Vitaly Ignatiev 13.10.2015

Vitaly Ignatiev 13.10.2015

SLAVS

THEORIES OF ORIGIN AND SETTLEMENT

Different things are written about the origin of the Slavs, but it is generally accepted that it was the second half of the first millennium from the birth of Christ, while it is also believed that they appeared immediately and suddenly. At least, official history does not consider the version of the existence of Slavic tribes until that time. Science denies them the presence of ancestors, proto-language and ancestral home. There were all sorts of little-studied, and not completely studied Pelasgians, Illyrians, Thracians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Dacians, Getae, Antes, Venets with Veneds, Etruscans, but the Slavs, we are told, were not.

Official science dates the origin of the Slavs to about the 6th century. In these years they are first mentioned by historians. Their habitat is outlined by scientists from the upper Elbe to the Dnieper, touching the Danube in the south and capturing the upper reaches of the Vistula.

The first who tried to answer the questions: where, how and when did the Slavs appear on the historical territory, was the oldest chronicler Nestor - author "Tales of Bygone Years". He determined the territory of the Slavs, including the lands along the lower Danube and Pannonia. It was from the Danube, according to the "Tale ...", that the process of resettlement of the Slavs began, that is, they were not the original inhabitants of their land, we are talking about migration. Consequently, the Kievan chronicler was the founder of the so-called migration theory of the origin of the Slavs, known as the "Danubian" or "Balkan". It was popular in the writings of medieval authors: Polish and Czech chroniclers of the 13th-14th centuries. This opinion was shared for a long time by historians of the XVIII - early. XX centuries The Danubian "ancestral home" of the Slavs was recognized, in particular, by such historians as S. M. Solovyov, V. O. Klyuchevsky and others. According to V. O. Klyuchevsky, the Slavs moved from the Danube to the Carpathians. Proceeding from this, the idea can be traced in his work that “the history of Russia began in the 6th century. in the northeastern foothills of the Carpathians. It was here, according to the historian, that an extensive military alliance of tribes was formed, led by the Duleb-Volhynian tribe. From here, the Eastern Slavs settled east and northeast to Ilmen Lake in VII- VIII centuries So, V. O. Klyuchevsky (and not he alone) sees Eastern Slavs comparatively late newcomers on their own land.

In the Middle Ages, another migration theory of the origin of the Slavs originates, which received the name "Scythian-Sarmatian". It was first recorded in the Bavarian Chronicle of the 13th century, and later adopted by many Western European authors of the 15th - 10th century. VIII centuries 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 "Roksolans". Gradually, the Slavs from the Northern Black Sea region settled to the west and southwest.

A different version of the migration theory was given by another major historian and linguist academician A. A. Shakhmatov . In his opinion, the basin of the Western Dvina and the Lower Neman in the Baltic region was the first ancestral home of the Slavs. From here, the Slavs, taking the name of the Wends (from the Celts), advanced to the Lower Vistula, from where only the Goths left in front of them in the Black Sea region (the turn of the 2nd - 3rd centuries). Consequently, here (Lower Vistula), according to A. A. Shakhmatov, was the second ancestral home of the Slavs. Finally, 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 tribes of southern and eastern Slavs here. So, following this "Baltic" theory, the Slavs were newcomers to the land, on which they then created their states.

There were and still are a number of other theories of the migratory nature of the origin of the Slavs and their "ancestral home" - this is the "Central European", according to which the Slavs and their ancestors turned out to be newcomers from Germany (Jutland and Scandinavia), settling from here across Europe and Asia, up to India. And the "Asian", which led the Slavs out of the territory Central Asia, where a common “ancestral home” for all Indo-Europeans was assumed, Alexander Nechvolodov put forward a similar theory. In his book "The Legend of the Russian Land" he writes:“Our origin is from the tribe of Japheth… THE HOLY WRITING tells us that after the flood, from the three sons of Noah - Shem, Ham and Japheth, all the nations that now live on earth originated. One of the tribes of the Japheth tribe settled in the upper reaches of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, which are now within the Russian Empire - in the Turkestan region. Here, this tribe gave rise, both to many tribes of Asia Minor, Persia and India, and to all the glorious and famous peoples inhabiting Europe: Greeks, Romans, Spaniards, French, English, Germans, Swedes, Lithuanians and others, as well as all Slavic tribes: Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Serbs and everyone else" .

Many theories and fictions have been put forward by various authors, scientists and not so much, about the origin of the Slavic tribe. Someone bases his point of view on archaeological excavations, but even here there is no single point of view about the continuity of cultures - meaning Slavic and Proto-Slavic, so in the latter, without denying their contribution to the formation of the Slavs, researchers nevertheless notice the presence non-Slavic components: Thracians, Celts, Germans, Balts and Scythians. And someone is trying to trace the paths of migration using various annals. But here the problem is that all chronicles, one way or another reporting information about the origin of the Slavs and Russia, did not reach us in the original, but were rewritten much later and due to political events that had an unconditional influence on them, cannot be 100% reliable.

A. Nechvolodov - interpreted our history as the history of a people endowed with a divine calling, seeing its roots in distant biblical times and including all pre-Kiev antiquity in it. At the same time, the Scythians were ranked among the ancestors of the Slavs, Huns and other peoples.

Historian and ethnologist L. N. Gumilyov , who wrote a large number of works on the history of ancient peoples, had his own point of view on the question of the origin of the Slavs. He paid special attention to the problem of interethnic contacts, including in Russian history, arguing that the Russians are an ethnic group that has developed from three components: Slavs, Finno-Ugric peoples and Tatars.

