The history of Russia is rooted in the history of many states and peoples who have ever lived in the territory from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean. Every Russian can consider himself a descendant of any ancient inhabitant of Eurasia, which for centuries was a "giant cauldron of ethnic remelting" of countless large and small nations.
Cimmerians
Since ancient times, the south of the Russian Plain has been an area of settlement for numerous peoples. The first inhabitants of the Northern Black Sea region, whose names have been preserved in written history, were the Cimmerians who lived here in the VIII-VII centuries BC. e.
The ancient Greek historian Herodotus reports that the Cimmerians lived in the Northern Black Sea region before the arrival of the Scythians. The stay of the Cimmerians here is usually attributed to the end of the II - the beginning of the I millennium BC. e. The Cimmerians were a strong state. The Cimmerians are mentioned in the Assyrian cuneiform texts of the 8th century BC. e. The Cimmerians were especially worried about Assyria under King Asargadon. In the annals of another Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, the victory over the "people of the Gimmer" (the name of the Cimmerians in ancient sources) is noted. The same annals speak of the struggle against the Cimmerians of the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus.
The Greek authors believed that the starting point of all the Cimmerians' campaigns in the countries of the Ancient East was the Northern Black Sea region, and the paths of their raids went through the Caucasus and the Balkan Peninsula.
According to toponymy data, the Cimmerians lived in the Azov region. Herodotus cites several geographical names that have survived here until his time (5th century BC). These are Bosporus Cimmerian, Cimmerian ferries, Cimmerian fortifications and the Cimmerian region. On the Dniester were the graves of the Cimmerian kings who died in a clash with the Scythians. Herodotus believes that part of the Cimmerians went to Asia Minor (Cappadocia), and the other part was assimilated2 by the Scythians.
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Greek colonies
From the VIII century BC The northern and eastern Black Sea regions attracted immigrants from Greece, who founded many colonies there, Olbia, Chersonesus (Korsun in the Russian chronicle, located near present-day Sevastopol), Feodosia, Panticapaeum, Phanagoria, Tanais. These cities were significant trading posts. Trade flourished on the basis of developed agriculture, crafts, and fishing. The political center of the region was Panticapaeum, located on the shores of the Kerch Strait (the Greeks called it Cimmerian Bosporus) and for a long time the capital of the Bosporus kingdom, the only large state in the Northern Black Sea region at that time. A distinctive feature of life in the Black Sea cities was a high level of material and spiritual culture. Thanks to archeology, masterpieces of antique crafts, sculpture, mosaics, and literature have survived to our time.
Scythians
The main information about the Scythians is given by archeology and the works of Herodotus. Coming from the east, this people in the 7th century BC. e. settled on the northern coast of the Black Sea. It was a large tribal (state) association and occupied in the 7th-5th centuries BC. e. middle and southern Dnieper, Lower Don, Kuban and Taman. The powerful Scythian state managed to resist the military and political claims of the Persians and Macedonians. The territory of Scythia was inhabited by heterogeneous peoples, differing in economic structure and way of life: Scythians-plowmen, Scythians-nomads. From the 5th century BC e. to the 3rd century AD e. Scythians head the state association in the Northern Black Sea region - the Scythian kingdom with its capital on the Dnieper (Stone settlement).
The Scythians had a developed economy in the form of agriculture, cattle breeding and crafts. They actively traded with the Greek colonies. The Scythians had quite developed social relations. The famous Scythian burial mounds have brought to us evidence of a vibrant and distinctive culture.
The well-known poetic image of the Scythians as "Asians with slanted and greedy eyes", created by A. Blok, does not correspond to reality: anthropological materials prove that the Scythians did not have any Mongoloid features. They were typical Caucasians, and by language they belonged to the North Iranian group. Of the currently existing peoples, the Ossetians are the closest to them in language - the descendants of the Sarmatians, the closest relatives of the Scythians.
Sarmatians
Moving to the southern Russian steppes from Western Asia in the II century BC. e., the Sarmatians defeated the Scythians and occupied the lands of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The steppe Crimea remains in the hands of the Scythians, where a new kingdom arose with the capital in Scythian Naples.
Over the next few centuries, the remnants of the Scythians dissolved among the newcomers - Sarmatians, Alans, Goths. Some of the Scythians were assimilated by the Slavs.
