Russians are one of the most numerous peoples on Earth, but scientists are still arguing about which people can be considered their progenitor. One thing is clear: Russian roots are older than official history assumed.
Normans
The Norman theory of the origin of the Russian nation is mostly the fruit of the efforts of Swedish historiography, the ideas of which were picked up by Russian science in the 18th-19th centuries. Thus, the 16th-century Swedish writer Olaus Magnus, in his work “The History of the Northern Peoples,” called not only the inhabitants of Scandinavia, but also the population south of the Baltic Sea, including Lithuanians and Russians, Normans.
Chronicler Henrik Brenner was completely sure that the Russians were descended from the Swedes. He associated the word “Rus” with the Finnish name for the Swedes “rotzalainen”, which in turn came from “Ruslagen” - the name of the coastal regions of the historical Swedish province of Uppland.
The German historian Ludwig Schlözer expressed the opinion that the countdown of “Russian existence” should be traced back to the calling of the Varangians.
Karl Marx echoes him, noting that as a result of the Rurikovich’s campaign of conquest, “the winners and the vanquished merged together in Russia faster than in other areas conquered by the Scandinavian barbarians.”
However, candidate of historical sciences Lydia Grot is skeptical about the Norman theory, believing that the Swedish historiographic tradition is “historical fantasies” taken to the point of absurdity.
Wends
Historian Boris Rybakov, citing ancient sources, expressed the opinion that the Slavs under the name of the Wends appeared around the 1st century AD as a result of “contact between the Romans and the tribes of the southern Baltic region.” Indeed, many Latin authors of the 7th – 8th centuries. Slavs and Wends meant the same people.
However, some sources suggest that the Wends were the direct ancestors of the Russians.
The language of the Finnish peoples preserves the memory of the Wends, who have always been identified with the Russians. In particular, the Finnish “Venäläinen” is translated as Russian, the Karelian “Veneä” is translated as Rus', and the Estonian “Venemaa” is Russia.
The writer Sergei Ershov is convinced that the Wends are the Rus: they began to be called Slavs 400-500 years after the emergence of the ethnonym “Rus” - in the 6th-7th centuries. n. e. “Wends-Russ,” according to the writer, inhabited the entire territory of modern Poland, right up to the mouth of the Elbe, and in the south their lands occupied the borders of the future Kievan Rus. By the 3rd century, the Rus began to gradually “split off” from the Wends, forming their own language.
The Slovak scholar Pavel Shafranik finds the term “Rusa” in this Proto-Slavic language, which, in his opinion, meant a river. “This root Slavic word, as a common noun, has already remained in use only among Russians in the word channel,” the scientist concludes.
Etruscans
Historians have long been concerned about the fate of the Etruscans, who by the middle of the 1st century BC. e. almost completely disappear from the culture of Rome. Has the richest heritage of the Etruscans sunk into oblivion? Evidence discovered during excavations in ancient Etruria suggests that it is not.
The nature of the burials, the names of the Etruscans, and their traditions reveal common roots with the culture of the Slavs.
Back in the 19th century, the Russian scientist Yegor Klassen proposed using the Old Russian language to translate Etruscan inscriptions. Only since the 1980s. linguists continued the endeavors of the Russian researcher. From that time on, a version appeared in which the Etruscans began to be considered Proto-Slavs.
Philosopher and political scientist Alexander Dugin does not go into the linguistic jungle and understands the word “Etruscan” literally - “this is Russian.” Next, he draws symbolic parallels in which he finds commonality between the Capitoline wolf, who nursed the founders of Rome, and the gray wolf from Russian fairy tales, who saved children lost in the forest. According to Dugin, the Etruscans gave rise to two branches - the Turkic and Russian peoples. As evidence, he cites the thousand-year coexistence of two peoples as part of the Golden Horde, the Russian Empire and the USSR.
Usuni
No less interesting is the version about the Siberian roots of the Russian people. Thus, the historian Nikolai Novgorodov believes that the Russians were known to the ancient Chinese from “pre-Christ times” under the name “Usun”. According to this version, the Wusuns eventually moved from Siberia to the west and began to be referred to by the Chinese as “Oruses.”
Chinese historians, to prove the kinship of the South Siberian people “Usuni” and Russians, refer to descriptions of their neighbors drawn from ancient sources.
In one of the characteristics, “they are people with blue sunken eyes, a prominent nose, a yellow (red) curly beard, with a long body; a lot of strength, but they like to sleep and when they sleep, they don’t wake up right away.”
Note that Arab scientists of the 10th – 12th centuries. distinguished three Ancient Rus - Kuyavia, Slavia and Artania. If Western European and Russian historians identified Kuyavia with Kievan Rus, Slavia with Novgorod Rus, then there was no consensus on the localization of Artania. Novgorodov suggested looking for her in Siberia.
In particular, he refers to the mention in Arab sources of black sables, which at that time lived only in Siberia. Also, on some medieval geographical maps, the area with the name Arsa (Arta) is placed on the territory of modern Altai in the area of Lake Teletskoye.
Scythians
A large and powerful nation - the Scythians - suddenly disappeared into history: by the 4th century AD, its mention disappeared from the chronicles. However, excavations by Soviet archaeologists carried out on the Dnieper, Bug, Dniester, Don and Kuban showed that the Scythians did not disappear anywhere, but simply became part of a different cultural era.
At one time, Lomonosov wrote that among “the ancient ancestors of the current Russian people, the Scythians are not the last part.”
The point of view of the great scientist is shared by many modern historians. In particular, a specialist in the field of historical anthropology Valery Alekseev noted that the physical predecessor of the Russian type is the Scythian-Sarmatian branch.
The similarity between Russians and Scythians can be seen in surviving images, as well as from the descriptions of chroniclers. The appearance of the Scythians was characterized by fairly tall stature, a slender and strong physique, light eyes and light brown hair.
