V. the origin of the ancient Russian people. The history of the study of the problem of ancient Russian nationality

The study aims to highlight the prehistory, the processes of formation, development and dialect division of the Old Russian people. Until now, archaeological materials have not been involved in a holistic solution of this problem. Linguists repeatedly turned to the questions of the history and dialectology of the Old Russian language, as a result of which the linguistic questions themselves turned out to be more developed than the historical ones. On the part of historians, attempts to illuminate the essence of the Old Russian people were less productive, since historical science does not have a sufficient source base in solving ethnogenetic topics. The use of archeological data in the study of the origins and evolution of the Old Russian ethnos, taking into account all the results obtained so far by other sciences, seems to be very promising. This is the purpose of the proposed work.

The archaeological materials collected by many generations of researchers have now made up a huge source fund, which is increasingly being used to study the complex historical processes that took place in Eastern Europe in antiquity and the Middle Ages. Based on archeological data, important results have already been obtained on a number of historical and ethnocultural topics that could not be resolved on the basis of information from historical sources that has come down to us. It seems that the time has come for the widest use of materials from archeology and in research on the complex problem of the formation of the Old Russian people, revealing its content and conditions for differentiation.

The book opens with a historiographical section that outlines the process of developing knowledge about this medieval ethnos. The research part consists of several sections. In order to understand the historical period preceding the formation of the ancient Russian nationality, it was necessary to shed light on its prehistory in the most detailed way. It turns out that the process of mastering the East European Plain by the Slavs was very complex and multi-act. Colonization was carried out from different sides and by various ethnographic Proto-Slavic groups. The heterogeneity of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe was aggravated by the fact that in different places the Slavs found multi-ethnic natives (various Finnish-speaking tribes in the forest belt, a heterogeneous Baltic population in the Upper Dnieper and adjacent lands, Iranian-speaking and Turkic tribes in the South). On the eve of the formation of the Old Russian people on the East European Plain, several large ethno-tribal groups are archaeologically recorded Slavic ethnic group, some of which were represented by dialect formations of the Late Proto-Slavic period. These groups in some cases are not comparable with chronicle tribes.

Based on archaeological materials, powerful integration phenomena that took place on the East European Plain in the last centuries of the 1st millennium AD are revealed. e., which consolidated the heterogeneous Slavs, led to its cultural unity, and ultimately to the formation of an ethno-linguistic community - the Old Russian people. An independent section is devoted to the study of these integration phenomena, among which the wide infiltration of the Danube Slavs into Eastern European lands, which was first discovered on the basis of archeological data.

The heterogeneous ethno-tribal composition of the Old Russian people was reflected in its dialect structure, reconstructed on the basis of archaeological materials, and in the fragmentation of its territory into historical lands, which became separate political entities during the period of feudal fragmentation of Russia. However, in this situation, the East Slavic ethno-linguistic community continued its unified development for some time, both culturally and ethnically.

Only the Tatar-Mongol yoke and the inclusion of significant parts of the East Slavic territories into the Lithuanian state broke the unity of the ancient Russian people. A gradual process of formation of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnic groups began.

This is the essence of the proposed study.

In an effort to draw a holistic picture of the ethnic history of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe, the author had to develop a number of topics that have not yet received adequate coverage in the scientific literature. Thus, the work establishes that in the northern part of the East Slavic area, the Slavic population appeared not on the eve of the formation of the Old Russian state, as it seemed recently, but even during the Great Migration of Peoples. The problem of the Rus, one of the formations of the Proto-Slavic era, is also illuminated in a new way.

The history of the study of the problem of ancient Russian nationality

This problem attracted the attention of researchers already in the first half of the 19th century. At an early stage, it was considered mainly on the basis of linguistic materials, which is quite understandable, since language is the most important marker of any ethnic formation. Among Russian scientists, A. Kh. Vostokov was the first to try to highlight the topic under consideration. Having identified some of the distinctive features of the Old Russian dialects, the researcher argued that the Old Russian language stood out from the common Slavic. He dated the emergence of differences between the individual Slavic languages ​​of the 12th-13th centuries, believing that at the time of Cyril and Methodius, all Slavs still understood each other relatively easily, that is, they used the common Slavic language.

This issue was studied somewhat more specifically by I. I. Sreznevsky, who believed that the common Slavic (Proto-Slavic) language was initially divided into two branches - western and southeastern, and the latter, after some time, differentiated into Old Russian and South Slavic languages. The researcher attributed the beginning of the Old Russian language to the 9th–10th centuries. During this period it was still monolithic. Dialectal features in the Old Russian language, according to the research of I. I. Sreznevsky, appear in the XI-XIV centuries, and in the XV century. on its basis, the Great Russian (with division into the North Great Russian and South Great Russian groups, the latter with a Belarusian sub-dialect) and Little Russian (Ukrainian) dialects are formed.

P. A. Lavrovsky explained the division of the Old Russian language into the Great Russian and Little Russian dialects by the historical situation - the formation in the time of Andrei Bogolyubsky of a state independent of Kyiv in North-Eastern Russia. This linguist first expressed the idea of ​​the early, even before the appearance of writing in Russia, the formation of the Old Novgorod dialect, which, however, did not meet with support among scientists of the 19th century.

In the second half of the last century, the tradition of deriving the Old Russian language from Proto-Slavic took root in linguistic literature completely. Only a few scholars have sporadically taken a different view. So, the historian M.P. Pogodin expressed the idea that the Kievan land was originally “originally Great Russian”, and Galician Rus was “Little Russian”. The Tatar-Mongol invasion significantly devastated the Kiev region, after which it was occupied by immigrants from Galicia and thus became Little Russian. A different opinion was held by M.A. Maksimovich, who believed that the population of Kievan Rus was Ukrainian. According to this researcher, the Ukrainian ethnos was preserved in the southern lands of Russia in the subsequent time, right up to the present. There was no desolation of the territory of modern Ukraine either in the Tatar-Mongolian period or ever before.

From historical and dialectological studies of the ancient Russian ethno-linguistic community of this period highest value have the work of A. I. Sobolevsky. Based on the analysis of ancient Russian written monuments of the XI-XIV centuries. this researcher singled out and characterized the features of the Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk-Polotsk, Kiev and Volyn-Galician dialects within the Old Russian language. He believed that the dialect division of the Old Russian language corresponded to the tribal division of the Eastern Slavs of the previous period.

The first serious historical and linguistic understanding of the beginning of the East Slavic ethno-linguistic community, the process of formation, development, dialect structure and decay of the Old Russian language belongs to A. A. Shakhmatov. Throughout his fruitful activity, this scientist somewhat changed and improved his views on this issue. I will confine myself here to a brief presentation of the essence of the constructions to which A. A. Shakhmatov came to in the last periods of his scientific work.

The first stage in the emergence of Russians (as the researcher called the Eastern Slavs), who separated from the southeastern branch of the Proto-Slavism, A. A. Shakhmatov dated the 5th-6th centuries. The "first ancestral home" of the emerging East Slavic ethnos was the lands in the interfluve of the lower reaches of the Prut and Dniester. These were the Antes, mentioned in historical sources of the 6th-7th centuries. and became the core of the Eastern Slavs. In the 6th century, fleeing the Avars, a significant part of the Ants moved to Volhynia and the Middle Dnieper region. A. A. Shakhmatov called this region “the cradle of the Russian tribe”, since the Eastern Slavs here constituted “one ethnographic whole”. In the IX-X centuries. from this area began a wide settlement of the East Slavic ethnic group, which mastered wide areas from the Black Sea to Ilmen and from the Carpathians to the Don.

The period from the 9th–10th to the 13th century, according to A. A. Shakhmatov, was the next stage in the history of the Eastern Slavs, which he calls Old Russian. As a result of settlement, the Eastern Slavs at that time differentiated into three large dialects - North Russian, East Russian (or Central Russian) and South Russian. The North Russians are that part of the Eastern Slavs who advanced to the upper reaches of the Dnieper and Western Dvina, to the basins of the Ilmensky and Peipsi lakes, and also settled the interfluve of the Volga and Oka. As a result, a political union was formed here, in which the Krivichi occupied a dominant position and into which the Finnish-speaking tribes were drawn - Merya, Ves, Chud and Muroma. To the east of the Dnieper and in the Don basin, an East Russian dialect was formed, in which akanye originally developed. The Ukrainian language and its dialects became the linguistic basis for the reconstruction of the South Russian dialect, in connection with which the South Russians A.A. The researcher's point of view in relation to the Croats was not firm - they were sometimes ranked among the South Russians, sometimes they were excluded from the environment of the East Slavic tribes.