The Soviet academician B. A. Rybakov, in the book “Kievan Rus and the Russian Principalities of the XII-XIII centuries”, attributed the beginning of Slavic / Russian history to the XV century BC, and at the same time suggested, on the basis of a number of documents, that the ancestors of the Slavs were separate Scythian peoples the times of Herodotus, especially since the similarity between the description of the Scythians by Herodotus and the later descriptions of the Slavs by Arab travelers, in particular ibn Fadlan, is quite obvious, and he also clearly describes the coexistence of tillers from forest villages and riders from cities.

M. V. Lomonosov, who began his struggle for Russian history at Moscow University, was then perceived by the official science of Russia (precisely due to German influence) as a dreamer and ignoramus, however, if not for Lomonosov’s persistence, then in Russia they would still be studied in schools myths about the complete inability of the Slavs to create a state. He argued that the history of the Slavs is much older and deeper than that which was determined for us by foreigners who settled in our academy of sciences.

You can argue for a long time, but science comes to the aid of historians.

To begin with, let's turn to anthropology - the science of man and his origin.The results of a large-scale experiment published in scientific journal The American Journal of Human Genetics states unequivocally that“despite the popular opinion about the strong Tatar and Mongolian admixture in the blood of Russians, inherited by their ancestors back in the days Tatar-Mongol invasion, the haplogroups of the Turkic peoples and other Asian ethnic groups left virtually no trace on the population of the modern northwestern, central and southern regions.

In addition, studies of the structure of the skulls of the Eastern Slavs, ancient and modern, carried out by T. A. Trofimova, led to an unexpected conclusion about the autochonism of the formations (which arose and continue to exist in this area, essentially the same as the aborigines) of the tribes of the Eastern Slavs. That is, according to these data, there is no question of any resettlement of the Slavs from the western territories.

Anthropology, the science is quite young, but today a completely new trend is gaining strength- Genetic genealogy - the use of DNA tests in conjunction with traditional genealogical research methods.A Y-chromosome DNA test allows, for example, two males to determine whether they share a common ancestor in the male line or not.Y-chromosomal haplogroups are statistical markers to understand the origin of human populations.The peculiarity of the Y-chromosome is that it is transmitted from father to son almost unchanged and does not experience "mixing" and "dilution" by maternal heredity. This allows it to be used as a mathematically accurate tool for determining paternal descent. If the term "dynasty" has any biological meaning, then it is the inheritance of the Y chromosome.

Currently, DNA genealogy provides much more opportunities than before to restore the directions of past migrations. So, according to the works of Anatoly Klesov, the haplogroup R1a, which is especially characteristic of the Slavs (although not only for them), is also characteristic of Northern India, where from 15 to 30% (according to various estimates) of the population has this haplogroup, and in the higher castes this percentage grows to 72%.

R1a 1 - comes from a mutation of the haplogroup R1, which occurred in a man who lived about 15,000 years ago presumably. And the distribution of the descendants of the protochromosome carrier was probably carried out in several waves.

The most significant wave - about 3-5 thousand years ago from the Black Sea steppes, is probably associated with the spread of Indo-European languages ​​​​and Kurgan culture. Most of all, this haplogroup is common among the Slavs, North Indians, Iranian peoples (Tajiks, Pashtuns) and Central Asian peoples (Altaians, Khotons, Kirghiz).

Ethnogeographic distribution of haplogroup R1a

Currently, high frequencies of haplogroup R1a are found in Poland (56% of the population), Ukraine (50 to 65%), European Russia (45 to 65%), Belarus (45%), Slovakia (40%), Latvia (40%), Lithuania (38%), Czech Republic (34%), Hungary (32%), Croatia (29%), Norway (28%), Austria (26%), Sweden (24%), northeast Germany (23%) and Romania (22%). It is most common in Eastern Europe: among Lusatians (63%), Poles (about 56%), Ukrainians (about 54%), Belarusians (52%), Russians (48%), Tatars 34%, Bashkirs (26% ) (in the Bashkirs of Saratov and Samara regions up to 48%); and in Central Asia: among the Khujand Tajiks (64%), Kirghiz (63%), Ishkashimi (68%).Haplogroup R1a is most characteristic of the Slavs. For example, the following haplogroups are common among Russians :

R1a - 51% (Slavs, Poles, Russians, Belarusians, Ukrainians);

N3 - 22% (Finno-Ugrians, Finns, Balts);

I1b - 12% (Normans - Germans);

R1b - 7% (Celts and Italics);

11a - 5% (also Scandinavians);

E3b1 - 3% (Mediterraneans).

These studies do not give a clear answer when and where the Slavs appeared. However, it is absolutely certain that the haplogroup R1a , inherent in a greater proportion of all peoples known as Slavic, arose at least 15,000 years ago, and, according to other researchers, 36,000 years ago, simultaneously with other main haplogroups.

Home country R 1 a disputes are ongoing, and there is no clear answer to this question. There are several theories of its origin. Here are three of them.

Eastern European theory

According to the theory of the origin of R1a in Eastern Europe, C. Wells, Director of the Genographic Project from National Geographic claims that R1a originated in Europe from 10,000 to 15,000 years ago in Ukraine or southern Russia, this region is called the "Ukrainian refuge" which he served for people during the last glacial maximum. Also, it is assumed that the mutation came from territories that lie a little further to the east - from the Black Sea-Caspian steppe. In any case, this happened as a result of migration, which is supported by the Kurgan hypothesis, according to which there is a connection between the spread of Indo-European languages ​​​​and the development of the Kurgan culture. This theory is supported by a high frequency (over 50%) in Ukraine and southern Russia (Wells 2001) and a high percentage of R1a carriers in border areas.

It is likely that the domestication of the horse took place there, which made possible a wide cultural expansion that occurred more than 5000 years ago from the area of ​​the Kurgan culture in Ukraine.