Historian and archaeologist Pavel Shultz complements the picture of Scythian-Russian identity, noting that “in the living quarters of the Scythian capital of Crimea, Naples, beautiful plates of carved bone were found, which vividly resemble Russian wood carving in character.”
"Russian Kaganate"
Writers Sergei Buntovsky and Maxim Kalashnikov express the idea that the ancestral home of the Russian ethnic group was the so-called “Russian Kaganate”, where representatives of different nations assimilated. In their opinion, archaeological evidence presents the civilization of the ancient Khaganate as a mixture of cultures of the Slavs, Turks and Alans.
Researchers suggest that due to the predominance of Alans from the 6th to the 8th centuries, a fusion of Iranian and Slavic blood took place within the “Russian Kaganate”.
However, other nationalities living on the territory of the Kaganate - the Bulgars, Yasses and Scandinavians - also left their, albeit smaller, mark on the Russian ancestry.
The author of the book “Secrets of the Russian Kaganate” Elena Galkina sees the upper reaches of the Don River, Seversky Donets and Oskol as the center of the state and identifies it with the Saltov-Mayatsk archaeological culture. Donetsk historian and publicist Alexey Ivanov defines the borders of the Kaganate as the current south-east of Ukraine, outlining them from the east with the Don, and from the west - Kiev.
Galkina finds confirmation of the version of the existence of the “Russian Kaganate” in Byzantine, Muslim and Western sources of the 9th century. In her opinion, after the defeat of the Kaganate by the Hungarians, the terms “Rus” and “Rus” passed from the “Rus-Alans” (Roxolans) to the Slavic population of the Middle Dnieper region.
Now there are a huge number of versions and hypotheses about the origin of the Russian people and the first centuries of our history. It is impossible to say which of them is true. It is only clear that Russian history is much more ancient than Norman historians believed. Even in pre-revolutionary times, attention was paid to the fact that the term Rus' was mentioned much earlier than the beginning of Rurik’s reign in Novgorod. In the same way, the question remains unclear who the Rus were and what relation they had to the Slavic tribes known from the first century AD. Indeed, even in the relatively late times of the Prophetic Oleg, the difference between the Slavs and the Rus is emphasized by chroniclers. Option one: the Rus are Slavs. Then the question is, are the Rus a separate clan, tribe, or the name of people of a certain profession, such as the later Ushkuiniki?
Option two: the Rus are not Slavs. Then who? Germans? Perhaps, but not a fact.
Historians have counted in historical materials at least four direct and eight indirect indications that before Kievan Rus there was a certain state that bore the name Russian, headed by the Kagan. This Turkic title denotes the sole leader of a large state and corresponds to the European title of emperor. This emphasizes that the Russian Kaganate was an independent and quite powerful entity, capable of independently determining its policy. However, its exact location is still unknown. Some researchers believe that it was located in the north of the East European Plain, while some scientists believe that this state was located in the area of the Sea of Azov.
According to E.S. Galkina (book “Secrets of the Russian Kaganate”), the center of this state was located in the upper reaches of the Os-kol, Seversky Donets and Don rivers. Russian historian and philosopher Sergei Perevezentsev calls this state Alanian Russia and sees its origins in the Don. Donetsk historian and publicist Alexey Ivanov calls it the Russian Kaganate and outlines the borders of this state along the line Seversky Donets - Don - Sea of Azov in the southeast and the Dnieper in the west. The modern capital of Ukraine was also part of this civilization.
For a long time, the prevailing version was that this was not a separate state, but part of the Khazar Khaganate. This assumption played a fatal role in the study of this civilization. In Soviet times, historical science practically did not study the Khazar Kaganate. Naturally, no one studied the history associated with our territory. The Russian Kaganate is not studied in independent Ukraine either. But in Russia, articles and entire books are dedicated to this state. Even in pre-revolutionary times, attention was paid to the fact that the term “Rus” was mentioned much earlier than the beginning of Rurik’s reign in Novgorod.
Having compared all the available historical data with archaeological finds, we come to the conclusion that only the Saltov-Mayatsk archaeological culture can be the Russian Kaganate.
It was one of the most urbanized states of the early Middle Ages. Now 25 cities have been excavated, some of which were inhabited by up to one hundred thousand people. For that time, this was a huge population, because Paris at that time had only twenty thousand inhabitants, and in Kyiv, even in the 11th century, no more than forty thousand people lived. The cities of the Russian Kaganate were centers of trade and crafts. Pottery, jewelry, and metallurgy were especially developed. The Russian Kaganate was a trading and military state through which important trade routes from northern Europe to Byzantium and Asian countries passed. For example, one of them began on the southern coast of the Baltic, then went along the Dnieper, Seversky Donets, Don and ended in the North Caucasus. Another important trade artery controlled by the Rus was the well-known route “From the Varangians to the Greeks.” In addition, the Russian Kaganate had access to the sea and conducted active maritime trade. The main export goods were weapons, jewelry and slaves. Such activity could not but irritate the Khazar Khaganate, another military-mercantile state that sought control over trade routes. Apparently, relations between the two kaganates were very tense. Apparently, parity was maintained for a certain time, and the border ran along the Don.
According to archaeological data, this culture of the Kaganate was a mixed Alan-Slavic-Turkic culture. At first (from the 6th to the beginning of the 8th century) the Alan component dominated. Alans are an Indo-Aryan Iranian-speaking people, descendants of the Sarmatians and ancestors of modern Ossetians. It should be noted that our region has long been in the area of settlement of Iranian tribes. First they were the Scythians, then the Sarmatians, Roxolans, Yasses, and Alans. It was from those times that the root “don”, meaning “river”, remained in our language in the names of water sources. So the names Don, Sevsrsky Donets came to us from time immemorial. Then the Slavs began to populate the territory of the forest-steppe strip (now the northern part of Donbass). At the same time, the Iranians moved deeper into the Slavic lands. A symbiosis of Iranians and Slavs arises, and the Kaganate can well be called a Slavic-Iranian state. In addition, the Kaganate was inhabited by Bulgars, Ases and even people from Scandinavia. By the end of the existence of the Russian Kaganate, the Slavs constituted the dominant part of its population. And most importantly, they had a high social status. This can be judged by the fact that the found Slavic burials are, as a rule, rich graves.