The wide settlement of the Eastern Slavs on the East European Plain and their division into three groups did not violate their unified linguistic development. The decisive role in the unified development of the Old Russian language, as A. A. Shakhmatov believed, was played by the Kiev state. With its emergence, a “common Russian life” is formed, the process of common Russian linguistic integration develops. The leading role of Kyiv determined the unified all-Russian linguistic processes throughout the territory of Ancient Russia.

In the XIII century. the Old Russian linguistic community is disintegrating. In the following centuries, on the basis of the North Russian, East Russian and South Russian dialects of the Old Russian language and as a result of their interaction, separate East Slavic languages ​​\u200b\u200bare formed - Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian.

The concept of A. A. Shakhmatov was a significant stimulus in the further study of the Old Russian language and nationality. It was adopted by a number of prominent linguists of that time, including D. N. Ushakov, E. F. Budde, B. M. Lyapunov. For a long time, the constructions of A. A. Shakhmatov were widespread among Russian scientists, and in some part they have not lost their significance to this day.

The Serbian linguist D.P. Dzhurovich, who made an interesting attempt to reconstruct the dialect division of the Proto-Slavic language, believed that it also included the Proto-Russian dialect, which became the basis of the Old Russian language, and localized it in the right-bank part of the Middle Dnieper, up to the basin of the upper Bug, inclusive .

Of undoubted interest are studies in the field of the origin of the East Slavic language of the Polish Slavist T. Ler-Splavinsky. He argued that the provision on the Proto-Russian (Old Russian) linguistic unity, formed during the division of the Proto-Slavic community, belongs to the indisputable. The researcher gave a detailed description of the "Proto-Russian language", describing the features that are unique to this language and alien to other Slavic languages. Until the end of the XI century. this language was divided not into three, as A. A. Shakhmatov believed, but only into two dialect groups: the northern and the more extensive southern, each of which had its own characteristic phonetic features. This division, according to T. Ler-Splavinsky, corresponded to the two cultural and political centers of Ancient Russia - Kiev and Novgorod. Kyiv united the southern tribes of the Eastern Slavs: Polyans, Drevlyans, Northerners, Radimichi, Vyatichi and, probably, others. Novgorod belonged to the lands of the Slovenian Ilmen and Krivichi.

The time of differentiation of the Old Russian language into the northern and southern branches, according to T. Ler-Splavinsky, cannot be determined from linguistic data. After the 11th century, during the period of political fragmentation of Russia, the process of gradual transformation of these dialect groups into three East Slavic languages ​​begins. Thus, in the XIII-XIV centuries. Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian languages ​​appear. The Russian language is formed on the basis of the consolidation of the North Russian group with a part of the South Russian. The Ukrainian language was formed entirely from the South Russian group, while the Belarusian language evolved from its northwestern part.

The constructions of T. Ler-Splavinsky were not widely used in linguistics and were accepted only by a few of its representatives.

The well-known linguist N. S. Trubetskoy tried to approach the coverage of the issues under consideration in a different way. The question of the existence of the Old Russian (Common East Slavic) language, in his opinion, should be considered firmly established. The researcher, like many of his predecessors, argued that the language development went from Proto-Slavic to Common East Slavic, and then as a result of the collapse of the latter, three independent East Slavic languages ​​were formed. Following T. Ler-Splavinsky, N. S. Trubetskoy tried to substantiate the initial division of the common Russian language into two dialect groups, southern and northern, which differed markedly in basic phonetic features. He admitted the existence of such a division even in the pre-literate period. While the southern part of the Eastern Slavs, the scientist argued, developed in contact with the southern and western Slavs, the northern group became sharply isolated. Sound changes penetrating from the Slavic south and west did not reach the north of the eastern Slavs. Here development proceeded in contact interaction with the non-Slavic tribes of the Baltic region. This was realized later in the existence of two cultural centers in Ancient Russia: Kyiv and Novgorod. Thus, it turned out that the origin of elements of the North Russian and South Russian dialects is older than the formation of the Old Russian language.

N. S. Trubetskoy did not determine the time of formation of the common Russian language, but assumed that its two-term structure was preserved until the 60s of the XII century, when the process of the decline of the reduced ones began, dated by the researcher to 1164–1282. After 1282, the Old Russian language ceased to exist - the main phonetic changes now developed locally, not covering the East Slavic world as a whole.

N. S. Trubetskoy's research on the long-standing two-term structure of the East Slavic language caused a heated discussion. They were sharply criticized by A. M. Selishchev. N. N. Durnovo actively opposed the objections of A. M. Selishchev.

In many linguistic works of the first half of the XX century. studied (without ethnohistorical digressions) the characteristic features of the Old Russian (East Slavonic) language and its dialects, which left no doubt about the existence of a single ethno-linguistic community during the period of Kievan Rus. At the same time, research showed that the Old Russian language became the common basis for the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. In this regard, we can mention the work of N. N. Durnovo on the history of the Russian language. The researcher emphasized that the phonetic and morphological foundations of the pre-written Proto-Russian language were directly inherited from the Common Slavic.

Meanwhile, in the first decades of the 20th century, other opinions were also expressed, denying the commonality of the Eastern Slavs. Thus, the historian M.S. Grushevsky attributed the origin of the Ukrainian ethnos to the Dnieper union of the tribes of the Antes, known to Byzantine authors of the 6th century. . Some linguists tried to deny the existence of a single Old Russian language. Thus, the Austrian Slavists S. Smal-Stotsky and T. Garter, determining the relationship of languages ​​only by the number of groups of similar features, believed that the Ukrainian language has similarities with Serbian in ten groups, and with Great Russian only in nine. Consequently, they concluded, Ukrainians once had much closer association with Serbs than with Great Russians, and there is no closer relationship between Great Russians and Ukrainians than with other Slavic ethnic groups. As a result, the researchers argued that there was no common Russian language, and the Ukrainian language goes back directly to Proto-Slavic. A similar opinion was also held by E. K. Timchenko. The constructions and conclusions of S. Smal-Stotsky met with unanimous rejection and severe criticism from linguists.

In the 20s of the XX century. V. Yu. Lastovsky and A. Shlyubsky preached the so-called "Krivichi" theory of the origin of Belarusians. They proceeded from the position that the Belarusians were direct descendants of the Krivichi, who supposedly constituted an independent Slavic people. The researchers did not provide any factual data confirming this hypothesis, but they simply do not exist.

Very interesting provisions on the issues under consideration were put forward in the 30-40s of the XX century. B. M. Lyapunov. A monolithic common Slavic language that did not know dialects, in his opinion, never existed. Already in the era of the Proto-Slavic language, there were noticeable dialect differences. However, the common Russian (East Slavonic) language was not based on a single Proto-Slavic dialect, but was formed from several ancient Proto-Slavic dialects, the speakers of which settled in the eastern part of the Slavic world.

Naming the East Slavic phonetic and morphological features that distinguished the common Russian language from the rest of the Slavic languages, B. M. Lyapunov believed that there were many dialects on the common Russian territory, and not three or two, as A. A. Shakhmatov and T. Ler-Splavinsky believed. The researcher allowed the existence in the prehistoric period of the dialects of the Polyans, Drevlyans, Buzhans and other tribal formations of the Eastern Slavs, recorded in the annals. He believed that the Rostov-Suzdal land was inhabited by a special ancient Russian tribe, whose name has not come down to us. The common Russian language, according to B. M. Lyapunov, functioned in the era of Kievan Rus, that is, in the X-XII centuries. Around the 12th century features begin to form, which later formed the specifics of the Russian and Ukrainian languages.