South Asian theory

The theory of the origin of R1a in South Asia, set forth by geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University, suggests the origin of this haplogroup in South Asia about 36 thousand years ago, and from there it began to spread. The hypothesis is based on the variety of subclades of the haplogroup and the large number of their carriers in Pakistan, Northern India and Eastern Iran.

West Asian theory

Kivisild (2003) adheres to the hypothesis of origin in Western Asia because of the belief that it was from there that the Indo-Aryan tribes invaded India. In addition, Semino (2000) speaks of the appearance of R1a in the Middle East, relying on the fact that together with the origin of the haplogroup, Indo-European languages ​​arose here.

But let's digress from scientific discoveries and return to the history of the Slavs, which, even without DNA research, testifies to a glorious past.

The history of the Slavs has its roots in ancient times. As evidence for this, the ancient Slavic city of Arkaim, which was discovered in the summer of 1987 in the Chelyabinsk region, can act. The buildings in this city were erected in a circular manner and were connected to each other in the form of an amphitheater. In this arrangement, scientists saw the possibility of participation in the decision-making of a large circle of people. Simply put, in the history of the Slavs, one can find the origins of democracy, which originated here long before it appeared in the west.

Confirmation ancient history Slavs can also serve as the oldest megaliths, which were discovered not far from the Ural Mountains in the Chelyabinsk region. They were located on an area of ​​​​about 6 square kilometers, that is, they are more diverse and bright compared to the English Stonehenge. In addition, one of the islands also found ancient building, which is very reminiscent of an observatory. The roof and walls of the structure are built of multi-ton stone slabs, the largest of which weighs about 17 tons. This building dates back to the 4th millennium BC, and it was erected by the ancestors of the Slavs.

The history of the Slavs can also include a more ancient structure: a metal processing plant, which was discovered in the same place, in the Urals. At this plant, the Slavs smelted copper. In 2011, a group of archaeologists discovered a gigantic geoglyph there, which was laid out in the form of an elk from stone slabs and reached a length of 265 meters.

In the same Chelyabinsk region, in the Kapova and Ignatievskaya caves, scientists managed to find rock paintings that were made more than 14 thousand years ago and depict the creation of life on earth as the ancestors of the Slavs saw it. Interestingly, fragments of similar drawings of a much later origin were found in Algerian and Australian caves.

Excavations in Trypillia (Ukraine). Cities of twenty thousand people approximately five thousand years BC. BUT Bones? (Near Voronezh). Forty-four thousand years BC , according to American archaeologists! That is, Kostenki is ancient Egyptian pyramids for forty thousand years!

It seems to me that today it can be absolutely firmly stated that the so-called "Norman" theory of the emergence of Slavic states, which asserted that the Slavs are the youngest people, is fundamentally wrong. The main basis of its apologists is that before the middle of the first millennium the words Slavs and Russians are not mentioned anywhere. However, these self-names are of a later origin, and before their occurrence, tribes and peoples had other names. It’s just that Russians in the distant past began to be called many kindred peoples, clans and tribes that were included in the state association called Rus. The proof of this is the lines above, archaeological excavations, oral tradition and much more, about which there is neither time nor necessity to write about in this article.

It's time to rewrite history. But this should be done not for the sake of political conjecture, but consciously, based on scientific research.

P . S . “Rus was created by the union of the Slavs, who went as far as possible to the east from the European wars and Euro-showdowns. It began long before Novgorod Rus. They left for a peaceful life: farming, creating families, procreating, sowing, harvesting, singing, dancing, dancing round dances on holidays ...

The call "For the Motherland!" was always only among the Slavs, because the Slavs always had to defend themselves!

With the name of Jesus, the Slavs never went on predatory campaigns, as the "politically correct" crusaders did in Europe.

Women in Russia were not burned at the stake! There was no terrifying / similar Western / Inquisition in Russia.

Our ancestors, the same Proto-Slavs, did not recognize slavery, while in Greece and Rome it flourished. For this, by the way, the Slavs were considered backward » .

Mikhail Zadornov

Reconstruction of the faces of a boy from the burial of the settlement of Sungir.

Sculptural reconstruction based on the skull of a man from the Filippovskiy barrows. Southern Urals. Sarmatians, 5-4 centuries BC

1. Introduction 3

2. The origin of the Slavs 4

3. Religion of the ancient Slavs 8

4. Social order 10

5. Culture of the Slavs 12

6. References 16

Introduction

“The history of research on the origin and religion of the Slavs is a history of disappointments,” said Stanislav Urbanchik, a prominent Slavic scholar, and he had reason to say so. It can be said that nothing was left of the culture of the Slavs, since almost everything was destroyed by Christianity. 70 years ago, Vatroslav Yagich, one of the creators of historical and linguistic Slavic studies, said that he would agree to give away all the accumulated scientific literature on this issue for several ancient texts of Slavic culture. Since then, no major finds of such texts have been noted, although archeology has made progress by discovering and examining a number of previously unknown ancient Slavic settlements and places of worship.

Origin of the Slavs

“- Tell me, Gamayun, prophetic bird, about the birth of the Russian family,

about laws, Svarog data!

I will not hide anything that I know ... "

“And they went to Zhiva Cvarogovna with young Dazhbog Perunovich.

soon children: Prince Kisek, father Orey. And father Orey gave birth to sons - Kiy, Shchek and Horeb Jr.

Zemun watered them with her milk, the god of the winds Stribog rocked the cradle, Semargl warmed them, Khors illuminated the world for them.

