In the era of the Great Migration of Peoples I - IV centuries. AD part of the Slavs was conquered by the East German tribe of the Goths. The ancient cultural heritage at this time practically did not touch our ancestors.
The Slavs preserved the most ancient features of the culture of the Proto-Indo-European time, long forgotten by almost all other Indo-Europeans, with the exception of the Balts. Therefore, their culture and statehood is deeply original and unlike the European one, “cultivated on an antique, ultimately, foundation. Along with the obvious negative consequences of this state of affairs, it should be noted that the Slavic, especially the East and South Slavic cultures, were completely alien to the negative aspects of the ancient worldview, in particular, the arrogant attitude towards strangers ("barbarians").
Invasion of the Huns in the 370s AD, judging by all, was supported by the uprising of the Slavs. From the end of the 5th - beginning of the 6th centuries. AD The history of Ancient Rus begins, the Great Migration of the Slavs, which is explained by three main reasons: the distant consequences of the invasion of the Goths, a serious cooling of the climate and a population explosion. By the X century. they inhabit Eastern Europe, the Balkans and part of Asia Minor. In the IX-X centuries. the Eastern Slavs are developing their own statehood. The first states appeared almost simultaneously in several main places. The next stage was their unification, which for the first time led to the unification in 882 by Oleg the Prophet of the northern and southern "centers" of statehood with the centers in Rurik Gorodishche (the predecessor of Novgorod, which appeared later) and Kiev. Creation of the first stone fortress in Russia in Ladoga (end of IX century.) also refers to the reign of this prince. It is impossible to believe that the Scandinavians played a decisive or even simply noticeable role in the formation of the ancient Russian statehood. Statehood cannot be "transferred" to someone else's soil; it develops only when the appropriate local conditions are combined. On the contrary, getting to Eastern Europe, the Normans always very quickly fell under the influence of Slavic culture. Nor should we talk about the conquest of Russia by the Scandinavians or part of it. Indeed, in the IX-X centuries. they were a dangerous enemy. However, forests and marshes, the presence of drags, the absence of a rugged sea coastline, as in Western Europe, made their successes here ephemeral. As archaeologists showed, there were no mass migrations from Scandinavia to Russia.that the Scandinavians played a decisive or even simply noticeable role in the formation of the ancient Russian statehood, is impossible. Statehood cannot be "transferred" to someone else's soil; it develops only when the appropriate local conditions are combined. On the contrary, getting to Eastern Europe, the Normans always very quickly fell under the influence of Slavic culture. Nor should we talk about the conquest of Russia by the Scandinavians or part of it. Indeed, in the IX-X centuries. they were a dangerous enemy. However, forests and marshes, the presence of drags, the absence of a rugged sea coastline, as in Western Europe, made their successes here ephemeral. As archaeologists showed, there were no mass migrations from Scandinavia to Russia.that the Scandinavians played a decisive or even simply noticeable role in the formation of the ancient Russian statehood, is impossible. Statehood cannot be "transferred" to someone else's soil; it develops only when the appropriate local conditions are combined. On the contrary, getting to Eastern Europe, the Normans always very quickly fell under the influence of Slavic culture. Nor should we talk about the conquest of Russia by the Scandinavians or part of it. Indeed, in the IX-X centuries. they were a dangerous enemy. However, forests and marshes, the presence of drags, the absence of a rugged sea coastline, as in Western Europe, made their successes here ephemeral. As archaeologists showed, there were no mass migrations from Scandinavia to Russia. On the contrary, getting to Eastern Europe, the Normans always very quickly fell under the influence of Slavic culture. Nor should we talk about the conquest of Russia by the Scandinavians or part of it. Indeed, in the IX-X centuries. they were a dangerous enemy. However, forests and marshes, the presence of drags, the absence of a rugged sea coastline, as in Western Europe, made their successes here ephemeral. As archaeologists showed, there were no mass migrations from Scandinavia to Russia. On the contrary, getting to Eastern Europe, the Normans always very quickly fell under the influence of Slavic culture. Nor should we talk about the conquest of Russia by the Scandinavians or part of it. Indeed, in the IX-X centuries. they were a dangerous enemy. However, forests and marshes, the presence of drags, the absence of a rugged sea coastline, as in Western Europe, made their successes here ephemeral. As archaeologists showed, there were no mass migrations from Scandinavia to Russia. As archaeologists showed, there were no mass migrations from Scandinavia to Russia. As archaeologists showed, there were no mass migrations from Scandinavia to Russia.
The first East Slavic states took shape, in many respects, contrary to the classical Marxist canons. There was no class or estate oppression here for a very long time, but there was oppression of one tribe by another. Payments collected from the Eastern Slavs from a foreign defeated people (tribute) were distributed not only among the elite, but among all the soldiers of the victorious tribe. On the one hand, this led to social peace and rare cohesion, and on the other, to terrible inter-tribal wars that allowed the Khazars and Varangians in the VIII-IX centuries. to conquer part of the Eastern Slavs. The ancient Russian princes known to us came from the descendants of the Kiev prince Askold, the breadwinners of the princes, i.e. people who raised the princes and, thus, associated with the princely family "artificial kinship", and Rurik - a native of Scandinavia, or, according to another version,from the Slavs of the South Baltic. The originality of the emerging statehood was also in the fact that Ancient Russia was originally created as a multiethnic state, where the most diverse tribes and political and legal traditions were mixed. Equal ethnocultural elements in this process were the East Slavic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric, Germanic, primarily Scandinavian, Celtic, Aryan, primarily North Iranian (Sarmatian). So, in the folding of the future Novgorodians, in addition to the Finno-Ugrians, Slavs from the Upper Dnieper, South Baltic and Mazovia took part. At different times, our ancestors entered into various interactions with the Aryans, mainly with various Sarmatian tribes, from which they even borrowed the gods Khors and Semargla, and with the Finno-Ugrians. Under their influence, in particular,among the Eastern Slavs, some matriarchal features revived. On the other hand, our ancestors assimilated many different tribes, including the Aryan, and influenced the Balts and Finno-Ugrians in a very serious way. With the Aryans, in the opinion of many linguists, the Eastern Slavs are even connected with the "secondary relationship of languages."