By the end of the 40s of the XX century. include extensive studies of the Old Russian language and its dialects by R. I. Avanesov. The concept of A. A. Shakhmatov on the differentiation of a single Russian ethnos by the 9th century. into three dialects was criticized by this linguist and was rejected as "anti-historical". R. I. Avanesov had no doubt that the Eastern Slavs once constituted a linguistic community and stood out from the common Slavic array. The formation of the Old Russian people of the era of Kievan Rus, according to the ideas of this researcher, was allegedly preceded by the East Slavic linguistic community. During the tribal period, this community included many dialects that were unstable, and their isoglosses were constantly changing. In the IX-XI centuries. in the conditions of the formation of feudalism, the settled population increases, its stability in territorial terms. As a result, a single and monolithic in origin language of the Old Russian people is formed, which, however, received unequal local coloring in different regions. This is how territorial dialects are formed, which destroyed the old tribal ones. New regional dialect formations were more stable, they gravitated towards large urban centers. At the same time, the ancient tribal isoglosses turned out to be almost completely erased, which, as R.I. Avanesov believed, makes judgments about the dialect division of the Eastern Slavs of the prehistoric period controversial. We can only talk about certain dialect features that divided the East Slavic area into northern and southern zones, as well as about narrow regional phenomena (Novgorod dialects, Pskov dialects, East Krivichi dialects of the Rostov-Suzdal land).

In the XII century. In connection with the decline of the Old Russian state, R. I. Avanesov wrote, regional trends are intensifying, which laid the foundation for the formation of linguistic features, which later became characteristic features of the three East Slavic languages. The final addition of the latter occurred several centuries later.

In the 1950s, B. A. Rybakov first attracted these archaeologists to the study of the problems under consideration. He proposed a hypothesis about the Middle Dnieper beginning of the Old Russian people. Its core, according to the ideas of the researcher, was a tribal union, formed in the 6th-7th centuries. in the Middle Dnieper (from the basins of Ros and Tyasmin on the right bank and the lower reaches of the Sula, Pel and Vorskla, as well as the Trubezh basin on the left bank, that is, parts of the future Kiev, Chernigov and Pereyaslav lands) under the leadership of one of the Slavic tribes - the Rus. The range of the latter was determined by the clothing treasures of the 6th-7th centuries. with specific metal decorations.

This territory in chronicles dating back to the 11th-12th centuries was usually called the Russian Land "in the narrow sense of this term." In the last quarter of the 1st millennium AD. e., argued B. A. Rybakov, other Slavic tribes of Eastern Europe, as well as part of the Slavicized Finnish tribes, joined the genesis of the East Slavic ethnos. However, the researcher did not consider how exactly the process of formation of the Old Russian people took place, and I believe it was impossible to do this on the basis of archeological materials.

The period of the Old Russian state with its capital in Kyiv, argued B. A. Rybakov, was the heyday of the East Slavic people. Its unity, despite the emergence of several principalities, was preserved in the era of the feudal fragmentation of Russia in the 12th-13th centuries. This unity was realized by the East Slavic population itself, which was reflected in the geographical understanding - the entire Russian land (in the broad sense) until the 14th century. was opposed to isolated estates, with princes at war with each other.

It can be noted that the attempts of historians to get involved in the study of the process of formation of the Old Russian nationality did not give the desired results. There was too little historical evidence to shed light on this complex issue. In the middle of the XX century. in historical writings, the idea prevailed that the Eastern Slavs in the 6th-7th centuries. were antes. So, for example, considered Yu. V. Gauthier. V. I. Dovzhenok wrote that the Ant language differed little from Old Russian. The latter allegedly represented the same language as Ant, but at a higher level of development. According to V.I. Dovzhenko, the basis for the consolidation of the Eastern Slavs into the Old Russian nationality was the rapid pace of socio-economic development of the population of the East European Plain, but the ethnic development during the period of Kievan Rus became the main thing along the way to the final formation of the nationality. The separation of a single ancient Russian people into separate parts, which led to the formation of three ethnic groups - Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian - should be sought in the historical setting of the XIII-XIV centuries.

A. I. Kozachenko also considered the Ants as the first nationality of the Eastern Slavs, which developed at the dawn of a class society. The flourishing of the Old Russian nationality was determined by this researcher by periods of Kievan Rus and feudal fragmentation (until the middle of the 13th century). Its consolidation was determined both by external danger and by the demand for national unity under conditions of strong princely power.

The idea of ​​the Antes as early Eastern Slavs was not new. It goes back to the scientific works of the first half of the 19th century. So, already K. Zeiss argued that the division of the Slavic ethnic group of the VI-VII centuries. to s (k) Lven and Ants corresponds to the differentiation of the Slavic language into western and eastern branches. Ants were identified with the Eastern Slavs by many scientists, including L. Niederle, and among linguists, as noted above, A. A. Shakhmatov and some researchers of the 50-60s of the XX century.

The problem of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality was also of interest to A. N. Nasonov. According to the ideas of this historian, the initial stage of the ethnic consolidation of the Eastern Slavs is associated with the early state formation "Russian Land", which took shape at the end of the 8th - beginning of the 9th century. in the Middle Dnieper with the center in Kyiv. Its territorial and ethnographic basis was the lands of the Polyans, Drevlyans and Northerners. At the end of the IX-X centuries. The Old Russian state spread to the entire area of ​​the East Slavic tribes, uniting two of their branches - northern and southern - into a single ethno-linguistic array.

L. V. Cherepnin linked the process of the formation of the Old Russian nationality with changes in socio-economic life, as if taking place in the 6th-9th centuries, which contributed to the rapprochement and merging of the heterogeneous Slavic population of Eastern Europe. This historian also attached significant importance to the formation of the Old Russian state, which proceeded in parallel with the formation of the nationality. However, the common language, territory, culture and economic life, as well as the struggle against external enemies, played a decisive role in this. Period X-XII centuries. L. V. Cherepnin defined it as the time of the merger of the East Slavic tribes into a “single Russian people”.

In the XII-XIII centuries, the researcher further argued, prerequisites were created for the division of the Old Russian nationality, as a result of which strengthening and political fragmentation of the territory of the Eastern Slavs caused by the Tatar-Mongol conquest, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities are formed.

From a historical point of view, V. V. Mavrodin also tried to show the process of formation of the ancient Russian people. He argued that the basis of the Old Russian language was the Kyiv dialect - a kind of fusion of the dialects of the population of Kyiv, rather motley in ethnic and social terms. In the diversity of Kievan dialects, a linguistic unity is formed, which became the core of the language of Kievan Rus as a whole. The commonality of the political and state life of all the Eastern Slavs, according to V.V. Mavrodin, contributed to the rallying of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe into a single ancient Russian people.

Initially, this researcher believed that the process of the formation of a nationality in the era of Ancient Russia was not completed and the ensuing feudal fragmentation predetermined its division and the emergence of new ethno-linguistic formations. Later, V.V. Mavrodin began to argue that the differentiation of the Old Russian people was due not to the incompleteness of the process of its folding, not to the feudal fragmentation of Ancient Russia, but to the historical conditions that prevailed in Russia after the Batu invasion - its territorial division, the seizure of many Russian lands by neighboring states.

At present, all these constructions of historians are of purely historiographical interest.

Ethnographers also drew attention to the presence of significant elements of the commonality of the material and spiritual culture and life of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples, dating back to a single ancient Russian people. To the common East Slavic elements characteristic of the three East Slavic peoples, ethnographers usually refer to the “three-chamber” plan of residential buildings, their lack of a foundation, the presence of an oven in the huts, fixed benches along the walls; similar types of folk clothing (women's and men's shirts, men's coats, women's hats); wedding, birth and funeral rites; similarities in the tools and processes of spinning and weaving crafts; agricultural rituals and the proximity of arable implements. An unconditional historical community is revealed by oral art (epics and songs) of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples, as well as fine arts - embroideries and wood carvings.

The original hypothesis about the prerequisites for the formation of the Old Russian nationality was proposed by P. N. Tretyakov. According to his ideas, the East Slavic ethno-linguistic community was the result of the miscegenation of a part of the Proto-Slavs - the bearers of the Zarubintsy culture, who settled in the first centuries of our era throughout the Upper Dnieper, with the local Baltic population. The Upper Dnieper region, as the researcher believed, became the ancestral home of the Eastern Slavs. “During the subsequent resettlement of the Eastern Slavs, which culminated in the creation of an ethnographic picture known from the Tale of Bygone Years, from the Upper Dnieper in the northern, northeastern and southern directions, in particular in the rivers of the middle Dnieper, it was by no means “pure” Slavs that moved, but a population that had assimilated Eastern Baltic groups in its composition. At the same time, P. N. Tretyakov mainly considered Zarubinets antiquities, which became widespread in the 2nd century. BC e. - II century. n. e. mainly in the Middle Dnieper and Pripyat Polissya, as well as late Zarubinets and post-Zarubinets antiquities of the Dnieper region. Other, more significant processes of the Slavic development of the East European Plain, and, consequently, the complex ethnogenetic situations that took place, remained outside the researcher's field of vision.

