Three brothers Chekh, Lech and Rus went to seek happiness all over the world.
- West Slavic legend
The legend of the three brothers is a typical patronymic explanation of the origin of peoples, which was widely used by the authors of the Old Testament. Patronymy is convenient for its simplicity coupled with versatility. Thus, the brothers Chekh, Lech and Rus not only "explain" the origin of the Czechs, Poles and Russians, but at the same time reflect the order of formation of the respective states by their seniority: Great Moravia, Poland, Piast, and Kievan Rus.
Unfortunately, like all patronymics, the brothers Cech, Lech and Rus arose postfactum, retroactively stating the existence of peoples and states. Therefore, let's digress from legends and consider modern, alternative to the "official", but claiming to be scientific, versions of the origin of the ethnonym Rus.
Version 1. Our distant ancestors lived along the rivers and deified them, and in the Proto-Slavic language Rusa meant "water, moisture".
Version 2. Rus is derived from the Latin word rus - "countryside, arable land".
Version 3. Rus comes from the word "bear", which in many Western European languages has a common Indo-European root urs-.
Version 4. Rus comes from the Slavic tribe Rugov.
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All four cited versions are non-explanatory explanations. The consonance of a word with the word rus is not enough. Rusa, rug, urs and rus are far from a complete list of words that are consonant with Rus existing in different languages. It is necessary to historically reasonably explain the transformation of a similar word into an ethnonym and linguistically rigorously prove the possibility of such a transformation. For example, most scientists do not consider the Rugs to be a Slavic tribe, the presence of Rugs on the territory of the future Rus is not recorded anywhere, and the transition from "g" to "s" is linguistically inexplicable.
Version 5. According to the so-called "Nostratic theory" in the north of Europe, there is a group of Baltic-Finnish languages, on the basis of which the name Rus could have appeared with the meaning "riding, southern country", and the most probable base language appears to be Karelian.
A reference to a fashionable theory, in this case a Nostratic one, should not replace facts and explanations of how a certain word from the “group of Baltic-Finnish languages” turned into an ethnonym of the population of Rus with the capital not in Karelia, but in Kiev.
Version 6. Rus comes from ruotsi, as the Finns and Karelians call the Swedes. The concept of rowing lies at the heart of ruotsi.
In general, the fact that the Finns call the ruotsi of the Swedes and not the Russians is a striking fact. It seems to me that not a single hypothesis of the emergence of the ethnonym Rus has the right to life if it does not explain this phenomenon. Deriving ruotsi from some kind of "oarsmen" or "rowing warriors" also requires a historically reasonable explanation.
Version 7. The Rus are the reudignii of Tacitus, who lived between the Balts, Slavs and Germans, and whose tribal name scientists trace to the term meaning "uprooters of the forest" (from the German roden - "uproot").
The version is based on the testimony of a revered Roman historian, for this alone it is worthy of consideration. However, here, too, it would be necessary to explain where to attach the "uprooters of the forest" and how reudignii are connected with Russia.
Version 8. Rus is derived from the name of the tributary of the Dnieper, the Ros river.
Another example of a non-explanatory explanation of another respected person - academician B. Rybakov. Firstly, it is not clear whether the ethnonym “Rus” comes from the Ros River or vice versa. Secondly, even if Russia comes from Ros, there is still no answer to the main question: why is Ros called Ros?
I think that this is enough, although the list can be continued. Alas, no result. A satisfactory solution was not given by any of the alternative versions, both listed above and many unmentioned. But a possible solution was nevertheless found in G. Lebedev. A scrupulous researcher, Lebedev has collected a huge amount of factual material about the Scandinavian countries of the "Viking Age" (VIII-X centuries) [5]. Unfortunately, he was unable to abstract from the prevailing officialdom and adapted the presented factual data to the chronicle tradition. As a result, Lebedev surprisingly passed by this clue, which was in the material of his own book!
However, everything is in order.
According to the initial chronicle, the time of the emergence of Rus is 852: "In the year 6360, indicta 15, when Michael began to reign, the Russian land began to be called." However, today we know of independent references to Russia, many of which date back to much earlier times. Some of them are given below in retrospect.
The Persian historian Ibn Rust quoted the Book of Ways and Countries by the Arab polymath Khordadbeh, written in the second half of the 9th century: “As for the dews, they live on an island surrounded by a lake. The circumference of this island, on which they live, is equal to three days' journey. It is covered with forests and swamps, unhealthy and cheese to the point that it is worth stepping on the ground, and it shakes due to the abundance of water in it. The dews have a king who is called "kagan dews". They raid the Slavs, drive up to them on ships, disembark, take them prisoner, take them to the Khazars and Bulgarians and sell them there. They do not have arable land, and eat only what they bring from the land of the Slavs. When a son is born to one of them, he takes a naked sword, puts it in front of the newborn and says: “I will not leave you any property, but you will have only thatwhat will you gain with this sword. " They have no real estate, no villages, no arable land, their only trade is the trade in sables, squirrels and other furs … Dew has many cities … These people are brave and victorious, when they land in an open place, no one can resist them: they destroy everything, take women and the vanquished into slavery. Dew is strong and careful and they do not make trips on horseback, and all their raids and battles are carried out only on ships … ". Dew is strong and careful and they do not make trips on horseback, and all their raids and battles are carried out only on ships … ". Dew is strong and careful and they do not make trips on horseback, and all their raids and battles are carried out only on ships … ".