Goths
From the Baltic to the Black Sea steppes in the 2nd century BC e. came the Germanic tribes ready. The Goths fought with the Sarmatians and Alans, but they managed to win only a few centuries later. In the IV century A. D. e. their leader Germanarich formed a kingdom that stretched across almost all of Eastern Europe. Since the late 360s, the Christian religion began to actively spread in Gothia. The state of the Goths did not last long, falling under the blows of the Huns.
Huns
Pushed aside in the IV century A. D. e. Goths to the west, they came from the Mongolian steppes, from where they migrated first to Central Asia and the Southern Urals, where they entered into a military-diplomatic alliance with the Voguls (Mansi), and then to the Black Sea region. LN Gumilev writes that a new ethnos was created in the South Urals - the Western Huns, "just as little like the old Asian Huns, as the Texas cowboys do to the English farmers." A powerful Hunnic alliance under the leadership of their leader Attila broke into Europe at the end of the 4th century, causing devastation. After 70 years of wars and campaigns, in the middle of the 5th century, the Hunnic Union collapsed. Some of the Huns, remaining on the Danube and in the Black Sea region, were gradually assimilated by their neighbors; the other part went east.
Turkic kaganate
It was formed in the middle of the 6th century in Altai and Mongolia, and then expanded its territory to China, Amu Darya and the Lower Don. With the collapse of the Khaganate, several unions were formed - Avar, Khazar and Bulgar.
Avars
In the 6th century, they repeated the path of the Huns from Asia to Europe; they settled on the present Hungarian plain and founded a powerful state that existed until the beginning of the 9th century. The movement of the Avars through the Eastern European steppes was accompanied by fierce clashes with the Slavs. The "Tale of the Time Years" tells that the Avars ("obry") enslaved some of the Slavs and subjected them to cruel oppression. Warlike Avars constantly raided Byzantium and Western Europe, their hordes reached the shores of the North Sea. In the end, after long wars, the Avars were defeated by the Franks and disappeared from the pages of history. Their death was reflected in Russia in the proverb: "Aki obri died."
Khazar state
It arose around the 7th century in the Caspian part of the North Caucasus and on the Lower Volga. For two centuries, the power of the Khazars spread to the Crimea, the Azov region and the Middle Volga.
There were large cities in Khazaria: Belendzher on the Sulak River, Semender (near modern Derbent), Itil on the Volga (the capital, the population of which was distinguished by ethnic diversity and reached 100 thousand people), Tamatarkh and Phanagoria on Taman, Sarkel, etc. The development of cities reflected the character Khazar economy, which was based not so much on the traditional for the Turks of cattle breeding, but on the use of geographical benefits and control of trade routes in Asia and Europe. The carriers of the religion are Arabs. The fact is that in the 7th-8th centuries the Arabs conquered the Mediterranean Sea (East and South), thus ending trade between East and West. The Great Silk Road has changed the vector of movement. Trade routes went through the Volga (Itil - the Khazar river) - the silver route and the Dnieper (Borisfen) - the brocade route. The collection of large customs duties was an important source of state revenue.
Both the kagan and the merchant elite of Khazaria brought large profits from the slave trade, which forced them to hunt for "live goods."
Its foreign policy was closely connected with the principles of the economy of Khazaria. But these principles infringed upon the neighbors of the Khazars, which inevitably led to an aggravation of relations. For some time, the Khazar Kaganate held political hegemony in the East European Plain. The Volga Bulgaria was in vassal dependence on him. Khazar troops under the leadership of Passover in 940 reached Kiev and imposed tribute on the Russian principality. Khazaria in the IX-X centuries was one of the richest and most powerful countries in Eurasia. The instruments of the Khazar policy were the mercenary army and diplomatic intrigues, aimed, among other things, at pushing the Pechenegs and Byzantines against Russia. The relations of Khazaria with the Arab Caliphate, which inflicted a number of military strikes on it, were tense. Disputes with Byzantium over the adjacent regions in the Crimea also intensified.
Hostile relations with Christian and Muslim neighbors led the Khazar government at the beginning of the 9th century to a serious political step - the official adoption of Judaism - a religion equally coldly perceived in both Byzantium and the Caliphate. Kagan Obadiya, turning to Judaism, hoped to strengthen his position by supporting the influential Jewish trading and usurious elite of the Caliphate.