The constructions of P. N. Tretyakov about the formation of the Old Russian people in the conditions of the Slavic-Baltic intra-regional interaction in the Upper Dnieper region do not find confirmation either in archaeological or linguistic materials. East Slavic does not show any common Baltic substratum elements. What united all Eastern Slavs linguistically in the Old Russian period and at the same time separated them from other Slavic ethnic formations of that time cannot be considered as a product of the Baltic influence.

The idea of ​​the emergence of an East Slavic linguistic community in the area of ​​Zarubinets culture was also expressed by the linguist F. P. Filin, however, without making any attempts to somehow support this thesis with linguistic materials. However, this is not the main thing in his important purely linguistic studies. The researcher argued that around the 7th century. n. e. The Slavs, who settled the lands east of the Carpathians and the Western Bug, are isolated from the rest of the Slavic world, which led to the emergence of a number of linguistic innovations that made up the specifics of the Old Russian language at the first stage of its development. In the works of F. P. Filin, all phonetic phenomena characteristic of the East Slavic linguistic community, and its special lexical development, received a detailed description.

The dialectal structure of the Old Russian language seemed to F. P. Filin to be complex, formed on the basis of both the dialect zones of the Proto-Slavic era inherited by the Eastern Slavs, and regional innovations that arose already in the process of the development of the East Slavic language. During the formation of the Old Russian state, the researcher argued, there were still no inclinations of the future Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages. There was a single Old Russian language, which had dialectal features in different areas.

In the work of 1940, F. P. Filin paid some attention to the Kiev dialect, which, in his opinion, was put forward as a common East Slavic language, that is, Old Russian. However, in subsequent studies, he no longer claimed this.

The fragmentation of Kievan Rus into many feudal principalities, according to F. P. Filin, led to an increase in dialect differences. The dialects of the Old Russian lands were now entering into a centripetal development. The turning point was the historical events of the 13th century. The Tatar-Mongol invasion and the Lithuanian conquests, which divided the East Slavic area for a long time, could not but affect the history of the language. Regional dialectisms arose in the phonetic system, phenomena developed that became specific to individual East Slavic languages. In the XIV-XV centuries, as F. P. Filin believed, one can speak of the initial stage of the formation of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian languages, since at that time the features characteristic of them became widespread.

The process of the formation of the Old Russian language by the Ukrainian linguist G. P. Pivtorak is somewhat vaguely described. On the one hand, referring to the works of archaeologists, he writes about two directions of the Slavic development of the East European Plain: 1) from the Middle Dnieper, moving along the Dnieper and Desna, the Slavs settled the upper Dnieper lands, the Volga-Oka interfluve and the upper reaches of the Neman; 2) from the Venetian area in the South Baltic, by sea or land, another group of Slavs settled in the forest zone, where the Krivichi and Slovenes of Novgorod are recorded in chronicles and archeology. The East Slavic ethnos, according to the researcher, was formed gradually during the settlement of Slavic tribes on the Russian Plain. The initial core of the settlement of the Old Russian people from the first half of the 1st millennium AD. e. there were lands between the upper reaches of the Western Bug and the middle Dnieper. The unity of the Old Russian language, according to G.P. Pivtorak, in the era of Kievan Rus and feudal fragmentation was constantly reinforced by various extralinguistic factors.

O. N. Trubachev sees the ancient center of the common Eastern Slavic linguistic community on the Don and the Seversky Donets. These hypothetical constructions do not seem to be sufficiently elaborated. A number of historical and philological questions arise, the answers to which modern Slavic studies cannot give.

In recent decades, the Kyiv archaeologist and historian P.P. Tolochko also addressed the problem of the ancient Russian nationality. His constructions are based on the interpretation of individual places of written monuments with some references to archeological materials and come down to the following. Already in the VI-VIII centuries. Eastern Slavs were a single ethno-cultural array, consisting of a dozen related tribal formations. Period IX-X centuries. characterized by internal migrations that contributed to the integration of the East Slavic tribes. The process received a noticeable acceleration from the end of the 9th - the first decades of the 10th century, when the Old Russian state was formed with the capital in Kyiv and the ethnonym rus approved for all Eastern Slavs.

During the IX-XII centuries. within the state territory of Kievan Rus there was a single East Slavic ethnic community. Its core, according to P.P. Tolochko, was Russia, or the Russian land “in the narrow sense”, or, in the terminology of foreign sources, “Inner Russia”, that is, the territory that in the late Middle Ages was called Little Russia.

The idea of ​​the formation of the Old Russian language on the basis of the Proto-Russian dialect formation, traces of which cannot be identified in linguistic materials, forces researchers to look for other ways to resolve the issue of the formation of a common East Slavic ethno-linguistic unity, the existence of which in the first centuries of the 2nd millennium AD. e. is beyond doubt. Above, B. M. Lyapunov's concept of the composition of the Old Russian language on the basis of several Proto-Slavic dialect groups was outlined. Modern archaeological evidence of the Slavic development of the East European Plain also leads to this conclusion. The issue of the formation of the Old Russian people on the basis of archeological materials was thesisly considered in a number of my publications, which show that the formation of this ethno-linguistic unity was due to the leveling and integration of the Slavic tribal formations that inhabited the East European Plain, in the conditions of a single historical and cultural space formed on the territory Old Russian state. This will be discussed in more detail in the present study.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the linguist G. A. Khaburgaev also adhered to a similar point of view. He argued that a distinct Proto-Slavic dialect or Proto-Russian language never existed. East Slavic ethno-linguistic unity took shape on the basis of the spread of Slavic speech in Eastern Europe in a heterogeneous way from components that were heterogeneous in origin. On the eve of the formation of the Old Russian state, according to G. A. Khaburgaev, a process took place that actively destroyed the old tribal foundations. The political unification of various Slavic tribes led to the formation of a peculiar dialect-ethnographic East Slavic community. Archaeological monuments of the X-XII centuries. on the territory of Ancient Russia, this researcher argues, testify to a noticeable convergence of all the main cultural and ethnographic elements, to the process of consolidating the population into a single nationality.

A small discussion regarding the essence of the Old Russian people took place at the VI International Congress of Slavic Archeology, held in Novgorod in August 1996. The Belarusian archaeologist G.V. Shtykhov, using selective historical and archaeological data, argued that the Old Russian people had not yet formed in the era of Kievan Rus finally and broke up in connection with the fragmentation of the Old Russian state into many principalities. The researcher did not touch upon the linguistic materials characterizing the East Slavic community at all and concluded that “the process of the emergence of kindred East Slavic peoples - Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian (Great Russian) - can be consistently stated without using this controversial concept” (that is, the Old Russian nationality). Apparently, G. V. Shtykhov is not embarrassed by the fact that this idea comes into conflict with the achievements of linguistics. The researcher further notes that the Slavic population of Ancient Russia spoke various dialects.

This is true, but this does not at all lead to the conclusion that there were no common phonetic, morphological and lexical phenomena in the 10th-12th centuries. affecting the entire East Slavic area.

A close position was recently taken by the Ukrainian archaeologist V. D. Baran. In a short article, mainly devoted to the culture of the Slavs of the period of the great migration of peoples according to archaeological data, he briefly concludes that the result of the Slavic migration and the interaction of the Slavs with the non-Slavic population was the formation of new ethnic formations, including the emergence of three East Slavic ethnic groups: Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian . The Kiev state, headed by the Rurik dynasty, did not stop the ethnic process of the formation of these peoples, but only slowed it down for a while. The period of the Tatar-Mongol ruin of Russia was, according to V. D. Baran, not the beginning, but the final stage in the formation of three East Slavic peoples. No data confirming this concept can be found in archaeological materials. V. D. Baran did not even try to substantiate it in any way. It is said, however, that the ancestors of the Belarusians in the V-VII centuries. there were tribes of the Kolochin culture, but how exactly the process of the ethnogenesis of Belarusians proceeded remains absolutely unclear. After all, the East Slavic population of both the Polotsk land and the Turov volost, which formed the backbone of the emerging Belarusian nationality, was not genetically connected in any way with the carriers of the Kolochin antiquities.