They also had grandchildren, and then great-grandchildren appeared - either the descendants of Dazhbog and Zhiva and Rosya - a beautiful mermaid, then a great and glorious people, a tribe by name - Rus ”

Songs of the bird Gamayun

The ancestors of the Slavs have long lived in Central and Eastern Europe. According to their language, they belong to the Indo-European peoples who inhabit Europe and part of Asia up to India. Archaeologists believe that the Slavic tribes can be traced according to excavations from the middle of the second millennium BC. The ancestors of the Slavs (in the scientific literature they are called Proto-Slavs) are supposedly found among the tribes that inhabited the basin of the Odra, Vistula and Dnieper; Slavic tribes appeared in the Danube basin and in the Balkans only at the beginning of our era.

Rybakov in his book "The World of History" writes that the Slavic peoples belong to the ancient Indo-European unity, which included such peoples as Germanic, Baltic ("Lithuanian-Latvian"), Romanesque, Greek, Indian ("Aryan"), etc. in ancient times over a vast area from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean and from the Arctic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. Four or five thousand years ago, the Indo-Europeans did not yet occupy the whole of Europe and had not yet populated Hindustan.

The estimated maximum territory of the settlement of the ancestors of our Slavs in the west reached the Elbe (Laba), in the north to the Baltic Sea, in the east - to the Seim and Oka, and in the south their border was a wide strip of forest-steppe, which went from the left bank of the Danube east towards Kharkov . Several hundred Slavic tribes lived in this territory.

Despite the seemingly fragmented and scattered Slavic tribes, all the same, the Slavic tribes were a single whole. The chronicler of "The Tale of Bygone Years" at the beginning of his work wrote: "... There was one Slavic people" ("There was one language Slovene"). The problem is not only to determine the ancestral home of the Slavs, but even to answer the question of their origin. There are many versions of this problem, however, none of them can be considered completely reliable.

In the VI century. from a single Slavic community, an East Slavic branch stands out (future Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian peoples). Around this time, the emergence of large tribal unions of the Eastern Slavs. The chronicle preserved the legend about the reigning in the Middle Dnieper region of the brothers Kyi, Shchek, Khoriv and their sister Lybid and about the founding of Kyiv. The same reigns were in other tribal unions, including 100-200 separate tribes.

Many Slavs who lived on the banks of the Vistula settled on the Dnieper in the Kiev province and were called glades from their clean fields. This name disappeared in ancient Russia, but became the common name of the Poles, the founders of the Polish state. From the same tribe of Slavs were two brothers, Radim and Vyatko, the heads of the Radimichi and Vyatichi: the first chose a dwelling on the banks of the Sozh, in the Mogilev province, and the second on the Oka, in Kaluga, Tula or Oryol. The Drevlyans, so named from their forest land, lived in the Volyn province; Dulebs and Buzhans along the Bug River, which flows into the Vistula. Lutichi and Tivertsy along the Dniester to the very sea and Danube, already having cities in their land; white Croats in the vicinity of the Carpathian mountains. Northerners, neighbors of the meadows, on the banks of the Desna, Seven and Suda, in the Chernigov and Poltava provinces; in Minsk and Vitebsk, between Pripet and the Western Dvina. Dregovichi; in Vitebsk, Pskov, Tver and Smolensk, in the upper reaches of the Dvina, Dnieper and Volga. Krivichi; and on the Dvina, where the Polota River flows into it, the Polochans of the same tribe with them, on the shores of Lake Ilmen, in fact, the so-called Slavs who founded Novgorod.

The most developed and cultural among the Slavic associations were glades. According to the chronicler, "the land of the glades also bore the name "Rus". One of the explanations of the origin of the term "Rus", put forward by historians, is associated with the name of the Ros River, a tributary of the Dnieper, which gave the name of the tribe on whose territory the meadow lived.

Religion of the ancient Slavs

The ancient Slavs were pagans who deified the forces of nature. The main god was, apparently, Rod, the god of heaven and earth. An important role was also played by deities associated with those forces of nature that are especially important for agriculture: Yarilo - the god of the sun (among some Slavic tribes he was called Yarilo, Khors) and Perun - the god of thunder and lightning. Perun was also the god of war and weapons, and therefore his cult was subsequently especially significant among the retinue. His idol stood in Kyiv on a hill, outside the courtyard of Vladimirov, and in Novgorod over the Volkhov River it was wooden, with a silver head and a golden mustache. Also known are the "cattle god" Volos, or Beley, Dazhbog, Samargl, Svarog (the god of fire), Mokosha (the goddess of earth and fertility), etc. The pagan cult was performed in specially arranged temples, where an idol was placed. The princes acted as high priests, but there were also special priests - sorcerers and magicians. Paganism persisted until 988, before the invasion Christian faith

Oleg's agreement with the Greeks also mentions Volos, whom the Russians swore allegiance to in the name and Perunov, having special respect for him, since he was considered the patron of cattle, their main wealth. The god of fun, love, harmony and all prosperity was called Lado; he was sacrificed by those entering into a marriage union. Kupala, the god of earthly fruits, was revered before picking up bread on June 23. Young people decorated themselves with wreaths, laid out a fire in the evening, danced around it and sang Kupala. On December 24, we praise Kolyada, the god of celebrations and peace.

The Slavs had an annual cycle of agricultural holidays in honor of the sun and the change of seasons. Pagan rituals were supposed to ensure a high harvest, the health of people and livestock.

social order

The level of development of the productive forces at that time required significant expenditures of labor for managing the economy. Labor-intensive work, which had to be performed within a limited and strictly defined time frame, could only be performed by the team. The great role of the community in the life of the Slavic tribes is connected with this.

The cultivation of the land became possible by the efforts of one family. The economic independence of individual families made the existence of stable tribal groups superfluous. Natives of the tribal community were no longer doomed to death, because. could develop new lands and become members of a territorial community. The tribal community was also destroyed during the development of new lands (colonization) and the inclusion of slaves in the community.