Now, it’s probably worth considering the origin of the term Rus, Russian. The root “rus” is of Indo-European origin and means “light, white.” It has retained this meaning in the language to this day. For example, in the words “fair-haired”, “fair-haired”, “brown hare” and so on. In addition, this term denoted a noble or dominant family. It is quite natural that this word was used equally by two branches of Indo-Europeans - Iranians and Slavs. Perhaps the spread of the self-name of the “Saltovo people” as “Rus”, “Rus” is connected with the name of the current Seversky Donets, which, according to the Arabic source “Khudua-al-Alam”, was called the Rus River, that is, a bright or clean river. Perhaps, from the name of the river, the inhabitants of the Kaganate began to call themselves that. There is a version that the Kaganate got its name from the Alan people of the Rukhs, descendants of the Sarmatian tribe of Roksalans (light Alans) and Ases.
Probably, the Rus were not originally Slavs, but were assimilated by the Slavs, leaving them their name. This is not the only such case in history. Let us recall, for example, the Bulgarians, a Slavic people who received their name from a tribe of nomadic Turks.
The Russian Kaganate died in the thirties of the ninth century, when its territory was captured by the Magyars (Hungarians), who roamed here until the end of the ninth century, and then went west. After the defeat of the Kaganate, part of the remaining population moved north into the forests and assimilated among the Slavic tribe of northerners. Perhaps thanks to this, the toponymy of our region has been preserved. Some of the fugitives moved to the Dnieper region under the protection of the surviving Kyiv.
But the fate of the third group of people from the Kaganate is especially interesting. These were probably the remnants of a professional squad. They ended their campaign in the Baltic states. Some researchers believe that the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea became their new homeland, some historians claim that the Rus settled in Prussia, where they, together with local tribes, form a tribal union called Russia. In addition, there is a version about the island of Saaremaa as a new refuge for the Rus. Be that as it may, all researchers agree that the new state was in the Baltic states. At this time, the Slavs were actively developing these territories. They needed an ally in new lands. Naturally, they paid attention to the tribal formation, which was close to them in language and culture. So, perhaps the Russian Rurik, invited with his retinue to Novgorod, was not a Scandinavian, but a native of the Russian Kaganate.
If our reconstruction of the history of the Russian Kaganate is based on archeology, hypotheses and scattered historical information, then Rurik is a historical figure. His closest associate was Prophetic Oleg. In our country, this name is usually derived from the Scandinavian name Heleg, although it is more logical to derive it from the Iranian Khaleg (creator, creator, prince). Oleg, having become regent for Rurik’s young son Igor in 879, organizes a campaign south along the Dnieper. In 882, Oleg virtually captured Kyiv without a fight. It was then that the words “Kyiv is the mother of Russian cities” were heard. Agree, it sounds more than strange if, following the Norman historians, we consider Oleg a Scandinavian. But if Oleg, like the people of Kiev, comes from the Russian Kaganate, then his action is logical. The prophetic prince proclaimed the beginning of the revival of his ancient state, but with the capital in Kyiv. By the way, the Kiev people perceive Oleg’s arrival without much indignation. There were no riots or unrest. But when Rurik began to reign in Novgorod, there was an uprising of Vadim the Brave.
After establishing himself in Kyiv, Oleg established his control over the tribes of the Northerners and Radimichi, who had previously paid tribute to the Khazars. That is, Oleg gathered around Kyiv exactly those Slavic tribes that were most closely in contact with the Russian Kaganate. Through the efforts of the Prophetic Oleg, at the beginning of the tenth century, a new state was formed, which united the lands of the Russian Kaganate and received the former name of Rus', and its ruler called himself Kagan. This title ceased to be used only under Yaroslav the Wise.
Prince Svyatoslav completed what Oleg had started by making a victorious campaign against Khazaria in 965. He not only destroyed this state, but also began to revive the Russian Kaganate through a new Slavic colonization of lands along the Don and Donets, the center of which was the former Khazar city of Sar-kel, renamed by Svyatoslav to Belaya Vezha (vezha - tower). He is trying to resettle the Slavs there, but the situation was different. Pecheneg nomads come from the Volga region to our steppes. After they were defeated in the thirties of the eleventh century, the Polovtsy came to their place. By the way, Vladimir Monomakh made two dozen campaigns in the steppes, where the Russian Kaganate was located, literally clearing them of nomads. So the princes of Kievan Rus did not forget about their ancestral home. But Kievan Rus had already entered a period of fragmentation, and the great princes did not have the strength to retain their southern possessions. Most of the Slavs during the time of Vladimir Monomakh moved back to Kievan Rus. Those who remained were partially massacred by the Polovtsians, who took Belaya Vezha by storm in 1 1 1 7, and partially moved to Tmutarakan. A small part of the Slavs, uniting with representatives of neighboring peoples (Alans and Turks), became the ancestors of the Brodniks - free warriors who led the same lifestyle as the Cossacks four hundred years later.
So, let's summarize. The Russian Kaganate was the first proto-state in relation to which the term “Russian” was used. The legacy of this state subsequently had a serious impact on both Rus' and the states formed on its territory. A lot of elements from the Russian Kaganate passed into the Russian state. This is the title of rulers, and gods of Iranian origin in the pantheon of Slavic gods, and numerous words with Iranian roots in our language.
Russian Kaganate and Yarova Rus
Fascinating lectures by V. Chudinov about the latest expeditions and new discoveries... Demonstration and deciphering of inscriptions on objects found by archaeologists in the Russian Kaganate, on the territory of Vagria, Scandia and Slav Rus'... Chudinov Valery Alekseevich Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the State University of Medicine, Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Chairman of the RAS Commission on the culture of ancient and medieval Rus', director of the Center for Ancient Slavic Literature and Culture, writer...