The kagan's hopes, however, did not materialize. Before the adoption of Judaism, there was religious and ethnic diversity in Khazaria, but the new religion, with its dogma of being chosen, could not unite all the peoples that were part of the kaganate. Judaism tore the kagan and his entourage away from the provincial nobility and further alienated them from the people. A kind of Christian-Muslim-pagan alliance was formed against the government. Civil strife greatly weakened the state, which was aggravated by the penetration of the nomadic hordes of Magyars and Pechenegs into its borders. Part of Khazaria went to the Arabs. The war began with the noticeably stronger Kievan Rus.
In 965, the Kiev prince Svyatoslav struck a powerful blow to Khazaria, from which she could no longer recover. Svyatoslav's son Vladimir suppressed the remnants of the Khazar statehood. The ethnic system of Khazaria also disintegrated. The descendants of the Turkic-Khazars mixed with other Turkic peoples, became an integral part of the later Russian people. The Judeo-Khazars emigrated to Western Europe, and partly scattered along the outskirts of the Khaganate. Their descendants in the form of small ethnic groups survived in Dagestan (Mountain Jews) and in Crimea (Karaites).
The Bulgar unions around the 7th century were divided into four groups. Two of them wandered in the Azov region and the North Caucasus, later taking part in the formation of the Balkars and some other peoples. The third group went to the Balkans, where they merged with the Danube Slavs, giving them their ethnonym3. The fourth migrated to the Middle Volga region, where it subdued a number of local Finno-Ugric tribes.
State of the Volga Bulgaria
It was founded by the Bulgars who came to the Middle Volga region around the 7th century. The capital - the city of Bulgar - was a large trade point connected with Russia, northern tribes, southern and eastern nomads. The Bulgars established strong ties with Central Asia, which strengthened after they adopted Islam in 922.
Volga Bulgaria was a multinational state. Bulgars and Finno-Ugrians occupied the same areas in strips, partially assimilating, moreover, mutually. The modern inter-striped coexistence of the Mari, Mordovians, Chuvashes, Tatars goes back to that distant time. Numerically, the Bulgars prevailed. This state continued to grow until, in 1236, it was defeated by the Mongol Tatars. After that, the name “Bulgars” in the Volga region began to gradually disappear under the conditions of assimilation. But the people who once bore this name did not disappear; the Chuvash and Kazan Tatars are descendants of the Volga Bulgars. The Bulgar element is noticeable in the process of the formation of the Bashkirs, Mari, Udmurts.
Pechenegs
They appeared in the Dnieper-Don interfluve in the 9th century. They fought with the Magyars, Khazars and Russia. The first clash between the Russians and the Pechenegs was in 915, after which peace was concluded. In 944, Prince Igor attracted the Pechenegs to a joint campaign against Byzantium. It was difficult to fight the Pechenegs: they were unusually mobile and almost elusive. For their part, the Pechenegs easily went on campaigns against any country. Most often they were used by the Byzantines, although the Pechenegs often annoyed them. According to some reports, the Pechenegs participated in Svyatoslav's campaign against Khazaria. But already 3 years after that, the Byzantines managed to play off the Pechenegs with the Russians. The protracted conflict led to the encirclement of Svyatoslav's detachment by the Pechenegs on the Dnieper rapids in 971. Svyatoslav was killed.
After that, the offensive of the Pechenegs on Russia intensified, a grueling struggle began. The Pechenegs intervened in the princely feuds. This lasted until 1019, when Yaroslav the Wise inflicted a serious defeat on them. The pressure of the Pechenegs then weakened. In 1036, Yaroslav repeated his success at the walls of Kiev, effectively destroying the Pechenezh danger. Together with the Turks and Berendeys, the Pechenegs became vassals of Russia. In the middle of the 12th century, these three ethnic groups united into an alliance, which received the name of the Black Klobukov in the Russian chronicle. The Mongol-Tatar invasion led to a complete loss of their independent significance and absorption by other peoples. Gagauz (modern nation) are the descendants of the Pechenegs.
Polovtsi
In the XI century, they came from the steppes of the Irtysh region and Eastern Kazakhstan to the shores of the Middle and Lower Donets. Throughout the 11th century, the Polovtsy mastered the steppe, seizing new lands and moving from place to place, recognizing the most convenient camps, fishing and hunting industries, water and land routes of trade caravans, from which they received considerable duties.
