prompted by the impoverishment of pastures, which is a constant problem for nomads and the reason for their permanent movement. This was also the reason for their constant conflicts with China, as a result of which the Great Wall of China was built. However, in the 1st century BC, China took advantage of the weakening of the Hunnic power due to civil strife, and inflicted a crushing defeat on them, which summed up centuries of conflicts.

The Hunnic power collapsed, and its scattered parts scattered across Asia and Europe. Some of the most desperate, or, in Gumilyov’s words, passionaries, moved to the West, where they passed through Kazakhstan in the 50s of the 2nd century AD and reached the banks of the Volga. After 360, perhaps again due to a general cooling, they crossed the Volga and continued their journey to the West, where they defeated the Alans and Ostrogoths. This is how Ammianus Marcellinus described it: “The Huns, having passed through the lands of the Alans, who border on the Greuthungs and are usually called Tanaites, carried out terrible destruction and devastation on them, and concluded an alliance with the survivors and annexed them to themselves. With their assistance, they boldly broke through with a surprise attack into vast and fertile lands Ermanaric - King of the Ostrogoths." They were followed by the Goths, who, under the pressure of the nomads, divided into the Visigoths and Ostrogoths. The Huns firmly settled in the territories of the Northern Black Sea region, coming close to the Roman borders.

How the Slavs were formed

Today there is not a single generally accepted version about the origin of the Slavic ethnic group. But we know that the Slavic ethnic space, which would later become the foundation for the formation of the ancient Russian state, was formed thanks to the great migration.

We know practically nothing about the Proto-Slavs: who they were, what kind of life they led, and where they actually lived. Ancient sources are silent about this period in the history of our ancestors. This may indicate that before the arrival of the Huns and resettlement, their territories were located far from the borders of the Roman Empire and were not part of the interests of its politicians. True, sometimes we still come across rare references to the tribes of the Wends, which Herodotus recalled, as well as in later sources, about the Antes (already in the later sources of the 6th-7th centuries) and the Sklavins (the general name used by Byzantine authors to describe Slavs), who are considered to be the ancestors of the Slavic tribes.

According to some versions, all possible ancestors of the Slavs were initially a “combustible mixture” of Scythian nomadic tribes and local peoples (including Greek). Their common Slavic language, as well as an archaeological community, began to take shape no earlier than the 5th century, most likely in the territories of Attila’s Empire. It was there that, based on borrowings from various cultures, the common Slavic language was formed, later known as Old Bulgarian or Old Church Slavonic (the Bulgarians are known as the closest relatives of the Huns). That is, being part of Attila’s empire, the Proto-Slavs experienced the enormous influence of both nomadic Asian and sedentary European cultures.

Subsequently, the new ethnic group completed the last stage of the Great Migration of Peoples (VI-VII centuries), settling in Eastern, South-Eastern and Central Europe.