For many centuries, scientists have been breaking their spears, trying to understand the origin of the Russian people. And if research in the past was based on archaeological and linguistic data, today even geneticists have taken up the matter.
From the Danube
Of all the theories of Russian ethnogenesis, the most famous is the Danube theory. We owe its appearance to the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years”, or rather to the centuries-old love of domestic academics for this source.
The chronicler Nestor defined the initial territory of settlement of the Slavs as the territories along the lower reaches of the Danube and Vistula. The theory about the Danube “ancestral home” of the Slavs was developed by such historians as Sergei Solovyov and Vasily Klyuchevsky.
Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky believed that the Slavs moved from the Danube to the Carpathian region, where an extensive military alliance of tribes arose led by the Duleb-Volhynian tribe.
From the Carpathian region, according to Klyuchevsky, in the 7th-8th centuries the Eastern Slavs settled to the East and Northeast to Lake Ilmen. The Danube theory of Russian ethnogenesis is still adhered to by many historians and linguists. The Russian linguist Oleg Nikolaevich Trubachev made a great contribution to its development at the end of the 20th century.
Yes, we are Scythians!
One of the most vehement opponents of the Norman theory of the formation of Russian statehood, Mikhail Lomonosov, leaned toward the Scythian-Sarmatian theory of Russian ethnogenesis, which he wrote about in his “Ancient Russian History.” According to Lomonosov, the ethnogenesis of the Russians occurred as a result of the mixing of the Slavs and the “Chudi” tribe (Lomonosov’s term is Finno-Ugric), and he named the place of origin of the ethnic history of the Russians between the Vistula and Oder rivers.
Supporters of the Sarmatian theory rely on ancient sources, and Lomonosov did the same. He compared Russian history with the history of the Roman Empire and ancient beliefs with the pagan beliefs of the Eastern Slavs, finding a large number of similarities. The ardent struggle with the adherents of the Norman theory is quite understandable: the people-tribe of Rus', according to Lomonosov, could not have originated from Scandinavia under the influence of the expansion of the Norman Vikings. First of all, Lomonosov opposed the thesis about the backwardness of the Slavs and their inability to independently form a state.
Gellenthal's theory
The hypothesis about the origin of Russians, unveiled this year by Oxford scientist Garrett Gellenthal, seems interesting. Having done a lot of work on studying the DNA of various peoples, he and a group of scientists compiled a genetic atlas of migration of peoples.
According to the scientist, two significant milestones can be distinguished in the ethnogenesis of the Russian people. In 2054 BC. e., according to Gellenthal, trans-Baltic peoples and peoples from the territories of modern Germany and Poland migrated to the northwestern regions of modern Russia. The second milestone is 1306, when the migration of Altai peoples began, who actively interbred with representatives of the Slavic branches.
Gellenthal's research is also interesting because genetic analysis proved that the time of the Mongol-Tatar invasion had virtually no effect on Russian ethnogenesis.
Two ancestral homelands
Another interesting migration theory was proposed at the end of the 19th century by Russian linguist Alexey Shakhmatov. His “two ancestral homelands” theory is also sometimes called the Baltic theory. The scientist believed that initially the Balto-Slavic community emerged from the Indo-European group, which became autochthonous in the Baltic region. After its collapse, the Slavs settled in the territory between the lower reaches of the Neman and Western Dvina. This territory became the so-called “first ancestral home”. Here, according to Shakhmatov, the Proto-Slavic language developed, from which all Slavic languages originated.
Further migration of the Slavs was associated with the great migration of peoples, during which at the end of the second century AD the Germans went south, liberating the Vistula River basin, where the Slavs came. Here, in the lower Vistula basin, Shakhmatov defines the second ancestral home of the Slavs. From here, according to the scientist, the division of the Slavs into branches began. The western one went to the Elbe region, the southern one was divided into two groups, one of which settled the Balkans and the Danube, the other - the Dnieper and Dniester. The latter became the basis of the East Slavic peoples, which include the Russians.
We're locals ourselves
Finally, another theory different from migration theories is the autochthonous theory. According to it, the Slavs were an indigenous people inhabiting eastern, central and even part of southern Europe. According to the theory of Slavic autochthonism, Slavic tribes were the indigenous ethnic group of a vast territory - from the Urals to the Atlantic Ocean. This theory has quite ancient roots and many supporters and opponents. This theory was supported by the Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr. He believed that the Slavs did not come from anywhere, but were formed from tribal communities living in vast territories from the Middle Dnieper to Laba in the West and from the Baltic to the Carpathians in the south.
Polish scientists - Kleczewski, Potocki and Sestrentsevich - also adhered to the autochthonous theory. They even traced the ancestry of the Slavs from the Vandals, basing their hypothesis, among other things, on the similarity of the words “Vendals” and “Vandals”. Of the Russians, the autochthonous theory explained the origin of the Slavs Rybakov, Mavrodin and Greeks.
Liked: 3 users
Dear people who care about their history!
I present to your attention the Khorosan theory of the origin of Rus', which clearly traces the traces of the Dzhurdzhens - Jurans - Chechings, whose habitat was for a long time the Argun River basin in the Far East.
I will be glad to send you the full text of my theory with pictures and geographical maps for subsequent reproduction within this forum. I am ready to send my material to the forum administration - please indicate the address to where.
Once upon a time, the great Russian writer L.N. Tolstoy said: “People live peacefully among themselves and act in harmony only when they are united by the same worldview: they equally understand the purpose and purpose of their activities. So it is for families, so it is for various circles of people, so it is for political parties, so it is for entire classes, and so it is, especially for peoples united in states. People of one nation live more or less peacefully among themselves and defend their common interests in harmony only as long as they live by the same worldview adopted and recognized by all people of the nation.”