Each community owned a certain territory on which several families lived. All possessions of the community were divided into public and private. The house, household land, livestock, inventory were the personal property of each community member. The common property was arable land, meadows, forests, fishing grounds, reservoirs. Arable land and mowing could be periodically divided among the community members.

The collapse of primitive communal relations was facilitated by the military campaigns of the Slavs and, above all, campaigns against Byzantium.

The participants in these campaigns received most of the military booty. Particularly significant was the proportion of military leaders - princes and tribal nobility - the best husbands. Gradually, a special organization of professional warriors is formed around the prince - a squad, whose members are both economic and social position different from their fellows. The squad was divided into the eldest, from which the princely stewards came out, and the youngest, who lived with the prince and served his court and household.

The most important issues in the life of the community were decided on popular assemblies- veche gatherings. In addition to the professional squad, there was also a tribal militia (regiment, thousand).

Slavic culture

Little is known about the culture of the Slavic tribes. This is due to the extremely scarce data sources. Changing over time folk tales, songs, riddles have preserved a significant layer of ancient beliefs. Oral folk art reflects the diverse ideas of the Eastern Slavs about the nature and life of people.

Very few samples of the art of the ancient Slavs have survived to this day. In the basin of the Ros River, an interesting treasure was found from items of the 6th-7th centuries, among which silver figurines of horses with golden manes and hooves and silver images of men in typical Slavic clothes with patterned embroidery on their shirts stand out. Slavic silver items from the southern Russian regions are characterized by complex compositions of human figures, animals, birds and snakes. Many stories in modern folk art are of very ancient origin and have changed little over time.

On earth, it has not given rest to historians for almost a thousand years. Nestor, the author of the Tale of Bygone Years, was the first to raise this question. In his descriptions of events one could find references to how the Slavs were forced to leave the Roman province. They began to live in new places in different parts of Europe. There was no information about the dates of their migrations.

Theories of the origin of the Slavs

In Byzantine sources, the first mention of the Slavs was in the first half of the 6th century. This people turned out to be a powerful force and occupied the lands from Illyria to the Lower Danube. Later, the settlements of the Slavs spread along the Elbe River, reached the coast of the Baltic and North seas and penetrated even into northern Italy.

Everyone who has delved even a little into the history of the origin of the forefathers has come across a theory according to which the ancestors of the Slavs were Wends. So called the tribes that lived near the Baltic Sea. However, this theory has insufficient evidence.

Historians have provided an interesting point of view. They are convinced that there was no single original great people. In their opinion, the Slavic people, on the contrary, was formed as a result of the union of many different ancient tribes.

The biblical story says that after the "Great Flood" the sons of Noah got different lands. The countries of Europe were under the auspices of Aoret. It was on this land that the Slavs appeared. Initially, they settled near the Vistula River, now it is Poland. Then the settlements grew along such rivers as the Dnieper, Desna, Oka, Danube. This theory, put forward by the chronicler Nestor, has a lot of archaeological evidence.

Who was before the Slavs?

Among archaeologists there is no consensus about the earlier cultures of the Slavs, and it is not known how the continuity between generations took place. However, according to existing scientific versions, it is assumed that the Proto-Slavic language separated from the Proto-Indo-European. This formation of the language took place in a very wide time frame from the second millennium BC to the first centuries of our era.

The data obtained by scientists with the help of linguistics, written sources and archeology indicate that the Slavs originally lived in Central and Eastern Europe. With different parties they were surrounded by Germans, Balts, Iranian tribes, ancient Macedonians and Celts.

It becomes clear that today it is impossible to answer with certainty the question “How did the Slavs appear on earth?”, And to this day it remains open to many minds.

The word "Rus" can in no way be attributed to any of the Scandinavian or Germanic languages ​​for at least one reason - none of them has a soft sign, and even more clearly, there is no change in the meaning of words when softening consonants.

In Russian, in addition to the usual softening of consonant sounds, a soft sign can also perform a word-forming function, which is just used in the word "Rus" to describe the concept it expresses - the transformation of a set into a concept expressed in singular, - “those who are young are young”, “what is old is old”, “those who are black are black”, “those who are Rus are Rus”.

The last example is not an explanation of the origin of the meaning of the word "Rus" and "Rus", it only shows that the word "Rus" is formed according to the rules of the Russian language, moreover, so specific that it is not only absent in other non-Slavic languages, but also in modern Russian does not apply to borrowed words. From the very pronunciation of "Rus" it is clear that this word is derived from another word, and the purpose of such pronunciation is to generalize another concept, in this case in the form of a common name for members of the community, or their place of residence.

The fact that the Russian language has the word "Rus" (a short form of the adjective "blond"), which has an independent meaning, only confirms that ignoring the Slavic origin of the word "Rus" is impossible. But at the same time, it doesn’t matter any connection between the semantic definition of “rus” as “fair-haired” and “rus” as the name of a representative of the community - whether the name of the tribe came from the color of the hair or, conversely, fair-haired people began to be called that because for the specificity of the appearance of members of a particular community. These metamorphoses of concepts could have taken place in such hopeless antiquity that any attempt to explain them would be “covered with a basin” of mental speculation, so we can assume that there is no such connection at all. It's not essential. The only important thing is that the language has preserved evidence that this word is Russian and cannot be attributed to any Scandinavian or Germanic languages.