Byzantine patriarch Photius was horrified after the famous attack of the dews on Constantinople in 860: “Woe is me that I see how a rude and cruel people surround the city and plunder the city suburbs, destroys everything, destroys everything - fields, dwellings, pastures, herds, women, children, elders, youths. The people are not eminent …, but received a name from the time of the campaign against us, insignificant, but gained importance, humiliated and poor, but reached a brilliant height and untold wealth, a people living somewhere far from us, barbaric, nomadic, proud of weapons."
About the same Nikon Chronicle, where, according to B. Rybakov, the message came from the Serbian translations of the old Byzantine descriptions of the 860 attack: the country of Rome [Byzantium] and I want to go to Constantingrad … ".
L. Gumilev quotes from a Persian anonym of the 9th century: “The people of the dew country are militant. They are at war with all the infidels around them and come out victorious. Their king is called Kagan of the Ros. There is a group of Morovvats among them."
Byzantine chronicles report that in 840 a fleet of dews will attack Amastrida (Paphlagonia, the southern coast of the Black Sea).
The Bertine annals for the year 839 contain a letter to the Frankish emperor Louis I from the Byzantine emperor Theophilos, who, together with the embassy, “also sent … some people who claimed that they, that is, their people, were called Ros [Rhos]; their king, called Khakan, sent them to him [Theophilus], as they assured, for the sake of friendship. He [Theophilus] asked … that, by the grace of the emperor and with his help, they would be able to safely return [to their homeland] through his empire, since the path along which they arrived in Constantinople ran through barbaric lands and, in their extreme savagery, extremely fierce peoples, and he did not want them to return this way, so as not to be exposed in case of any danger. After thoroughly investigating [the purpose of] their arrival, the emperor learned that they were Svei people."
In the appendix to the biography of St. Stefan Surozhsky there is vague information about the attack on Surozh (now Sudak) by the prince of the dews Bravlin around the end of the VIII century.
A note in the Life of George of Amastrid "(VIII century) reads:" Everything lying on the shores of the Black Sea … ravaged and ravaged the fleet of dews (the people grew up - Scythian, living near the Northern Taurus [6], rough and wild) ".
The message of the Persian historian Belami under 642-643 (translated from Arabic, presumably from Tabari): “When the vanguard of the Arab army approached Derbent, the ruler of Derbent Shahriar said:“I found myself between two enemies - the Khazars and the Ros, the latter are enemies of everything the world, and no one can fight them. Therefore, instead of taking tribute from us, entrust us better to fight with them”…”.
The famous Polish Slavic scholar Henrik Lovmianski as the first genuine mention of the dew, which does not cause reservations, is recognized as the name hros or hrus in the 6th century Syrian source of the Pseudo-Zacharias Church History.
It is high time to note here that all the authors who wrote in Greek had objective difficulties with the depiction of the sound / u /, therefore it is difficult to distinguish dew and rus in Pseudo-Zechariah and in other Greek texts. The situation is even worse in Arabic, which does not distinguish between the vowels / o / and / u / at all. In the following text, the word "dew" is conventionally used everywhere in order to avoid unnecessary confusion (there is already enough of it!) With everything Russian and Russian in the modern sense of these words.
Thus, historical evidence fixes the ethnonym dews from at least the 6th century, and it is precisely the ethnonym, since almost all the above reports are not talking about a country or state, but only about a people referred to as hros (hrus), dews (rus), [7]. This people, living on the "island of dews", but at the same time somewhere near the Crimea (Caucasus), as well as in the Northern Black Sea region, is awarded the following characteristics: barbaric, cruel and nomadic; brave and victorious, making his raids only on ships; merchant, not disdaining the slave trade; not eminent, humiliated and poor, but who reached a brilliant height and untold wealth. Sometimes the characteristics look contradictory, for example, dews do not have villages and real estate, but at the same time there are many cities. And nowhere, maybeexcept for the "Persian Anonymous" with his "people of the country", not a word about the country, the state of the dews! Really, this people, awarded with such striking, albeit contradictory characteristics, did not have their own state? It turns out he did, but in the distant past. Moreover, the state of this unusual people could, during its heyday, be considered a great power, which the arrogant Rome itself reckoned with. But none of the witnesses cited above, including the earliest of them, Pseudo-Zachariah, has already seen this state. But none of the witnesses cited above, including the earliest of them, Pseudo-Zachariah, has already seen this state. But none of the witnesses cited above, including the earliest of them, Pseudo-Zachariah, has already seen this state.
V. Egorov