Unfortunately, in Russian society there remains a tendency, instead of the idea of SPIRITUAL UNION, to TRANSMIT THE PRINCIPLE OF “DIVIDE AND CONTROL” - let me remind you that today there are 46 THEORIES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE IN ACADEMIC SCIENTIFIC CIRCULATION, AND NONE OF THEM IS RECOGNIZED CRAZY.
I hope my theory will contribute to the ideological unification of the Russian world.
I cannot again bring up a very important thought: “...We are interested and need not increasing the number of fairy tales - we already have enough of them, but removing the veil from our initial history. We need to see it without embellishment and distortion in order to know who we are and where we come from, and what goals and paths to them were destined by the distant ancestors who gave birth to us. The dust raised around this does nothing to help clarify the horizon; it only clogs the eyes and makes it difficult to breathe for those who remove these veils from Slavic history.”
Sincerely, Ivan Streltsov.
Reply With quote To quote bookHttps://www.gazeta.ru/science/2015/09/03_a_7734953.shtml Russians are not Slavs at the core and it is their genetic predisposition to “change” their nation, so Russians outside the former USSR have not created a single stable diaspora anywhere and They assimilate extremely quickly, and this despite their huge numbers, in contrast to much smaller peoples who have created their own diasporas. Vladimir Dal 1852:"
The Korels, Zyryans, Permyaks, Voguls, Votyaks, Cheremis, Rus, somewhat alter our language. The Chud tribes generally easily lose their language and nationality and become Russian in appearance; ...more than half of Russia or its subjects still bear the signs of the Chud tribe." As a result, if we really simplify it in the form of a version, then in the territory of the central zone of present-day Russia and to the north lived Finnish peoples, who at a certain stage were subjected to colonization from the south in the form of Christianization with the imposition of the Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) language close to the Serbian language, this is how the state of Muscovy was formed. When the German dynasty of Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov took power, this colony was named Russia from the German word Rassia, which then meant Serbia, and the language practically. brought to the current state of the Russian language, including by borrowing words from other languages and inventing new words. The overwhelming majority of the population artificially became Slavs, and the root of Slav is SLAVE in many European languages, accordingly, many fell into SLAVERY, which is now given out under the guise of a serf. right. Someone will ask, since the language is close to Old Bulgarian, then why was it not called Bulgaria, but the answer was already in the presence of two Bulgarias by that time, Slavic-speaking Danube Bulgaria, where the foundations of the Russian language came from, and Turkic-speaking Volga Bulgaria, where the Tatars, i.e., Bulgars, live. . For your information, there are practically no ancient manuscripts over 300 years old, everything else is supposedly copies, so the current traditional history before the 17th century is not far from fairy tales and legends in essence! As an example, the Mordovians (Moksha, Erzya), despite the terrible living conditions, even in the middle of the 20th century, statistically outnumbered the Kyrgyz and there were often families with 8 or more children. Some 70 years passed and officially there were 7 Kyrgyz times more than the Mordovians (Moksha, Erzya), and most of the Mordovians (Moksha, Erzya) turned into Russians!
Original message VERB
Where did the name "Russian" come from?Before speculating where the name “Russian” itself came from, and where these same Russians came from in Europe, it is necessary to remember one detail: the territory where Slavic tribes settled for a long time, despite the fact that each tribe had its own name, bore and the common name is Russian Land. Early medieval chronicles and legends of all Slavic peoples without exception speak about the land of the Russians. Not only that, but the ancient Scandinavians considered themselves Russians until the 9th century! “Nordic Russians” and “Dan Russians” are recorded in Arab and Byzantine chronicles. There is indisputable information that the early Germans - the inhabitants of modern Bavaria and Saxony - also considered their land Russian and called themselves “Russians” until the 13th century AD. This is evidenced by the works of such famous German researchers as Hermann Wirth, Otto Rahn, Rene Guenon and others. There is information that the ancient Celts, before they were conquered by Caesar’s legions, also called themselves Russians. And their neighbors in Northern Italy brought two of their self-names to historical times: Tyrrhenians and the most ancient - Etruscans (the root “Rus” is evident).
Historical science explains the self-name of peoples, especially nomadic ones, but the name of the leader; settled peoples - by locality; sometimes the self-name of an ethnic group arose due to some cultural traditions that this ethnic group adhered to. For example, the ancient Hittites and Hutts, having come to the territory of Asia Minor from the harsher northern regions, built their dwellings in the old fashioned way: where there was wood, they were cut down, and where there was not enough of it, they were entirely made of adobe. In both the first and second cases, avoiding the mud brick technology adopted by its closest neighbors - the inhabitants of Syria and Akkad. For this they received the nickname “Khatniks” or “Hutts”, “Hittites”. Self-names of tribes arose for other reasons. A serious factor was belief in some god, whose name, in the end, became the self-name of the entire people; or prolonged isolation, when people began to believe that only they existed on earth. Take, for example, the self-name of the American Eskimos: when translated into European languages, it sounds like “real people.” The northeastern Chukchi call themselves approximately the same.