Very important point in the problem under consideration is the question of the identity of the Eastern Slavs in the era of Ancient Russia as a single ethnic entity. This topic was considered earlier by D. S. Likhachev, later an interesting section was devoted to it, written by A. I. Rogov and B. N. Florey in a monographic study of the formation of the self-consciousness of the Slavic peoples in the early Middle Ages. Based on the analysis of chronicle texts, hagiographic monuments and foreign evidence, researchers argue that already in the 11th century. an idea was formed about the Russian land as a single state, covering the entire territory of the Eastern Slavs, and about the population of this state as “Russian people”, constituting a special ethnic community.

Notes

• Vostokov A. Kh. Discourse on the Slavic language // Proceedings of the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. Issue. XVII. M., 1820. S. 5–61; Philological observations of A. Kh. Vostokov. SPb., 1865. S. 2–15.
• Sreznevsky II Thoughts on the history of the Russian language. SPb., 1850.
• Lavrovsky P.A. On the language of the northern Russian chronicles. SPb., 1852.
• Pogodin M.P. Notes on the ancient Russian language // Izv. Academy of Sciences. T. 13. St. Petersburg, 1856.
• Maksimovich M.A. Collected Works. T. P. Kyiv, 1877.
• Sobolevsky A. I. Essays from the history of the Russian language. Kyiv, 1888; His own. Lectures on the history of the Russian language. Kyiv, 1888.
• Shakhmatov A. A. To the question of the formation of Russian dialects and Russian nationalities // ZhMNP. SPb., 1899. No. IV; His own. Essay on the most ancient period in the history of the Russian language: (Encyclopedia of Slavic Philology. Issue II). Pg., 1915; His own. Introduction to the course of the history of the Russian language. Part 1. The historical process of the formation of Russian tribes and Russian nationalities. Pg., 1916; His own. The most ancient fate of the Russian tribe. Pg., 1919.
• Ushakov D.N. Adverbs of the Russian language and Russian nationalities // Russian history in essays and articles / Ed. M. V. Dovnar-Zapolsky. T. 1. M., b. G.; Buddha E.F. Lectures on the history of the Russian language. Kazan, 1914; Lyapunov B.M. Unity of the Russian language in its dialects. Odessa, 1919.
• Dzhurovich D.P. Dialects of the common Slavic language. Warsaw, 1913.
• Lehr-Splawinski T. Stosunki pokrewienstwa jezykow rukich // Rocznik slawistyczny. IX–1. Poznan, 1921, pp. 23–71; Idem. Kilka uwag o wspolnosci jezykowej praruskiej // Collection of articles in honor of Academician Alexei Ivanovich Sobolevsky (Collection of the Department of Russian Language and Literature. 101:3). M., 1928. S. 371–377; Idem. Kilka uwag o wspolnosci jezykowej praruskiej // Studii i skize wybrane z jezykoznawstwa slowianskiego. Warzawa, 1957.
• Trubetzkoy N. Einige uber die russische Lautentwicklung und die Auflosung der gemeinrussischen Spracheinheit // Zeitschrift fur slavische Philologie. bd. 1:3/4. Leipzig, 1925, pp. 287–319. The article was translated into Russian and published in the book: Trubetskoy N.S. Selected Works in Philology. M., 1987. S. 143–167.
• Selishchev A. M. Critical remarks on the reconstruction of the ancient fate of Russian dialects // Slavia. VII: 1. Praha, 1928; Durnovo N. N. Several remarks on the issue of the formation of Russian languages ​​// Izv. in Russian language and literature. T.P.L., 1929.
• Durnovo N. N. Essay on the history of the Russian language. M., 1924. Reissue: M., 1959.
• Hrushevsky M. History of Ukraine-Rus. Ki i v, 1904, pp. 1–211.
• Smal-Stocki St., Gartner T. Grammatik der ruthenischen (ukrainischen) Sprache. Vienna, 1913; Smal-Stotsky St. Rozvytok glancing about the sim "th words" of the yang mov i ix mutually opidnennya. Prague, 1927.
• Timchenko E.K. Words "Janian unity and the camp of the Ukrainian language in the words" Jansk homeland // Ukraine. Book. 3. Kiev, 1924; His own. A course of Ukrainian language history. Kiev, 1927.
• Galanov I. Rev. on the book: Grammatik der ruthenischen (ukrainischen) Sprache. Von Stephan v. Smal-Stockyj and Teodor Garther. Wien, 1913 // Izv. Department of the Russian language and literature of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. 1914. T. XIX. Book. 3. S. 297–306; Yagich V. Rets. // Archiv fur slavische Philologie. bd. XXXVII. Berlin, 1920. S. 211.
• Lastouski V. A short history of Belarus and Vilna, 1910. More consistently, the opinion of this researcher is presented in his articles published in the journal Kryvich, which was published in 1923-1927. in Kaunas.
• Lyapunov B.M. The most ancient mutual relations of the Russian and Ukrainian languages ​​and some conclusions about the time of their emergence as separate linguistic groups // Russian Historical Lexicology. M., 1968. S. 163–202.
• Avanesov R. I. Questions of the formation of the Russian language in its dialects // Vestnik Mosk. university 1947. No. 9. S. 109–158; His own. Questions of the history of the Russian language in the era of the formation and further development of the Russian (Great Russian) nationality // Questions of the formation of the Russian nationality and nation. M.; L., 1958. S. 155–191.
• Rybakov B. A. On the question of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality // Abstracts of reports and speeches by employees of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the USSR Academy of Sciences, prepared for a meeting on the methodology of ethnogenetic research. M., 1951. S. 15–22; His own. The problem of the formation of ancient Russian nationality // Vopr. stories. 1952. No. 9. S. 42–51; His own. Ancient Rus // Sov. archeology. T. XVII. M., 1953. S. 23–104.
• Gotye Yu. V. The Iron Age in Eastern Europe. M., 1930. S. 42.
• Dovzhenok V.I. On the question of the composition of the ancient Russian nationality // Reports VI scientific conference Institute of Archeology. Kyiv, 1953, pp. 40–59.
• Kozachenko A.I. Old Russian people- the common ethnic base of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples // Sov. ethnography. T. P. M., 1954. S. 3–20.
• Zeuss K. Die Deutschen und die Nachbarstamme. Munchen, 1837, pp. 602–604.
• Niederle L. Slavic antiquities. M., 1956. S. 139–140.
• Yakubinsky A.P. History of the Old Russian language. M., 1941. (Reprint: M., 1953); Chernykh P. Ya. Historical grammar of the Russian language. M., 1954; Georgiev Vl. Veneti, anti, sklaveni and tridelenieto in Slavonic Yezitsi // Slavonic collection. Sofia, 1968, pp. 5–12.
• Nasonov A.N. To the question of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality // Bulletin of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. 1951. No. 1. S. 69–70; His own. "Russian land" and the formation of the territory of the ancient Russian state. Moscow, 1951, pp. 41–42.
• Cherepnin L. V. Historical conditions for the formation of the Russian nationality until the end of the 15th century. // Issues of the formation of the Russian people and nation. M., 1958. S. 7–105.
• Mavrodin VV Formation of the Old Russian state. L., 1945, pp. 380–402; His own. Formation of a unified Russian state. L., 1951. S. 209–219; His own. The formation of the Old Russian state and the formation of the Old Russian nationality. M., 1971. S. 157–190; His own. Origin of the Russian people. L., 1978. S. 119–147.
• Tokarev S.A. On the cultural community of the East Slavic peoples // Sov. ethnography. 1954. No. 2. S. 21–31; His own. Ethnography of the peoples of the USSR. M., 1958; Maslova G.S. Historical and cultural ties between Russians and Ukrainians according to folk clothes // Ibid. pp. 42–59; Sukhobrus G. S. The main features of the commonality of Russian and Ukrainian folk poetic creativity // Ibid. pp. 60–68.
• Tretyakov P.N. Eastern Slavs and the Baltic Substratum // Sov. ethnography. 1967. No. 4. P. 110–118; His own. At the origins of the ancient Russian people. L., 1970.
• Sedov V.V. Once again about the origin of the Belarusian nationality // Sov. ethnography. 1968. No. 5. S. 105–120.
• Filin F.P. On the origin of the Proto-Slavic language and East Slavic languages ​​// Vopr. linguistics. 1980. No. 4. S. 36–50.
• Filin F. P. Essay on the history of the Russian language until the XIV century. A. I. Herzen. T. XXVII. L., 1940; His own. The formation of the language of the Eastern Slavs. M.; L., 1962; His own. The origin of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples: a historical and dialectological essay. L., 1972.
• Filin F.P. Essay on the history of the Russian language ... S. 89.
• Pivtorak G.P. Formation and dialect differentiation of old Russian language: (Historical and phonetic drawings). Kiev, 1988.
• Trubachev O. N. In search of unity. M., 1992. S. 96–98.
• Tolochko P.P. Ancient Russia: Essays on socio-political history. Kyiv, 1987, pp. 180–191; His own. Chi isnuvala old-Russian populism? // Archeology. Kiev, 1991. No. 3. S. 47–57.
• Sedov V.V. Eastern Slavs in the 6th–13th centuries. M., 1982. S. 269–273; His own. Slavs in the Early Middle Ages. M., 1995. S. 358–384.
• Khaburgaev G. A. Formation of the Russian language. M., 1980.
• Shtykhov G.V. Old Russian nationality: realities and myth // Ethnogenesis and ethnocultural contacts of the Slavs: Proceedings of the VI International Congress of Slavic Archeology. T. 3. M., 1997. S. 376–385. In the discussion on the report of G. V. Shtykhov, he was supported by I. A. Marzalyuk, A. I. Filyushkin, and O. N. Trusov (Ibid., pp. 386–388). Unfortunately, linguists did not take part in the dispute.
• Baran V.D. The great spread of words "yan" // Archeology. Kiev, 1998. No. 2. S. 30–37. In the book "Ancient Slavs" this researcher expressed a different idea. He believes that the carriers were the basis of all East Slavic chronicle tribes The collapse of the Kievan state after the death of Yaroslav the Wise led to the grouping of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe around three main cultural and economic centers: Polotsk on the Western Dvina, Vladimir on the Klyazma and Kyiv with Galich in the Dnieper-Dniester These regions preserved the traditions of the era of the great migration of peoples and became the foundations of the three East Slavic peoples - Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian (Baran V. D. Davni slov "jani. Kiev, 1998. S. 211-218).
• Likhachev D.S. National identity of Ancient Russia. M.; L., 1945.
• The development of the ethnic identity of the Slavic peoples in the early Middle Ages. M., 1982. S. 96–120.