The Polovtsians got their name from the Russians, who called them that for their blonde hair and blue eyes (from the word "chaff" - straw). This does not correspond to our current ideas about the Cumans as people of short stature, with black hair and large cheekbones. The Polovtsians had a pronounced clan cult. They put stele-like stone sculptures on the graves of their dead relatives. Tens of thousands of statues stood on mounds and maidans, at road crossings and river banks.
By the middle of the 12th century, the area (habitat) of the Polovtsian nomads stretched from the Dnieper to the Volga. The Cumans were by that time a military-political force, which both Rus and Byzantium reckoned with. The Russians had to fight a lot with them. At the beginning of the 12th century, Vladimir Monomakh inflicted a crushing defeat on them. The scattered Polovtsians retreated beyond the Volga and the Urals, some of them went to Transcaucasia, where they entered the military service of the Georgian king David the Builder, another part migrated to Transnistria. Two Polovtsian khans - Bonyak and Tukorgan - united the Dnieper hordes, continuing their raids on Russia. These khans entered Russian folklore as sworn enemies, having received the names of Bunyaka Sheludivy and Tugarin Zmeevich in legends and epics.
The first in Europe to experience the force of the blow of the Mongol-Tatars were the Don Polovtsy, headed by Yuri Konchakovich. In the Battle of Kalka in 1223, they suffered a crushing defeat. The help of the Russian squads did not help either. The surviving clans went to the Danube under the auspices of the Kingdom of Hungary and to Egypt to serve in the Sultan's guard. The remaining Polovtsians were resettled by the conquerors to the Volga region and included in the Golden Horde, where they mixed with the Mongols and related Turkic tribes. The name of the Polovtsians has disappeared, but their descendants are still alive in the Kazakh, Bashkir and other peoples.
Finno-Ugric peoples
The Tale of Time Years enumerated the peoples who paid tribute to Russia: Chud, Merya, All, Muroma, Cheremis, Mordovians, Perm, Pecheras, Yam, Lithuania, Zimigola, Kors, Norova, Lib. The Nikon Chronicle added the cave to the tributaries of Russia. All these peoples maintained active economic ties with the Slavs, often entered into military-political alliances. There were processes of cultural and everyday borrowing, mixed marriages were concluded. Some Finnish (Merya, Meschera, Muroma) and Baltic (Goliad) peoples completely disappeared into the Slavic ethnic massif. M. N. Pokrovsky believed: "80% of Finnish blood flows in the veins of the Great Russians." There was a process of formation of a new ethnos, which later received the name "Russian". IN. Klyuchevsky argues that assimilation proceeded peacefully. Waves of Slavs-settlers rolled through the Finno-Ugric settlements,leaving next to them Slavic villages, villages, farms. Mixed marriages were accompanied by the transition of entire clans among Merians, Meshchera, Murom into a single language. Most of the Finno-Ugrians were baptized according to the Orthodox rite, they took Russian names and surnames. In the Karelian runes, Russians were called brothers. The Finno-Ugrians took part in Russian military campaigns to Byzantium, to Sweden, in battles against the Teutonic and Livonian knights. Quite a few Finns were in the immediate environment of the Kiev prince and local princes.in battles against the Teutonic and Livonian knights. Quite a few Finns were in the immediate environment of the Kiev prince and local princes.in battles against the Teutonic and Livonian knights. Quite a few Finns were in the immediate environment of the Kiev prince and local princes.
The Finno-Ugric influence is clearly visible in Russian geographic toponymy (Moscow, Oka, Sylva, Protva, Sosva, Lozva, Murom, Vesyegonsk, etc.), in the Great Russian anthropological type, in the dialect of the Great Russians, in Russian mythology (water, woody, mermaids - tracing paper from Finnish representations), in the nature of the Russian household trades, their everyday life (steam bath, stove-stoves, etc.).
Slavs: theories of origin and settlement
The history of the Slavs goes back to the depths of time, and the first information about them was recorded in the oldest written sources. All of them, with reference to a certain territory, record the Slavs only from the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. (most often from the 6th century), that is, when they appear on the historical arena of Europe as a large ethnic community.