And now let’s return to the now incomprehensible, almost mystical word “Russ”. Why did the Slavic tribes of Eastern and Western Europe, despite their self-names (Polyans, Drevlyans, Radimichi, Krivichi, Vyatichi or Croats, Serbs, Obodrits, etc.), believe that they all live on Russian soil, and that all of them , ultimately, the Russians? Russes is a basic and sacred self-name associated with the memory of some ancestor or with the forces of the Cosmos itself. What does the self-name “Russ” mean, and what meaning does it carry, many researchers and scientists have tried to unravel. Describing the beauty and breadth of the Russian land, the author of “The Tale of Bygone Years,” chronicler Nestor, refuses to give an intelligible explanation for the self-name “Russian Land” and the word “Russies.” In all likelihood, the meaning of this word was lost long before his time. The unknown author of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” also did not know the meaning of the word “Russian”. In addition, the Russian land in his era narrowed significantly: with bitterness and pain, he narrates in “The Lay...” that the Russian land is behind, and ahead is the wild steppe - the Polovtsian land. And in subsequent times, right up to the reign of Ivan the Fourth, the steppes of the Don, Kuban, and Volga were called the Wild Field in Rus'. And, probably, only a few - mostly the descendants of Russian Vedic priests, to whom knowledge was passed on from generation to generation - knew that the expanses of forests and fields lying up to the Yaika-Ural River and further to the east were once also Russian land, where Since time immemorial, there lived tribes of eastern Russ-monasteries of nomads, lake Russ fishermen and plowmen.Normanists, adherents of the Western historical concept, even in the time of Lomonosov tried to prove that the self-name “Russ” comes from a Scandinavian root, because the tribes of the ancient Vikings also called themselves “Russians”. M. Lomonosov himself fundamentally disagreed with this theory, who rightly believed that the name of a densely populated country rich in cities, which the Vikings themselves called “Gardarika,” i.e., the country of cities, could not have come from the rural semi-wild population of Scandinavia. Gardarika in Viking times consisted of hundreds of towns and cities, while in the entire Scandinavian Peninsula there were then only seven settlements, not all of which resembled cities. It turns out that there once lived a Country of cities without a name, without a self-name, there lived a people who had inhabited it from time immemorial, and suddenly the Vikings came and gave the name to the people - the Russians, and from that time the country began to be called Russia. Wild? Certainly!
Realizing the inconsistency of the conclusion of the Normanists, many generations of not only Russians, but also advanced European researchers tried to find the root of the self-name “Russian”. However, solving this problem turned out to be very difficult. The deeper the scientists dug, the more mysterious the problem became.Are Russians a bearish people?
According to most scientists, there was undoubtedly an answer to this question, and not only in Russia, but also in the West. The trouble is that written sources that could shed light on this matter were irretrievably lost during the period of general Christianization of Europe. A number of scientists, mainly from Belarus, believe that the word “Russ” once referred to a bear that was especially revered in Rus'. Bear - the one who knows honey - is the second allegorical name of the sacred beast, which remained in everyday use, and the ancient “Russ” was forgotten. Now there is only the “people of bears” - the Russians. The name of the Russa River allegedly comes from the ancient sacred word “bear”. According to some scientists, many bears lived on its banks in those ancient times. This answer is, of course, simple and even logical, considering that the word “Russ” once meant the animal that we know as a bear. But, unfortunately, here we encounter only a hypothesis. We do not have direct evidence that “Russian” and “bear” are the names of the same animal. There is something else: in both Russian and German the bear is called the word “Ber”. In German this name is still alive, but in Russian it is preserved in the word “den”, i.e. “ber’s lair”. Consequently, the word “Russ” could not possibly mean a bear. The bear was called “berom” in Russian, German, and Iranian, and this does not require any special evidence. This means that the theory of “Russian is a bear” and “Russian people are bearish people” is utopian.Are the Russians people from the leopard tribe?
There is another theory of the origin of the word “Russ”. It was put forward by the famous Russian researcher Vladimir Shcherbakov. He believes that the word “Russ” comes from the word “race”, i.e. leopard. In his opinion, Russians are the descendants of the hypothetical people of the “sons of the leopard” who lived in the 7-8 millennium BC. e. on the territory of modern Asia Minor and Asia Minor. This people, according to V. Shcherbakov, once created a powerful Hatto-Luwian state that competed with Babylonia and Egypt. Later, the Hatto-Luwians created the state of Artsawa on the territory of Asia Minor, where the cult of the leopard race was most clearly expressed. According to Shcherbakov, part of the Hutts at the end of the 1st millennium BC. moved from Asia Minor to Europe and created a powerful Getian state on the territory of Thrace, which was later destroyed by Trajan. But over several centuries of war with Rome, part of the Goths settled in the north and populated the Carpathians; another large tribal association of the Goths moved to the East and populated the forest-steppe of the East European Plain. Here, in their new homeland, the word rass-leopard began to be used to describe the lynx, and the people themselves allegedly called themselves Russians.V. Shcherbakov considers the Hutts, Hutt-Luwians, Hittites, Goths, and therefore the Russians to be descendants of the Eastern Atlanteans. According to not only Shcherbakov, but also a number of other scientists, the war of the Atlanteans with the so-called Proto-Athenians in the Mediterranean was a war of the metropolis with a union of its own colonies. If you believe Plato, the colonies won this war, and if Shcherbakov, Eastern Atlantis won. According to the researcher, after this victory, the Eastern Atlanteans settled over vast areas of Europe, Asia and North Africa. This, in his opinion, happened around 8-7 thousand BC. Later, Semites came to these lands from the Arabian Peninsula and pushed the first settlers to the north. So the descendants of the once powerful people ended up in Asia Minor, and from Asia Minor they moved to Thrace.
The theory put forward by V. Shcherbakov is quite real and does not contradict either archaeological excavations or anthropological research. Indeed, in the territory of Western and Minor Asia in 8 thousand BC. e. The ancient distinctive culture of farmers and cattle breeders flourished. And the boundaries of this culture are quite extensive. The ancient farmers lived in fortified cities (Çatalhöyük), mastered all the major crafts, raised domestic animals except horses, and, in all likelihood, revered either the leopard or some species of now extinct cat. We can agree with Shcherbakov that these people called their totem “race”. But V. Shcherbakov is wrong in that this word gave the name to the people of the “Russians” and, moreover, to the vast territory of Eurasia, inhabited since ancient times, albeit by related, but still different tribes and even peoples.This researcher, developing his theory of the origin of the Russian people, ignored the culture of the ancient Aryans. If he had compared Sanskrit (the language of the Proto-Indians - Aryans) and the ancient Russian language, he would undoubtedly have come to the conclusion that, in essence, these are varieties of the same language, and in this language the word “Rusa” means the concept of “light, clear, radiant " The Russian word “russ” is more archaic and has its roots, as many scientists believe, in pre-Aryan vocabulary. Until now, a certain hair color in Rus' is called light brown, it is not dark or black. Therefore, Shcherbakovsky “race” could be called that way based on the color of his coat. Actually, in almost all wild cats of Europe and Asia, including the leopard and lynx, this color predominates. In Sanskrit - the same quality: light, radiant. But there is some discrepancy here: the fact is that in Rus' the word “light” also meant the quality of the soul. “Light” meant emitting a special spiritual light, carrying a higher, divine meaning. It was not for nothing that the ancient Russians called their princes Your Grace. From here another meaning of the Sanskrit word “Rusa” becomes clear - radiant...