Slavic cultural and tribal formations in the southern regions of the East European Plain on the eve of the formation of the Old Russian people

In the first centuries of our era, the Slavs inhabited parts of the territories of two archaeological cultures: Przeworsk, occupying Central European lands from the Elbe to the Western Bug and the upper Dniester, and Chernyakhov, which spread in the Northern Black Sea region from the lower Danube in the west to the Seversky Donets in the east. These cultures were large polyethnic formations of a provincial-Roman appearance. The Slavs, called Wends by ancient authors, in the area of ​​the Przeworsk culture belonged to the lands of the Middle and Upper Hanging with adjacent areas of the Oder basin and the Upper Dniester. This region was not closed, it was repeatedly invaded by various Germanic tribes. On the territory of the Chernyakhov culture, in the conditions of marginal mixing of the local Late Scythian-Sarmatian population and the settled Slavs, a Slavic-Iranian symbiosis developed, as a result, a separate dialect-tribal formation of the Slavs, known in historical sources as antes, became isolated in Podolia and the Middle Dnieper region.

The invasion of the Huns significantly disrupted the historical situation that had developed in Roman times in Eastern and Central Europe. The Huns, originating from Central Asia, in the II century. n. e., as evidenced by Dionysius and Ptolemy, appeared in the Caspian steppes, where they lived until the 70s of the 4th century. Having defeated the Alano-Sarmatians, who roamed the steppes between the Volga and the Don, in 375 the Huns invaded the northern Black Sea lands in powerful hordes, crushing everything in their path, robbing dwellings and burning villages of the Chernyakhov culture, devastating fields and killing people. Archeology shows that a significant number of Chernyakhiv settlements at the end of the 4th c. ceased to exist, the craft centers that functioned here, supplying the surrounding population with various products, were completely destroyed. Eunapius, a contemporary of the Hun invasion, wrote: “The defeated Scythians (as the ancient authors called the population of the former Scythia) were exterminated by the Huns and most of them died ...” By the end of the 4th century. the entire Chernyakhov culture ceased to function, only in certain areas of the forest-steppe zone relatively small islands of its settlements were preserved. Separate groups of the Chernyakhov population fled, as evidenced by archeological data, to the north to the southern regions of the Oka basin and to the Crimea. At the same time, other hordes of the Huns headed for Taman and the Crimea - the rich cities of the Bosporus were subjected to devastating pogroms, and their inhabitants were massacred.

Having defeated the Visigoths somewhere on the lower Dniester, the Huns invaded the Danube lands and at the beginning of the 5th century. mastered the steppe expanses of the Middle Danube, where, having subjugated the surrounding tribes, they soon created a powerful Hun state. Having settled in Central Europe, the Huns also kept the northern Black Sea tribes in their power.

The invasion of the Huns significantly affected the Przeworsk culture. The main part of its craft centers and workshops, which supplied the agricultural population with their products, ceased to function, and many villages were deserted. At the same time, there was an outflow of significant masses of the population from the area of ​​the Przeworsk culture. Thus, the Germanic tribes, recorded by Roman authors in the Vistula-Oder region, went south to the borders of the Roman Empire. The Slavs also joined the whirlpool of the great migration of peoples. In the first decades of the 5th c. Przeworsk culture ceased to function.

The situation was aggravated by a significant deterioration in the climate. The first centuries of our era were climatically very favorable for the life and management of the agricultural population, which formed the basis of the bearers of the Przeworsk culture. Archeology clearly records in the III-IV centuries. and a significant increase in the number of settlements, and a noticeable increase in population, and the active development of agricultural technology.

From the end of the 4th century in Europe, a sharp cooling sets in, the 5th century was especially cold. It was a period of maximum cooling not only for the 1st millennium AD. e., at this time the lowest temperatures in the last 2000 years were observed. Soil moisture increases sharply, which was due to both an increase in precipitation and the transgression of the Baltic Sea. The levels of rivers and lakes are noticeably rising, groundwater is rising, swamps are growing. As a result, many settlements of the Roman period were flooded or severely flooded, and arable land was unsuitable for agricultural activities. Archaeological surveys in northern Germany have shown that the level of rivers and lakes here has risen so much that the population was forced to leave most of the villages that functioned in Roman times. As a result, the Teutons abandoned the lands of Jutland and adjacent regions of mainland Germany. From floods and waterlogging, the Middle Vistula, which is distinguished by low relief, was seriously affected. Here, almost all the settlements of the Roman period by the beginning of the 5th century BC. abandoned by the agricultural population. As shown below, significant masses of the inhabitants of this region migrated to the northeast, moving along the elevated lacustrine-glacial ridges from the Masurian Lakes to Valdai.

The Hun conquests in Europe were interrupted in 451, when the Hun troops invading Gaul were defeated in the battle on the Catalan fields. A year later, the well-known Hun leader Attila (445-454), having gathered a powerful army, again moved to Gaul, but could not conquer it, and after his death the Hun state collapsed. The life of the agricultural population preserved in more or less large islands in the areas of the Przeworsk and Chernyakhov cultures, and these were mostly Slavs, gradually stabilized. Deprived of the products of the provincial Roman crafts, the population was forced to create life and culture anew. At first, the early medieval Slavs in terms of development turned out to be lower than in the Roman period.