In ancient times and in the Middle Ages, peoples did not invent nationalities for themselves. The most natural principle to name one's clans and communities is geographical. Even with all Nestor's fabulousness, concerning the times of which he was not a contemporary, his words about the principles of naming the tribes of the Slavs look quite scientific from a modern point of view: "the Slavs dispersed over the earth and called themselves by their names from the places where they sat down." It follows logically from this that in order to better identify your community, you need to use the names of geographical places that have neither analogues nor other names among other peoples, i.e. names of their cities (settlements) known to other communities. Even the names of rivers and lakes can be different for different communities.

But to decide how best to identify themselves, could, firstly, communities that have their own city, well known among other communities; secondly, communities whose degree of participation in inter-communal life (military, trade activities) will make it possible to voice and preserve their name in history. Otherwise, the name of the community or tribe will remain in history, which was given to it by those whose efforts history will be written. In other words, the names of more developed clans and communities, as a rule, are self-names. To a lesser extent, this can be said about communities named after rivers and lakes.

It is all the more obvious that the tribes that have the names of the habitat, for example, those living “in the trees”, “in the fields”, “in the swamps” (drevlyans, glade, dregovichi), received them from representatives of another people. It is impossible to imagine that any people identified themselves by the type of locality. Such tribes could have some self-names, but unknown or devoid of meaning for the people in contact with them, and because of this, they were named by this people more understandably for themselves according to the predominant living conditions that differ from many other tribes with whom they dealt.

If we talk about “nationalities”, then it is worth remembering what nationality the ancient Romans were, it is obvious that they were “Romans”, that is, there is no doubt that the city gave its name not only to its inhabitants, but also to the inhabitants of the empire. In Russian history, it is mentioned that the inhabitants of Novgorod called themselves "Novgorodians", the cities of Pskov (Pleskov) - "Pskovians", the cities of Murom - "murom", respectively, the inhabitants of the city of Rusa - "Rus".

The city of Rusa (only in the 17th or 18th century, the second letter “s” and the word “old” - “Staraya Russa” were added to its name) a settlement on the southeastern shore of Lake Ilmen from the 7th century, at a distance of 93 km. along the modern highway from Veliky Novgorod, located in the river basin, the names of which directly indicate the name geographical area, along which they flow - the river Porusya and the river Porus.

The statement that the inhabitants of Rusa should be called "Rus" or "Rusich" looks like an axiom from the point of view of the traditions of vocabulary and the rules of word formation in Russian. Perhaps that is why, at the time of rewriting history, the second letter “s” appeared in the name of the city, and the inhabitants of the city received a name that has a clearly Germanic interpretation of the pronunciation of the double “s”, - “Rushan”. But the names of the rivers were invented by our ancestors in such a way that they leave no doubt that the land on which they flow is Rus.

Thus, the area of ​​residence of the Rus, pre-state Russia, geographically representing the region southeast of Lake Ilmen, is the territory that was part of Russia initially during the formation of the state and that remained invariably in it during the various redrawing of its borders. The Rus community, which gave the modern name to the people of Russia, is the indigenous people of Russia, who lived in Russia before the formation of the state for at least a century, is identical in its linguistic, religious and cultural roots to the neighboring Slavic communities.

Changing the name of the community (people) from "Rus" to "Ros" is unacceptable not only from the point of view of the rules of the language, but also has no historical basis. The form "ros" (from the word Russia) appeared late (not earlier than the 16th century) and became generally accepted only from the 18th century. "Russia" as a Greek transcription of the Russian word "Rus" came into use along with the idea of ​​"Russia - the successor of Byzantium" and, in this regard, the deliberate borrowing of Byzantine symbols and Greek terms not only in religious but also in political life.

In all European languages, except for Russian and Greek, the name of the country "Russia" retained the root "rus", and the word "Rossy" first appeared as a poetic form derived from "Russia" in the odes of Lomonosov, later the poems of Derzhavin and others. Probably, only the poetic form can justify the obvious dissonance for the Russian ear of changing the word in contradiction to the rules of the language.

There is a "fluent O" in Russian, which can become "A" when the accent changes, but changing "O" to "U", or vice versa, is completely unacceptable. If you try to change words similar in structure, for example, “beetle” to “zhok” or “louse” to “vush”, it is obvious that not a single Russian speaker will determine the meaning of the words “zhok” and “vush” even approximately. But we are not even talking about harmless insects, but about a people known for "its cruelty and bloodthirstiness."

The substitution of sounds in the name of the people in our time can sound offensive. Suffice it to recall modern attempts to pronounce the word “Russians” based on the transcription of the language that is the state language of the current “light of civilization”, that is, according to the rules for pronouncing this word in English language. Why did someone decide that our ancestors did not care how their name sounded and, in connection with which such metamorphoses with the name of the people are taken for granted?

The fact is that even with the official interpretation historical events associated with the emergence of the Old Russian state, the thesis that Kyiv and, in general, the territory of Ukraine, has anything to do with this event, is rather difficult to assimilate even among people who have a deficit that is quite acceptable for living in society common sense. Therefore, here, too, a reinforced concrete principle of the origin of the names of peoples is put forward - geographical. It turns out that somewhere in the Cherkasy region of modern Ukraine there is a river Ros - a tributary of the Dnieper, and besides, having its own tributary - Roska!

It does not matter that this river is located much to the south of the original colony of Russian princes in Kyiv - and first of all, after Kyiv, Oleg took up the subjugation of the communities located to the north in order to connect the new lands with the Slavic ones. It does not matter that the assertion that the existence of the river Ros supposedly proves that the core of Russia is the middle Dnieper region, because glades lived on its banks, from which the newcomers Russ in Kyiv took tribute, has nothing to do with either elementary logic, or has at least indirect evidence (the naming of any lands on which there were Russian princes by Rus in two hundred years is no more valuable than modern statements about this).