Ancient authors knew the Slavs under various names: Wends, Antes, Sklavins; but, above all, under the name of the Wends. For the first time this name is found in the Natural History of Pliny (middle of the 1st century AD). Pliny calls the Wends among the peoples neighboring a group of Germanic tribes - Ingevons: "the lands up to the Vistula River are inhabited by the Sarmatians, Wends, Scythians, and Girras." Most likely, these were areas in the Vistula River basin and, perhaps, more eastern lands.
By the end of the 1st century A. D. e. include messages about the Wends of Cornelius Tacitus. Tacitus indicates that the Wends lived between the Pevkin peoples (the northern part of the Lower Danube) and the Fenns, who occupied the territory of the forest belt of Eastern Europe from the Baltic to the Urals. It is impossible to indicate the exact location of the Wends. It is also difficult to say whether the Wends of the time of Tacitus were Slavs. There is an assumption that the Wends were assimilated by the Slavs at that time and received their name. And if one can argue about the Wends of Tacitus, then the Wends of later authors are undoubtedly Slavs.
More accurate information about the Slavs of the middle of the 1st millennium A. D. e. Now the Slavs are called by their own name - Slovenes. Byzantine authors describe mainly the Slavs of the Danube and the Balkan Peninsula. Byzantine authors provide information about different aspects of the life and life of the Slavs.
More substantial information is available in the work of the Gothic Bishop Jordan. According to Jordan, the Wends are Slavs. From his work it is clear that in the VI century the Slavs inhabited a wide strip stretching from the Middle Danube to the Lower Dnieper.
Information about the Eastern Slavs is given to us not only by Byzantine authors, it is also contained in the descriptions of the largest Arab geographers of the 2nd half of the 9th-10th centuries. There are also semi-legendary information about the Slavs in the Scandinavian sagas, in the Frankish epic, and in Germanic legends.
The places of residence of the ancient Slavs, called "ancestral home", are determined ambiguously.
The first who tried to answer the questions: where, how and when did the Slavs come from was the chronicler Nestor - the author of the Tale of the Times. He defined the territory of the Slavs along the lower Danube and Pannonia. The process of settling the Slavs began from the Danube, that is, we are talking about their migration. The Kiev chronicler was the founder of the migration theory of the origin of the Slavs, known as the "Danube" or "Balkan". The Danube "ancestral home" of the Slavs was recognized by S. M. Soloviev, V. O. Klyuchevsky and others. According to V. O. Klyuchevsky, the Slavs moved from the Danube to the Carpathian region. It was here, according to the historian, that an extensive military alliance was formed headed by the Dulebo-Volynians. From here the Eastern Slavs settled east and northeast to Lake Ilmen in the 7th-8th centuries.
The origin of another migration theory of the origin of the Slavs - "Scythian-Sarmatian", dates back to the Middle Ages. It was first recorded in the Bavarian Chronicle of the XIII century, and later it was perceived by many Western European authors. According to their ideas, the ancestors of the Slavs moved from Western Asia along the Black Sea coast to the north and settled under the ethnonyms "Scythians", "Sarmatians", "Alans" and "Roxolans". Gradually, the Slavs from the Northern Black Sea region scattered to the west and southwest.
The third option, close to the Scythian-Sarmatian theory, was proposed by Academician A. I. Sobolevsky. In his opinion, the names of rivers, lakes, mountains within the limits of the location of the ancient settlements of the Slavs supposedly show that they received these names from another people who were here earlier. Such a predecessor of the Slavs, according to Sobolevsky's assumption, was a group of tribes of Iranian origin (Scythian root). Later, this group assimilated (dissolved) with the ancestors of the Slavic-Baltic who lived further to the north and gave rise to the Slavs somewhere on the shores of the Baltic Sea, from where the Slavs settled.
The fourth version of the migration theory was given by Academician A. A. Chess. In his opinion, the first ancestral home of the Slavs was the basin of the Western Dvina and the Lower Neman in the Baltic States. From here the Slavs, having adopted the name of the Wends (from the Celts), advanced to the Lower Vistula, from where the Goths had just left for the Black Sea region (the turn of the 2nd-3rd centuries). Therefore, here (Lower Vistula), according to A. A. Shakhmatova, was the second ancestral home of the Slavs. When the Goths left the Black Sea region, part of the Slavs, namely their eastern and southern branches, moved east and south in the Black Sea region and formed here the tribes of the southern and eastern Slavs. So, following this "Baltic" theory, the Slavs were newcomers to the land, on which they then created their states.
