Who are the Rus, or dew, or Rus? The usual answer is either a people or a certain social group. And who's ethnicity? Again stupor: either the Germans, or the Scandinavians, or the Slavs, or even the Celts. Everything would be fine, but neither ethnography nor history knows the Russians. But the Russians are very familiar with medieval historiography. But how familiar? Such impression, medieval authors together decided to make fun of the descendants. So who were they, Rus?
Medieval authors wrote their works not for us, but for their contemporaries. For them, the Rus were not a mysterious tribe, but quite real people with whom they fought and traded. So how did the contemporaries themselves see the Rus?
So let's see.
Byzantium: for the Greeks, dew (only this way) is clearly the population of all Ancient Russia, which attacks the empire or trades with it. Why did they write exactly "the people grew", here the authority of the Bible played a role, because the prophet Ezekiel says "to Gog in the land of Magog, to the prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal" (the fact that Gog is the Lydian king Gyges, well-known to the Greek scribes, the Greeks they did not even suspect about it). True, Konstantin Bogryanorodny has a reservation: dew - they trade with Byzantium: "The Slavs, their paktiots (tributaries): Kriviteins, Lendzanians and other Slavinians - they chop monoxyls in their mountains during winter …", that is, the Rus are the Slavs, and the Slavs are subject to the Rus. Rus - collect taxes and trade with Byzantium, while the Slavs pay taxes and sell ships to the Rus. But the question arises:Did the Slavs cut ships for free? They took part in the raids on the empire, and the Greeks also called them Rus at that time.
Europeans: here they are united in the opinion: the Rus are the people inhabiting the state of Rus. The learned Italian Liutprand writes directly: “Closer to the north, there is a certain people, which the Greeks in appearance call Rusy, but we call Normans by location. Indeed, in German, nord means north, and man means man; that's why northern people can be called Normans. If the Byzantines defined the Rus as the dews from the Bible or the Scythians, then the Europeans tried to pull the Rus to the ancient geography, correlating the Rus with the Rugi or Ruthenians.
Arabs: these distinguish between Rus and Slavs. The Rus attack the Slavs, impose tribute and sell the Slavs into slavery, as well as trade with Byzantium, the Caliphate and the Khazar Khaganate, and sometimes they fight. Here they are in solidarity in the division of the Slavs and the Rus.
Scandinavians. This is where the fun begins. Sagas don't know any Rus! More precisely, they know, but already in later geographical summaries, starting from the 12th century. And this term has never been tried on. Although God himself ordered them!
So, for the neighbors of Russia, the Rus are either the entire people of the country, or the ruling elite. In general, they themselves were confused. Our ancestors themselves are probably to blame for the confusion. Probably to the question of a foreigner: "Who are you and where are you from?", Our gallant ancestors answered: "I am from a kind of Russian, from Russia." Here's a foreigner racking his head over such an answer, and at the same time they added a headache to us.
Promotional video:
And what did our ancestors themselves think about it? I want to note that Russian sources do not know any Russes - they only know Rus. Rus is already a late construction that has nothing to do with historical Rus. Therefore, those who now call themselves Rus can just as well call themselves an elf or a goblin.
The Tale of Bygone Years (PVL, further) immediately declares in the story about the vocation of the Varangians: “And they went across the sea to the Varangians, to Russia. Those Varangians were called Rus, as others are called the Swedes, and some Normans and Angles, and still other Gotlandians - that's how these are. " It would seem that everything is clear that Russia is a Scandinavian people. But bad luck - there is no such people and never have been in Scandinavia. The Slavs and Finno-Ugrians of the Danish king Rerik and his squad (or some kind of Plab prince from Rügen, in this case it does not matter) were summoned. The German chronicler Titmar of Merseburg remembered about the Danes, who wrote in a remark about Kiev: “until now, to him, to all that land, by the forces of the slaves who escaped by flight (* here the ethnonym Slavs and the Latin word sclavus - slave are played up), most of all (by forces) (it was possible) to resist the ruinous (raids) of the Pechenegs … ". Under "swift dans", the author clearly has descendants of Rurik.