It would seem that the answer to the question has been found. The word “Rusa” means both the internal and external qualities of a person, and the bearers of these qualities began to be called Russians, and the land on which they settled - the land of the Russians or Russian land, Russia or Russia.The Russians are the people who came from heaven!
But it turns out that not everything is so simple. The fact is that the words of ancient languages, which include Sanskrit, and even more so the ancient Russian “Prakrit”, always had a double meaning: external and internal. The external meaning of the word “Russa”: light, radiant - there is no doubt, that is what it is. Its internal meaning is unclear. That esoteric sacred cipher, which, in all likelihood, determined the name of the people. And in order to unravel it, it is necessary to go deeper not into the Indo-European layer of culture, but into a more ancient one, into the Hyperborean.Very little has reached us about the time of the legendary northern continent - Arktogaea, and even then only in myths. But, as you know, myths were created by people to preserve and transmit particularly valuable knowledge to future generations. Let's try to decipher some of them and connect them with modern ideas about the Earth, Space and the knowledge of the ancients. Take, for example, the myths of Ancient Greece: in them the God of the sky is called Uranus. It is interesting that Uranus-sky can be traced in the names of some cities of Sumer, for example, the city of Ur - the heavenly city, or the city of Nippur - the city under heaven. The root “ur” sounds in the name of the ancient capital of Assyria - Ashur, and in the name of the country Urartu, even the Ural mountains contain the same root, etc. And everywhere the root “ur” is associated with the sky, Space... Now let’s remember Rigveda. This ancient text speaks of Mount Meru, on the top of which stood the palace of Indra himself. As you know, Mount Meru was located under the North Star or, in Russian, the celestial Kolo. Let's try to decipher the name of Mount Meru, especially since in this word we see the already familiar letters “p” and “u”, but in a different combination. What would that mean? The sky is Ur, the mountain is Meru. The letter combination “me” means the word “place”.
If we consider that the Russian language and the language of the ancient Aryans are essentially two branches of the same proto-language, and the word place is undoubtedly archaic, then everything becomes clear. Then why not “ur”, but “ru”? What's the point here? If you read “ru” from right to left, you get the familiar “ur” - sky. Feedback is encrypted here. That is, a mountain standing in the place where they came from heaven. If we turn to ancient Russian mythology, we will encounter the same thing: at the birth of the Universe, the Great Svarog created the star Sedava, and under it Mount Alatyr, and on that mountain Alatyr subsequently fell the Alatyr-stone with the inscriptions of Svarog to his relatives - the Russian people. Here there is a connection between the Earth and the Sky, and what is clearly expressed is not a departure from the Earth to the stars, but, on the contrary, a coming from the sky to the Earth. And the strange star Sedava is obviously one of the stars that in ancient times played the role of the modern Kolo-Polar star, and below it is Mount Alatyrskaya on Buyan Island, and the Svarog stone flies to this mountain from the sky. Therefore, the word “ru” means coming from heaven.Russians are a luminous people.
But if we discard research in the field of mythology and turn to science, then here we will encounter the same thing. For example, the prominent German scientist Hermann Wirth, the founder of the Hyperborean theory, describing in his work the religion of the inhabitants of Arctogea, calls the son of God by the name Ur. “Ur,” according to Wirth, is our earthly starry sky. Let's remember the Greek Uranus. Consequently, the word “russ” contains the meaning of feedback: Heaven-Earth. Then how to decipher the letter “s” in this word? But the word “light” begins with it in all Slavic languages: Svetovid, Svetich, Yarosvet, etc. Of course, this word is no less ancient than the Sanskrit “rusa”, and perhaps even older. Then the word “Russ” is translated into modern Russian as those who came from heaven through the light, or “through the light.”By the way, this does not contradict modern ideas about the connection between energy and matter in physics. Theoretically, this option is possible: the transition of matter into energy and back. But not only theoretically. As scientists prove, this is how UFOs move in space. All this at first glance seems fantastic, but only at first glance. The fact is that there are still peoples alive and well on Earth who stubbornly prove that their ancestors came to Earth from Space. For example, the African Dogon claim that their ancestral home is the double star system Sirius. An interesting fact is that hundreds of years ago the Dogon knew the structure of Sirius, the number of its satellites and accurately named the planet from where their distant ancestors flew to Earth. Modern astrophysics cannot explain such knowledge. But not only the Dogon remember their arrival from the stars. The mysterious Ainu people also remember this. Hokkaido. However, their ancestral home is not Sirius, but another star, which they still refuse to name. Other peoples of the Earth also remember their origin from the stars, but this sacred knowledge is inaccessible to modern scientists: as a rule, it belongs only to initiates.