There are a number of other theories of the migratory origin of the Slavs and their "ancestral homeland" - this is the "Asian" one, which brought the Slavs out of the territory of Central Asia, where a common "ancestral homeland" for all Indo-Europeans was assumed, this is also the "Central European", according to which the Slavs and their ancestors turned out to be newcomers from Germany (Jutland and Scandinavia), settling from here in Europe and Asia, right up to India - and a number of other theories.
In contrast to migration theories, the autochthonous - local origin of the Slavs is recognized. According to the autochthonous theory, Slavism was formed over a vast territory, which included not only the territory of modern Poland, but also a significant part of modern Ukraine and Belarus.
Autochthonous theory notes the complexity of the formation of the Slavs. Initially, small separate scattered ancient peoples formed on a certain vast territory, which then formed into larger and, finally, into historically known peoples. The Proto-Slavic, Proto-Slavic and Slavic periods are distinguished.
The ancestors of the Proto-Slavs, as a result of their cultural rapprochement, gave birth to the Slavs. This process can be traced by archaeologists to BC. e. from the III millennium to I.
The Proto-Slavic period begins at the end of the 1st millennium BC. A cultural as well as a linguistic community is established. A significant part of the Proto-Slavs was included in the orbit of Scythian influence. In the VI-VII centuries. the period of Proto-Slavic history ends. The resettlement of the Slavs in vast areas, their active interaction with other peoples led to the cultural differentiation of the Slavic world and the division of a single language into separate Slavic languages.
In the VIII-IX centuries. a period of Slavic history proper begins, the formation of alliances, the formation of states. The folding of modern Slavic peoples takes place.
Thus, the most important historical fact is the presence in the 1st millennium A. D. on the territory of Eastern Europe of the Slavs.
The Great Migration of Nations: Historical Facts
The first centuries of our era became a time of mass migrations in Europe and Asia, which were called the Great Migration of Nations. The term “ethnic revolution” is sometimes used to denote this phenomenon. It is intended to emphasize the scale of migration processes in the 1st millennium and their role in changing the ethnopolitical map of Europe and Asia. In the course of global movements of people, the boundaries of traditional settlement were erased and changed, different ethnic components were mixed, new peoples were created.
The first wave of the Great Migration was associated with the Germans. In the II-III centuries. across the East European Plain, from north to south - from the regions of Scandinavia and the Baltic to the Crimea, to the Balkans and from there to South Asia - the Germanic tribes of the Goths moved. Jordan has a mention of the Mordovians, Mary, Vesi, Esthians and the Onega Chud, which became part of the Gothic kingdom, created by the Gothic leader Germanarich.
Under the pressure of the Huns and Slavs in the 5th century, the Goths were driven out of the Black Sea region to the west, setting in motion other Germanic tribes bordering on the Roman Empire.
In the VI-VIII centuries, the Turkic tribes - Avars, Khazars, Bulgars - became political leaders on the Eurasian continent. The Turks stood out in Asian migrations - especially when settling in Siberia: Kyrgyz, Uighurs, etc.
The last migration waves of the Great Migration include the Arab conquests that began in the 7th century and covered Arabia, Western and Central Asia, Transcaucasia, and North Africa. Several stages of Jewish migration from the Near East coincided with the era of the Great Migration. The dispersal of the Jews began even before the new era in connection with the Babylonian, Macedonian, Roman conquests. The Arab campaigns caused several more waves of exodus of Jews from their ancestral home.
The first expeditions of the Normans to both Western and Eastern Europe date back to the end of the 8th century.
In the 9th century, the Pechenegs burst into the southern Russian steppes, and in the 11th century, the Polovtsians. At the same time (at the end of the 9th century), the distant transition of the Magyars (Ugro-Finnish tribe, related to the Khanty-Mansi) from the South Urals to Europe ended with their settling of Pannonia, where they assimilated the local Slavs.
Thus, the Great Migration of Nations in the 1st millennium A. D. changed the ethnopolitical panorama of Europe and Asia, laid the foundation for modern peoples and states.