The Slavs entered the Middle Ages as a far from monolithic mass. Geographically, they were scattered over a wide area of ​​Central and Eastern Europe. Communications between individual regions were often absent. The historical situation in each of them was peculiar; in a number of places, more or less large groups of Slavs settled among other ethnic aborigines. As a result, in the V-VII centuries. there were several different Slavic cultures recorded by modern archeology (Fig. 1).

rice. 1. The resettlement of the Slavs during the Great Migration of Peoples

(a) area of ​​the Sukovsko-Dziedzitsa culture;
b - Prague-Korchak culture;
c – Penkovskaya culture;
d – hyposhty-Kyndeshti antiquities;
e - Imenko culture;
(f) cultures of the Pskov long mounds;
g - Tushemla culture;
h - "Meryanskaya" culture;
and – antiquities of the Udomel type;
j - regions of residence of the Slavs in Roman times;
l - the main directions of the beginning process of development by the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula

Notes

• For more on this, see: Sedov V.V. Origin and early history of the Slavs. M., 1979. S. 119-133; His own. Slavs in antiquity. M., 1994. S. 233-286.
• Latyshev VV News of ancient writers about Scythia and the Caucasus. T. I. Greek writers. SPb., 1893. S. 726.

Anty

During the 5th century in the Podolsk-Dnieper region of the territory of the former Chernyakhov culture, the Penkovo ​​culture is being formed (Fig. 2). Its creators were the descendants of the population of the forest-steppe strip of the Chernyakhovsky area, that part of it, where in Roman times, under the conditions of the Slavic-Iranian symbiosis, Antes were formed. In addition, during the formation of Penkovo ​​antiquities, there was an influx of migrants from the Dnieper left-bank lands, as evidenced by the elements of Kievan culture, manifested in house building and in ceramic materials.

rice. 2. Areas of the Prague-Korchakov and Penkov cultures

a - monuments of the Prague-Korchak culture (Duleb group);
b – monuments of the Penkovo ​​culture (Antskaya group);
c - the direction of migration of the carriers of the Prague-Korchak antiquities to the lower Danube;
(d) area of ​​the Tushemla culture;
(e) area of ​​the Kolochin culture;
(f) area of ​​the Moshchin culture;

Monuments of the initial stage of the Penkovo ​​culture were studied in the Middle Dnieper and on the Southern Bug. Such, in particular, are the settlements of Kunya, Goliki and Parkhomovka, excavated by P. I. Khavlyuk in the Bug region, on which semi-dugout dwellings heated by heaters or hearths were discovered, and characteristic stucco pottery was found. At the settlement of Kunya, an iron two-membered fibula with a long shackle and a solid flat receiver was found, dating from the end of the 4th–5th centuries; In the semi-dugout dwellings at the settlement of Kochubeevka, along with Penkovo ​​utensils, fragments of Chernyakhov pottery were also found. Such utensils were also found in some other Penkovo ​​settlements, apparently survivingly used at the beginning of the Middle Ages.

In the Middle Dnieper region, one of the studied sites with cultural layers of the 5th century. is the settlement of Hittsi. The bulk of the pottery here was typically Pennovsky hand-made utensils. Some vessels combined the features of Penkovo ​​and Kiev ceramics in form. Fragments of Chernyakhov pottery were also found. The dating find here is a bone comb from the 5th century BC.

To the early stage of the Penkovo ​​culture belongs one of the ground burial grounds near the village. Velikaya Andrusovka on the river. Tyasmin. His excavations revealed burials according to the rite of cremation on the side. The remains of the cremation were poured into small pits. In one of these burials, a cast bronze buckle dating back to the 5th century was found.

In the next century, the population of the Penkovo ​​culture is actively growing and developing new territories. The culture is characterized by a number of features, among which the most striking is ceramics (Fig. 3: 4–6). Its leading form was pots with a slightly profiled upper edge and an oval-rounded body. The greatest expansion of these pots falls on the middle part, the neck and bottom are narrowed and approximately equal in diameter. The second common type of vessels are biconical pots with a sharp or slightly smoothed edge. In addition, flat clay discs and frying pans, characteristic of most Slavic cultures of the early Middle Ages, and occasionally bowls are common at Penkovo ​​sites. All these dishes were made without a potter's wheel. Ornamentation on the vessels, as a rule, is absent, only a few pots have notches along the edge of the rim, a molded roller or moldings in the form of knobs on the body.

rice. 3. Ceramics of the Prague-Korchak (1-3) and Penkovo ​​(4-6) cultures

1-3 – from the Korchak IX settlement and the Korchak burial ground;
4-6 - from the village of Semenki

The main type of settlements were unfortified settlements with an area of ​​no more than 2-3 hectares. In most villages, there were from 7 to 15 households at the same time. Unsystematic building dominated, only a few settlements had a row type of building. The dwellings were sub-square semi-dugouts with an area of ​​12 to 20 square meters. m. The depth of the pits ranges from 0.4 to 1 m. The walls of the buildings had a log or pillar construction, log dwellings predominated. Log cabins were cut "in the cloud" or "in the paw". Their ground parts rose by 1.5-2m. With a pillar structure, the blocks were laid horizontally along the walls of the pit and fastened with stakes or by letting their ends into the grooves of the risers. The roofs of the dwellings had wooden frames, which were covered with straw, reeds or poles smeared with a layer of clay.

Dwellings were heated by stoves or hearths. At the early stage of the Penkovo ​​culture, hearths predominated, later stove-heaters dominated, usually occupying one of the corners of buildings. In rare cases, clay ovens have also been recorded. The floors of the dwellings were rammed, mainland; only in a few buildings the floor was lined with wooden planks. In many buildings opposite the stoves, recesses were cut out for descending a wooden staircase, sometimes steps were cut into the mainland soil. The interior of the Penkovsky dwelling is unpretentious - only wall benches were arranged.

Dwellings in the Penkovsky settlements were accompanied by outbuildings. These were either above-ground log or column structures, or, more often, cylindrical, bell-shaped or barrel-shaped pits-cellars from 0.3 to 2 m in diameter and up to 2 m deep. They stored grain and other food supplies.

In the southern regions of the Dnieper region, where the population of the Penkovo ​​culture was in close contact with the nomadic world, in a number of settlements, recessed dwellings of a round or oval shape were discovered, reminiscent of nomad yurts and indicating the infiltration of the Alan-Bulgarian population into the environment of the Slavs.

In the area of ​​the Penkovo ​​culture, there are also isolated fortified villages. Among them is the well-studied ancient settlement of Selishte in Moldavia, 130 x 60 m in size, arranged at the confluence of the Vatich stream into the river. Reut. From the floor side, it was reinforced with a wooden wall and a deep canyon. Excavations revealed 16 semi-dugout dwellings and 81 utility pits. In four semi-dugouts, the remains of handicraft activities related to jewelry and pottery were recorded. Researchers of the monument believe that the ancient settlement was one of the administrative and economic centers of the Penkovsky area.

One of the most interesting monuments of the Penkovo ​​culture is the Pastirskoye settlement with stratifications of the 6th-7th centuries, located in the Tyasmina basin. It occupied an area of ​​about 3.5 hectares and was protected by ramparts and ditches built back in the Scythian time. Excavations have explored about two dozen dwellings, semi-dugouts with stoves, heaters, typically of Penkovo ​​appearance. In addition, workshops for iron processing, a forge and pottery kilns for firing pottery are open. Collected abundant and varied clothing material. Stucco pottery of the Penkovo ​​types was predominant in the settlement. At the same time, vessels of a nomadic appearance and pottery of the so-called pastoral type, convex-sided gray-glazed pots, were found here. In all likelihood, this ceramics goes back to the Chernyakhov pottery.

The pastoral settlement was a large trade and craft and, most likely, an administrative center, in which a diverse population lived. In addition to Slavic dwellings, the remains of yurt-like buildings of nomads were discovered here.

On the territory of the Penkovo ​​culture, the Gaivoron iron-making complex, located on the island of the Southern Bug, was studied. On an area of ​​3000 sq. m, excavations revealed 25 industrial furnaces, of which 4 were sintering furnaces (for enrichment of iron ore), in the rest iron smelting was carried out.

Funeral monuments of the Penkovo ​​culture are exclusively ground burial grounds. Its bearers and direct descendants of the Ants did not know the kurgan rite at all. The Penkovsky area was characterized by biritualism, most likely inherited from the Chernyakhov culture.

The most studied cemeteries of the Penkovo ​​culture are the above-mentioned monument near the village. Velikaya Andrusovka and the Selishte necropolis in Moldavia. Burials according to the rite of cremation of the dead on the side, followed by the placement of calcined bones in shallow pits with a diameter of 0.4–0.6 m and a depth of 0.3–0.5 m, were recorded everywhere, burials according to the rite of inhumation are more rare.