If we turn to Ancient Egypt, then here we see the same picture. For example, the location of the Great Pyramids at Giza is an exact copy of the Orion constellation. In addition, the southern shaft, laid in the Khufu pyramid, was aimed (in 2475 BC - apparently when the pyramids were built) at the star Al-Nitak, the middle star of Orion's belt. This was proven by a number of researchers: Hancock, Bauval, Trimbel, Gantenbring and others. It is interesting that the mine coming from the queen’s tomb was targeted in the same 2475 BC. e. to Sirius.This begs a fair question: have the Russian people preserved the memory of the coming from outer space, in addition to their self-name? It turns out he saved it. First of all, these are myths about the Stozhary star. Later legends confuse it with the star Sedava, but the name itself says that these stars are different, since they carry different meanings. Sedava is an ancient proto-polar star, prehistoric Kolo. According to Bauval, Badawi and others, most likely the star is Alpha in the constellation Leo. Stozhary is a completely different star. Its very name says that it is a large, powerful luminary, many times (a hundred) times larger than our sun. So, there are myths that directly say that Stozhary was one of the main stars created by the Great Family, and from Stozhary the wisdom of the Gods came to Earth. In particular, the god Veles flew to Earth from this star in a fiery whirlwind. Veles, as is known from mythology, is one of the most ancient ancestors of the Russian people...
Therefore, the word “russ” carries the following information:
a) information about the arrival from Space from a certain star Stozhara with the transfer of sacred knowledge and teachings to Earth (letters of Svarog, the arrival of Veles);
b) the word “Russ” means light, carrier of knowledge, radiating spirituality, god-man.
For many centuries, scientists have been wanting to know the origins of the Russian people. And if research in the past was based on archaeological and linguistic data, today even geneticists have taken up the matter.
From the Danube
Of all the theories of Russian ethnogenesis, the most famous is the Danube theory. We owe its appearance to the chronicle “The Tale of Bygone Years”, or rather to the centuries-old love of domestic academics for this source.
The chronicler Nestor defined the initial territory of settlement of the Slavs as the territories along the lower reaches of the Danube and Vistula. The theory about the Danube “ancestral home” of the Slavs was developed by such historians as Sergei Solovyov and Vasily Klyuchevsky.
Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky believed that the Slavs moved from the Danube to the Carpathian region, where an extensive military alliance of tribes arose led by the Duleb-Volhynian tribe.
From the Carpathian region, according to Klyuchevsky, in the 7th-8th centuries the Eastern Slavs settled to the East and Northeast to Lake Ilmen. The Danube theory of Russian ethnogenesis is still adhered to by many historians and linguists. The Russian linguist Oleg Nikolaevich Trubachev made a great contribution to its development at the end of the 20th century.
Yes, we are Scythians!
One of the most vehement opponents of the Norman theory of the formation of Russian statehood, Mikhail Lomonosov, leaned toward the Scythian-Sarmatian theory of Russian ethnogenesis, which he wrote about in his “Ancient Russian History.” According to Lomonosov, the ethnogenesis of the Russians occurred as a result of the mixing of the Slavs and the “Chudi” tribe (Lomonosov’s term applied to the Finno-Ugric peoples), and he named the area between the Vistula and Oder rivers as the place of origin of the ethnic history of the Russians.
Supporters of the Sarmatian theory rely on ancient sources, and Lomonosov did the same. He compared Russian history with the history of the Roman Empire and ancient beliefs with the pagan beliefs of the Eastern Slavs, finding a large number of similarities. The ardent struggle with the adherents of the Norman theory is quite understandable: the people-tribe of Rus', according to Lomonosov, could not have originated from Scandinavia under the influence of the expansion of the Norman Vikings. First of all, Lomonosov opposed the thesis about the backwardness of the Slavs and their inability to independently form a state.
Gellenthal's theory
The hypothesis about the origin of Russians, unveiled this year by Oxford scientist Garrett Gellenthal, seems interesting. Having done a lot of work on studying the DNA of various peoples, he and a group of scientists compiled a genetic atlas of migration of peoples.
According to the scientist, two significant milestones can be distinguished in the ethnogenesis of the Russian people. In 2054 BC. e., according to Gellenthal, trans-Baltic peoples and peoples from the territories of modern Germany and Poland migrated to the northwestern regions of modern Russia. The second milestone is 1306, when the migration of Altai peoples began, who actively interbred with representatives of the Slavic branches.
Gellenthal's research is also interesting because genetic analysis proved that the time of the Mongol-Tatar invasion had virtually no effect on Russian ethnogenesis.
Two ancestral homelands
Another interesting migration theory was proposed at the end of the 19th century by Russian linguist Alexey Shakhmatov. His “two ancestral homelands” theory is also sometimes called the Baltic theory. The scientist believed that initially the Balto-Slavic community emerged from the Indo-European group, which became autochthonous in the Baltic region. After its collapse, the Slavs settled in the territory between the lower reaches of the Neman and Western Dvina. This territory became the so-called “first ancestral home”. Here, according to Shakhmatov, the Proto-Slavic language developed, from which all Slavic languages originated.
Further migration of the Slavs was associated with the great migration of peoples, during which at the end of the second century AD the Germans went south, liberating the Vistula River basin, where the Slavs came. Here, in the lower Vistula basin, Shakhmatov defines the second ancestral home of the Slavs. From here, according to the scientist, the division of the Slavs into branches began. The western one went to the Elbe region, the southern one - divided into two groups, one of which settled the Balkans and the Danube, the other - the Dnieper and Dniester. The latter became the basis of the East Slavic peoples, which include the Russians.
We're locals ourselves
Finally, another theory different from migration theories is the autochthonous theory. According to it, the Slavs were an indigenous people inhabiting eastern, central and even part of southern Europe. According to the theory of Slavic autochthonism, Slavic tribes were the indigenous ethnic group of a vast territory - from the Urals to the Atlantic Ocean. This theory has quite ancient roots and many supporters and opponents. This theory was supported by the Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr. He believed that the Slavs did not come from anywhere, but were formed from tribal communities living in vast territories from the Middle Dnieper to Laba in the West and from the Baltic to the Carpathians in the south.
Polish scientists - Kleczewski, Potocki and Sestrentsevich - also adhered to the autochthonous theory. They even traced the ancestry of the Slavs from the Vandals, basing their hypothesis, among other things, on the similarity of the words “Vendals” and “Vandals”. Of the Russians, the autochthonous theory explained the origin of the Slavs Rybakov, Mavrodin and Greeks.