An external factor played a huge role in the history of pre-Mongol Rus. This factor, as modern science has shown, can both stimulate the processes of state formation and slow them down, as evidenced by the example of the Polabian Slavs, whose wars with the Germans "preserved" tribal isolation. The onslaught of enemies in Kievan Rus stimulated, in general, all centripetal processes. In the north, there were incursions of the Yatvingians and Scandinavians. The Normans achieved the greatest successes at the very end of the 10th century, when the Norwegian Jarl Eirik was able to take Ladoga in 997 and ravaged the Russian lands for 4 years. Relations with nomads played a special role in the life of our ancestors. In the VI century. the Avars (obry) subjugated the Dulebs, but later frequent uprisings of the Slavic tribes allowed Charlemagne to defeat the Avar Kaganate. In the IX century.the southern borderlands were attacked by the Magyars (Hungarians). According to the Persian author Ibn Rosteh, they subdued some of the East Slavic tribes. However, waging war with the latter was apparently very difficult. At the turn of the IX-X centuries. the Hungarians went to the Middle Danube, and, constantly committing devastating raids on various peoples of Western and Central Europe, did not dare to do a similar thing east of the Carpathians.
The Khazars were of much greater importance for the Eastern Slavs. The "stone chronicle" - a chain of powerful fortresses on the border of the two countries, built by the Khazar government against the Eastern Slavs, eloquently testifies to the fierce struggle between Russia and Khazaria. Tribute to the Khazars, according to the Tale of Bygone Years, was paid at different times by Vyatichi, Northerners, Polyana and Radimichi. In addition, apparently, at the will and instigation of the Khazar elite, the aforementioned campaigns of the Magyars against the Slavs at the end of the 9th century were also made. By setting some tribes of Eastern Europe against others, the Khazar Kaganate retained power over them. In the second half of the VIII - the first third of the IX centuries. Khazaria has experienced a series of serious shocks that greatly weakened this country. Summarizing numerous indirect data, L. N. Gumilev came to the conclusion that the second half of the VIII century.- this is the period of the gradual seizure of power in the Khazar Kaganate by the richest Jewish merchants - the Rakhdonites. This triggered a civil war that significantly weakened the country. At the beginning of the IX century. Russian princes adopted the title "kagan", i.e. put forward, according to the concept of that time, in opposition to the Khazar elite, claims to supreme power over the entire Great Steppe. At the end of the 9th and the first half of the 10th centuries. Khazaria is no longer leading an offensive movement on the land of the Eastern Slavs, it, most likely, is only defending itself. In 965 Svyatoslav Igorevich destroyed this state, annexing Tmutarakan, Korchev (Kerch) and Belaya Vezha in the Lower Don region to his state. This event made an amazing impression on contemporaries. The Pechenegs, known in the southern Russian steppes since 915, became the allies of the Russians in the wars with the Khazars. However, having defeated the common enemy,they themselves began to raid Russia.
In 988-997 Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavovich defeated the Pechenegs in a difficult war. To do this, he created several lines of powerful fortresses located in the zone of visibility of each other, and populated them with soldiers from different regions of Russia. In the event of a raid, the local population fled here, and smoke and fire alarms made it possible to transmit information about the enemies first to the neighboring fortress, then to the next one, and so, along the chain, to Kiev itself. In addition, he fenced off the southern borders of the country with Serpent Shafts, which deprived the enemy cavalry of the surprise factor. In 1036 Yaroslav the Wise defeated the Pechenegs for the last time. In 1060 the torques that replaced them were driven off. After the final defeat of the Pechenegs, some of them, however, like some of the Torks, submitted to Russia, becoming part of the so-called black hoods. The union of the latter with the Eastern Slavs was largely due to the presence of a common enemy - the Polovtsians, who appeared in the southern Russian steppes from the middle of the 11th century. Nomads and other enemies were a difficult test for the Eastern Slavs, turning their history into a history of constant war, which, of course, did not at all exclude trade, unions and dynastic marriages. For example, the grandfather of Andrei Bogolyubsky and his brother Vsevolod Big Nest on the mother's side was the Polovtsian Khan Aepa. The connections with the Volga Bulgaria were also diverse. In the VII-VIII centuries. The Middle Volga region was inhabited by tribes that left the so-called Imenkov culture. According to new information, these were the Eastern Slavs. Further, this population was swept away by the Magyars or the Turkic people - Bulgars. This territory was Turkized, but even in the 20s. X century. There were still quite a lot of Slavs here,and the ruler of the Volga Bulgaria was called by the Arab diplomat Ahmed ibn Fadlan "al-malik as-Sakaliba" - "the king of the Slavs". This country traded intensively with Russia. However, there were often wars between them.
Author: Miss Yulia
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