But it turned out to be important that in Greek "rus" is written as "ros", which, probably, in itself is a rich material for future works on the study of everyday literacy of the Slavs of the 9th century or the frequency and mass nature of their visits to Byzantine beaches, which had a side effect in the form of amnesia for the name of a kind. But now - almost logically. That's just ignored by other rivers with similar name Ross - in Belarus, Roska - in the Tver region and a couple of rivers with the name "Rόsa" in western Brazil and eastern Peru.

The ancient name of the representative of the community, which gave the modern name of the indigenous nationality of Russia, is "rus" - in its original form, or the word "Rusich", grammatically formed in the form of an obsolete possessive form of the original word. The mention of the historical name "Rus" with a double "s" - "Russ" is not correct, since the second "s" here is a fragment from "sky" - a suffix and ending that began to form in the Russian language no earlier than the 14th century, t .e. the spelling "Russ" is the result of a reverse transformation from the modern definition of "Russian", which now replaces the possessive form "Rusich" in the language.

On the territory of the Rus community to the south-east of Lake Ilmen, the number of salt springs and traces of salt production of the 6th-8th centuries. many times higher than the corresponding number of salt mines of that time in the lands of Novgorod, Pskov, Pomorie and Izborsk, due to the fact that there is an underground salt lake. Beating from underground in large numbers salt springs, which provided a more convenient organization of production than evaporation sea ​​water, predetermined the initial occupation of the Rus community almost completely.

Old Russian texts also preserved other names of Ilmen, the Moyskoye Sea and the Russian Sea. The western and southwestern coast of Ilmen was called the Varangian coast in Russian written sources of the Middle Ages. Remembering the “glorious sea of ​​the sacred Baikal” and the fact that the Caspian Lake is even now officially called the “sea”, it can be unequivocally stated that a thousand years ago they were not guided by the modern geographical features of the seas and large lakes were called seas.

Ilmen is the sea over which the Varangians were driven out for the first time and over which they went later, after them. The city of Rusa is located just diametrically opposite to Novgorod - across the sea. And “walked” - a word not from modern maritime jargon - the distance to Rusa could be covered on foot in an acceptable time - 1.5-2 days, on horseback - in less than a day.

Does anyone believe that the delegation from Novgorod traveled 3.5 thousand kilometers to the opposite shore of the Baltic Sea? And the Vikings were driven there three years earlier?

Someone believes that the people, who had sufficiently developed institutions of civil society and their own religious ideas, will call for rulers of a different faith, language and culture, who, moreover, did not have their own statehood, in order to break their own way of life for sure? They could do this, knowing exactly what order those whom they call had, what their religious and cultural values ​​were, i.e. neighbors with whom they had great amount contacts in all spheres of life.

The path "from the Varangians to the Greeks" began and ended on the banks of the Ilmen. The Christian monk Nestor "paved" the path along the Dvina to the Baltic Sea to substantiate the fable about the journey of one of the apostles of Christ - Andrew to Rome through ... all of Russia with a mandatory visit to the place where Kyiv will be, and a prophecy about the city over which "grace will shine of God." At the same time, he was the only one who called the Baltic Sea "Varangian", obviously being familiar with the legends about waterway to the Varangians on the shores of the Varangian Sea, although there was neither a road nor the Varangians, about whom he could write as a contemporary, at the time of his chronicle writing. If such geographical delights for Nestor are justified by the need to explain the involvement of Russia in Christian history, then the repetition of this path by historians, or laying it through Ladoga, bypassing the Baltic Sea to the Scandinavian shores, remains to be explained by geographical cretinism. Only people suffering from this rare disease can believe in using this route from the Scandinavians to Byzantium, if for them the way through Europe is much shorter, while being easier and safer.

The Ruses living in the southeast of Ilmen, or rather their armed detachments, were the Varangians from whom history made the founders of the Russian state, though silent that they were not the only ones in this capacity and did not have a "controlling stake". It remains to be seen whether the Vikings of Russia and those who called them to rule belonged to different ethnic groups.

It is known that Novgorodians were called Slovenes, like Pskovians - with the letter "o" in the first syllable and with an accent on it. This word is a short form of the adjective “verbal” (as mentioned above, full forms with the endings “ij / y” began to form in the language from the 14th century).

For the ancient Slavs, the formula "Sloven or German?" was the only criterion definition of belonging to their people. “If someone is Slavic, - his words are understandable to me, then he was brought up in the same cultural environment as me, and, accordingly, professes the same values ​​​​that my family adheres to. If someone addresses me with incomprehensible words, for me he is dumb, dumb, German.

Neither hair color, nor the shape of the eyes, nor the R1a1 gene was of great importance for the Slavs, who built their world according to the literal meaning of this word - “peace is peace and mutual understanding”, but a special word, which, for example, in English is denoted as "world", they never came up with. (It does not matter that the word world in the geographical sense later differed in writing from “peace as mutual understanding” with a dot over i, - oral speech remains the primacy). The geographical "world" remained a tracing-paper from the world of mutual understanding, because for the ancient Slavs, both psychologically and geographically, the world was where there is mutual understanding, which, by definition, is possible only on the basis of common language. Despite the fact that this argumentation is maximally idealized, it explains why the factor of common language formed the basis of the term, which today plays the role of a concept close to the term denoting nationality - “Sloven”.

The language is constantly trying to change in the adjective word its characterizing function to a naming one, making it a common noun, that is, from words that answer the questions “what?”, “whose?” into words answering the questions “who?”, “what?” (guard, canteen, brownie, cop, etc.). The principle of identifying “friend or foe” based on the definition of “Sloven [is this person?]” was formed long before the formation of Slavic communities, already known at the time of the emergence of the Old Russian state. By this time, the word simply names the representative of the people, and later its possessive form “Sloven”, answering the question of belonging to the community - “whose?” with the stress on the second syllable also becomes a noun by moving the stress to the last syllable.