But in Denmark there is no Rus people, just as there are none among the Western Slavs. So, the Russians called the squad of Rurik and their descendants. And this is not the only case of such a naming of the Scandinavian squad. In 844, some ar-rus from the country of Majus (the biblical country of Magog, that is, a certain northern country) attacked Arab Spain. When the Arabs began to find out who they were, it turned out that they were the Norwegians of King Turgays from Ireland. But we do not know the Rus people in Ireland or Norway. And since the Arab chroniclers wrote that there were exactly the Russians, it means that only prisoners could have called themselves that way.
Several years earlier, in 839, certain envoys appeared to the court of the Frankish emperor Louis the Pious, “claiming that they, that is, their people, were called Ros, their king, called the Khakan …”. When they began to understand, it turned out that they were Swedes. Here the data is confirmed by the deaf information of the Russian chronicles: “In the year 6367 (859). The Varangians from the overseas levied tribute from the Chudi, and from the Slovenes, and from the Mary, and from the Krivichi. … In the year 6370 (862). They drove the Varangians across the sea, and did not give them tribute, and began to possess themselves … . But the matter was more complicated than in the annals. Most likely, the Swedes were invited to reign for the sake of fighting the Khazar Kaganate, because the title of the ruler of the Kagan meant a claim to imperial power in the region, and there could be only one Kagan at that time. Hence,these Swedes failed to cope with their task and were dismissed by the general Slavic uprising, during which Ladoga and Pskov burned to the ground.
So, Russia is clearly a Scandinavian term, because in sources (Arabic, German, Russian) it appears only in connection with the Scandinavian peoples. And again there is a certain duality: on the one hand, this is the squad, on the other hand, this is the name of the people.
But even as the name of the people, Russia looks strange. Under some circumstances, it simply replaces the original naming of the people. So in the ethnographic description PVL gives out "In the Japhetovo unit there are Russians, Chud and all sorts of peoples: Merya, Muroma, all, Mordovians, Zavolochskaya Chud, Perm, Pechera, Yam, Ugra, Lithuania, Zimigola, Kors, Letgola, Livs." And where are the Slavs? They are not - they were replaced by the Russians. Rus - replaced the name of the entire Slavic population of Rus in the 12th century, although in the 9th-10th centuries. the Byzantine emperor and Arab authors clearly distinguished the Rus and Slavs.
But PVL is still surprising. “And from those Varangians the Russian land was nicknamed. The Novgorodians are those people from the Varangian family, and before they were Slovenes. (* For the author of PVL, the Vikings and Rus are synonyms). We will agree that the name Rus could have been brought by the Scandinavians, but how were the Slavs converted into Varangians? But let's pay attention to what kind of Novgorodians they are. Until the 30s. X century. There was no Novgorod. In its place there were several fishing settlements, both Slavs and Finno-Ugric peoples. Somewhere in the 30s. Prince Igor decided to found a new city here (he did not even break his head over the name) and make it the center of northern Russia instead of Ladoga. And then pure synoikism, known from ancient history, occurred. Several multiethnic settlements were united into a single polis with their own civic collective and a common new cult of three deities. So these people became Novgorodians and Russians.
Hence, it can be assumed that Russia is not an ethnonym, but the name of a form of collective organization. And both a small one, like a squad, and many thousands in the form of a city collective and even a state.
It is interesting that the term Rus even supplanted the term glade. “And the Slavic people and the Russian are one, from the Varangians they called themselves Rus, and before there were Slavs; although they were called glades, the speech was Slavic. They were called glades because they sat in the field, and they had a common language - Slavic. " Glade is a tribal union. And by the way, it is also polyethnic (it is not for nothing that the author of the PVL writes "although they were called glades, they were Slavic," that is, the local population was completely assimilated by the Slavs). When the Slavs came to the Dnieper, Iranian-speaking tribes already lived there. And even Kiev was founded by the Iranians, because the names Kiy, Shchek, Khoriv are not Slavic names. The Iranians were a cultured people, superior in this to the Slavs, who looked like pure savages in comparison with them. As a result of unification into a single tribal Slavic-Iranian union,the glade progressed rapidly and overtook the rest of the Slavic tribes in social and economic development, becoming the locomotive of Russia. Note that the author of the PVL clearly says that the term rus itself is Scandinavian.