In Russian, changing the letter “o” in a word when the stress changes is a natural transformation, therefore the origin of the word “Slav” is due to the “word”, and not to “glory”. A similar transformation occurred with the word "boat" when it began to be used with an accent on the last syllable, but it came from the same word as the modern "boat" - "boat".

From the point of view of the origin of the word "Slav", although the annals directly name only Novgorodians and Pskovians as Slovenes, the Slavs were members of all other communities using the same language with the Novgorodians. The Slavic community in this sense was definitely the Rus. They were not accompanied by specialists in simultaneous translation to communicate with the Slavs on their journeys across the sea and back. They perfectly knew the life and culture of the Slavic communities, shared their beliefs. The language must necessarily preserve those words by which they must call themselves, their army, their military residences in their native language. And they survived, this is the “prince”, “squad”, “capital”.

If the origin of the words "team" and "capital" does not require special proof of their Slavic origin, then the theory of the origin of the word "prince" due to ignorance of quite elementary information (or unwillingness to apply them) about the recording of the Old Russian words "horse" and "horse" some try to derive from other languages. But these words are Old Russian literally indicate the meaning of the word "prince", identical to the word "horse", - "knyaz" from the word "k'n" ("horse"). It was the size of the population of these odd-toed ungulates that determined the nobility in the Slavic communities. And the point is not so much in their economic value, but in the number of riders that a horse owner can put up and equip.

There are no Scandinavian or German terms in the Russian language, not only in relation to the concepts that foreign princes must voice in the way they are used to - in their native language, but in general - the influence of Scandinavian culture and language in Russian culture and the Russian language is almost zero . As for the names, it is worth finding out what names were in Russia two hundred years ago. Also, it can be assumed that researchers of the history of Russia in the 21st century, in a thousand years, can conclude that mainly the Greek and Jewish population lived here. How can one "demand" one's ancestors to prove their Slavic origin by assigning names that are understandable [to us]? How can we know the traditions of a pagan society thousands of years ago regarding how they called their children, when there are few among us who want to give a name to a child, the pronunciation of which until the end of his life will associate him with some thing, animal, feeling, phenomenon, and the like?

​Conclusions from any evidence used to determine the ethnicity of the Rus - annalistic, geographical, linguistic, cultural, religious - unequivocally indicate that the Varangians-Rus are a native Slavic community, adjacent to Novgorod and related to it.

Thus, the so-called "calling of the Varangians" is a social contract of the Slavic population, which used the advantages in organizing the way of life of different communities of the same people to create a state.

There are many hypotheses about the origin of the Slavs. Someone refers them to the Scythians and Sarmatians, who came from Central Asia, someone to the Aryans, Germans, others even identify them with the Celts.

"Norman" version

All hypotheses of the origin of the Slavs can be divided into two main categories, directly opposite to each other. One of them, the well-known "Norman", was put forward in the 18th century by the German scientists Bayer, Miller and Schlozer, although for the first time such ideas appeared during the reign of Ivan the Terrible.

The bottom line was this: the Slavs are an Indo-European people who were once part of the “German-Slavic” community, but broke away from the Germans during the Great Migration of Nations. Caught on the periphery of Europe and cut off from the continuity of Roman civilization, they were very backward in development, so much so that they could not create their own state and invited the Varangians, that is, the Vikings, to rule them.

This theory is based on the historiographic tradition of The Tale of Bygone Years and the famous phrase: “Our land is great, rich, but there is no side in it. Come reign and rule over us." Such a categorical interpretation, which was based on an obvious ideological background, could not but arouse criticism. Today, archeology confirms the existence of strong intercultural ties between Scandinavians and Slavs, but it hardly says that the former played a decisive role in the formation of the ancient Russian state. But disputes about the "Norman" origin of the Slavs and Kievan Rus do not subside to this day.

"Patriotic" version

The second theory of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, on the contrary, is patriotic in nature. And, by the way, it is much older than the Norman one - one of its founders was the Croatian historian Mavro Orbini, who wrote at the end XVI-early XVII century work called "Slavic Kingdom". His point of view was very extraordinary: he attributed to the Slavs the Vandals, Burgundians, Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Gepids, Getae, Alans, Verls, Avars, Dacians, Swedes, Normans, Finns, Ukrovs, Marcomanni, Quadi, Thracians and Illyrians and many others: "They were all of the same Slavic tribe, as will be seen in the future."

Their exodus from the historical homeland of Orbini dates back to 1460 BC. Wherever they didn’t have time to visit after that: “The Slavs fought almost all the tribes of the world, attacked Persia, ruled Asia and Africa, fought the Egyptians and Alexander the Great, conquered Greece, Macedonia and Illyria, occupied Moravia, the Czech Republic, Poland and the coast of the Baltic Sea ".

He was echoed by many court scribes who created the theory of the origin of the Slavs from the ancient Romans, and Rurik from the emperor Octavian Augustus. In the XVIII century, the Russian historian Tatishchev published the so-called "Joachim Chronicle", which, in contrast to the "Tale of Bygone Years", identified the Slavs with the ancient Greeks.

Both of these theories (although in each of them there are echoes of the truth), are two extremes, which are characterized by a free interpretation historical facts and archeological information. They were criticized by such "giants" of national history as B. Grekov, B. Rybakov, V. Yanin, A. Artsikhovsky, arguing that the historian should in his research not rely on his preferences, but on facts. However, the historical texture of the “ethnogenesis of the Slavs”, to this day, is so incomplete that it leaves many options for speculation, without the possibility of definitively answering the question. main question: "Who are these Slavs anyway?"