And now we observe another feature of the term rus - it is a multiethnic collective. After all, the squads of the Scandinavians, especially outside Scandinavia, could well accept warriors of other peoples. By the way, this is confirmed at the expense of Ireland. There were renegades who went to the service of the Vikings, for which the rest of the Irish hated them.
"Russian Truth" - a legal document of the XI century. speaks of Rusyns and “Slovenians”: “If the killed is a Rusyn, or a Gridin, or a merchant, or a sneak, or a swordsman, or an outcast, or Slovenin, then 40 hryvnias must be paid for him.” If the merchants, outcasts, vigilantes (greedins and swordsmen) and the police ranks of the yabednik everything is clear, then who are the Slavs and Rusyns? In Pravda, they are equal - vira costs 40 hryvnia. Rusyns and Slavs are free people (5 hryvnias for a slave vira). One might think that we have before us the division into Rus and Slavs, known from foreign sources. “The Slavs, their (dews) paktiots, namely: Kriviteins, Lendzans and other Slavs …”, writes Konstantin Porphyrogenitus. Slovenians are the Slavic population of Rus. And the Rusyns?
The suffix -in in Russian means belonging to something or someone. That is, the Rusyns are belonging to Russia. Thus, the Rusyns are an alien population that appeared together with Rurik. Let me remind you that in the IX-X centuries. the Slavs lived in tribal communities, judging by ancient tribal laws. Rurik and the state apparatus did not fit into the generic norms. “Pravda” was needed to introduce the state apparatus into the right-wing field of Russia. In PVL, Rusyns are opposed as negotiating parties to the population of the Byzantine Empire - Christians or Grechin, just as in Pravda to the Slavs. It can be concluded that the Rusyns are not only the descendants of Rurik and his squad, but also people who joined Rus, no matter what nationality. Primarily in cities. Until the X century. in Russia there were no real cities, that is, there were no policies with urban collectives. This process began only with the emergence of the state, when people began to break away from the tribal communities and settle in fortified trade and craft centers, serving the squads and merchants. For a hundred years, urban collectives have grown, strengthened, organized, gaining self-government and urban cults of pagan deities, becoming a political and economic force. Moreover, the state itself created urban collectives. So, Rusyns are townspeople. “The Novgorodians are those people from the Varangian family, and before they were Slovenes” (PVL). The name Rusyns means "owned by the state" and not part of the old tribes. The inclusion of cities in the state was the first step in the formation of the state: the princes and Rurik defended the interests of the tribes, and the tribes paid tribute and everyone was happy with the treaty (a pact in Byzantine sources or nearby in Russian sources). And then the process of strengthening the state began to involve cities, and then tribes, destroying the ancient tribal structure of Slavic society, transforming Russia into a feudal state. “And the Slavic people and the Russian are one, from the Varangians they called themselves Rus, and before there were Slavs; although they were called glades, the speech was Slavic”(PVL). Only the inclusion of old tribes and clans in the state system, and not only as tributaries by agreement, can explain the name of the chronicler of the Novgorodians and Glades by Rus. Only the inclusion of old tribes and clans in the state system, and not only as tributaries by agreement, can explain the name of the chronicler of the Novgorodians and Glades by Rus. Only the inclusion of old tribes and clans in the state system, and not only as tributaries by agreement, can explain the name of the chronicler of the Novgorodians and Glades by Rus.
Russia is not an ethnonym. Rurik was a Varangian, and Russian sources did not confuse the Vikings and Russia. Russia is a state property. Since they did not know the Greek-Latin terms for the name of the new phenomenon in Russia, they used the already familiar - Russia, or a multiethnic collective subordinate to the leader.
Thus, Russia can be translated as "union" or "federation". And then the words "We are from the Russian clan" become understandable, it is akin to "I am a Soviet person" or "I am a Russian", that is, belonging not to any one people, but to a whole federation of peoples. Indeed, Russia was a multinational state, including the Slavic, Baltic, Finno-Ugric, Iranian peoples. It even emerged as a federation of Slavs and Finno-Ugric peoples. And it is not surprising that Russia quickly supplanted all other tribal names. Belonging to a huge multinational empire was honorable. And that is why the disintegration of Russia was so acutely perceived and is perceived now.