The fertile lands occupied by the bearers of the Penkovo ​​culture, finds of agricultural tools (iron spears, sickles, hoes), grain pits, typical for all settlements, and osteological materials definitely indicate that agriculture and animal husbandry were the basis of the economy. Among the crafts, ironworking and bronze casting were the most actively developed. Technological analyzes of iron products reveal the inheritance of the production achievements of the Roman period by the Penkovsky population.

A series of treasures and random finds of various jewelry. Among the treasures stands out Martynovsky, found in 1909 in the basin of the river. Rosi and containing up to a hundred silver items - forehead rims, earrings, temporal rings, a neck torc, bracelets, a fibula, belt accessories (plaques, tips and onlays), as well as two silver bowls with Byzantine hallmarks, a fragment of a dish, a spoon and nine stylized figures people and animals.

A very interesting and widespread category of finds are finger fibulae, which had semicircular shields with five to seven protrusions (Fig. 4). They were found as part of hoards, at several Penkovo ​​settlements and in burials. At the settlement of Barnashevka in the Vinnitsa region. the production complex of the third quarter of the 1st millennium AD was opened. e., in which a casting mold for the manufacture of finger fibulae was found.

rice. 4. Finger brooches with a mask-like head from the Antian sites of the Northern Black Sea region

A large amount of literature is devoted to finger fibulae with mask-like heads and their derivatives, usually called brooches of the Ant type. In particular, I performed a generalization with distribution maps. Such brooches were an integral part of the women's clothing of the Slavic ethno-tribal group, represented by the Penkovo ​​culture. In addition, these adornments are known in those regions of the early medieval Slavic world (the Danube, the Balkan Peninsula and part of the South-Eastern Baltic), in the settlement of which, as evidenced by other archeological data, people from the northern Black Sea lands participated.

The ethnonym of the Slavic group represented by the culture in question is defined. These are the Antes, known from the historical writings of the 6th-7th centuries. Jordanes, who completed his work "Getica" in 551, reports that the Antes were part of the Venedian Slavs and lived in the territory "from Danastra to Danapra". The researchers of this monument claim that Jordanes borrowed this information from Cassiodorus, who wrote at the end of the 5th - beginning of the 6th century. Therefore, the indicated geographical coordinates should refer to the initial phase of the Penkovo ​​culture and correspond to the Podolsk-Dnieper region of the Chernyakhov culture.

Procopius of Caesarea, a Byzantine historian of the middle of the 6th century, reports on a wider settlement of the Antes. Their western limit at that time was the northern bank of the Danube (Istra), and in the east the Ant settlements extended to the land of the Utigurs, who lived in the steppes of the Sea of ​​Azov, which corresponds to the general territory of the Penkov culture.

Thus, according to archaeological data, the Antes, according to archaeological data, are a large tribal group of Slavs that formed in the interfluve of the Dniester and Dnieper in late Roman times with the participation of the local Iranian-speaking population and settled at the beginning of the Middle Ages in the area from the lower Danube to the Seversky Donets. According to paleoanthropological data, a significant part of the population of the 10th–12th centuries. Southern Russia, characterized by mesocrania with relative narrowness, goes back to that group of bearers of the Chernyakhov culture, which developed under the conditions of assimilation of the Scythian-Sarmatian tribes.

Procopius of Caesarea reports that the Antes, like the rest of the Slavs, used the same language, they had the same way of life, common customs and beliefs, and earlier they were called by the same name - Wends. At the same time, it is obvious from historical sources that the Antes somehow stood out among other Slavs, since they are called on a par with such ethnic groups of that time as the Huns, Utigurs, Medes, etc. The Byzantines somehow distinguished the Anta from the Slav, even among mercenaries of the Empire.

The peculiarity of the Penkovo ​​culture speaks of some ethnographic specificity of the Ants. There is reason to believe that the Antes constituted a special dialect group of the Late Proto-Slavic language. Full characteristic Antian dialect is difficult, but it is possible to think that it stood out among other Proto-Slavic dialect formations, primarily by the presence of a large number of Iranianisms.

According to V. I. Abaev, the change of the explosive g characteristic of the Proto-Slavic language into the posterior palatal fricative g (h), which is recorded in a number of Slavic languages, is due to the Scythian-Sarmatian influence. Since phonetics, as a rule, is not borrowed from neighbors, the researcher argued that the Scytho-Sarmatian substratum should have participated in the formation of the southeastern Slavs (in particular, future Ukrainian and South Russian dialects). Comparison of the range of the fricative g in the Slavic languages ​​with the regions inhabited by the Antes and their direct descendants definitely speaks in favor of this position. V. I. Abaev also admitted that the result of the Scythian-Sarmatian influence was the appearance of the genitive-accusative in the East Slavic language and the proximity of East Slavic with the Ossetian language in the perfective function of preverbs. V. N. Toporov explains the origin of the unprepositional locative-dative by the influence of the Iranians. These phonetic and grammatical features in the Slavic world are regional. Their geographical distribution allows the idea of ​​their origin in the Ant dialect of the Proto-Slavic language.

The penetration into the Slavic pagan pantheon of the gods Khors and Simargl, recorded in Russian chronicles, is also connected with the Iranian world of the Northern Black Sea region. V. I. Abaev wrote about etymological and semantic parallels between the Ukrainian Viy and the Iranian god of the wind, war, revenge and death (Scythian Vauhka-sura), between the East Slavic Rod and the Ossetian Naf.

In the Slavic ethnonymicon, indisputable Iranianisms are also known. These are, in particular, the tribal names of Croats and Serbs. The appearance of these tribal groups in the Danube basin and on the Elbe, as archeological evidence shows, was the result of the great Slavic migration of the early Middle Ages. Their ancestors in Roman times lived somewhere in the Chernyakhovsky area of ​​the Northern Black Sea region. The ethnonym itself antes also has a Scythian-Sarmatian origin. “Of all the existing hypotheses, it seems to be more probable,” F. P. Filin wrote in this regard, “is the hypothesis about the Iranian origin of the word antes: ancient. Indian antas "end, edge", anteas "located on the edge", Ossetian. att "iya "rear, behind". This point of view is shared by many scientists, including O. N. Trubachev. That is, the Antes are outlying inhabitants. And indeed they inhabited the southeastern outlying territory of the Slavic world both in Roman times and in at the beginning of the medieval period Full semantic correspondence is observed with the name of the region of Ukraine, from where the modern ethnonym Ukrainians. The group of Slavs under consideration, apparently, was called Ants by the Scythian-Sarmatians of the Northern Black Sea region.

There is very little historical evidence to study the socio-political structure of the Ants. At the end of the IV century. in the conditions of enmity between the Goths and the Antes, the existence of a tribal formation of the latter seems undoubted. Jordan reports that initially the Antes repulsed the attack of the Gothic army, but after a while the Gothic king Vinitary still managed to defeat the Antes and executed their prince Bozh (Boz) with seventy elders. This event, judging by indirect data, took place somewhere in the region of the Erak River, usually identified with the Dnieper.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Antes, as can be assumed on the basis of historical data, did not create a common political association - a single tribal union headed by archon princes. Archaeological materials say nothing about this either. From the text of Jordanes' work, one can guess that in the 6th century, apparently, there were several Antian tribal formations, each of which had its own prince. Procopius of Caesarea reports that the Antes "... are not controlled by one person, but since ancient times they have lived in democracy, and therefore they have profitable and unprofitable business always carried out together." In other words, the Antes, according to Procopius, did not know the sovereign power, similar to the Byzantine one, and lived on the basis of self-government, discussing all common issues at tribal gatherings.

The relationship between the Ants and the Slavs in different periods was not the same. In a number of cases, they undertook joint actions; sources also record enmity between them. During the reign of Justin I (518–527), as Procopius testifies, the Antes attacked Thrace. From the 40s of the VI century. a period of peaceful relations between the Antes and Byzantium began. Around 545 the Antic-Byzantine alliance was concluded. Since that time, the sources do not record a single attack of the Antes on the Byzantine Empire. Obviously, thanks to this alliance, the Antes are increasingly penetrating into Byzantium and participating in separate detachments in the imperial wars in Italy. Thus, it is known that the Antes detachment constituted a significant part of the troops of the Byzantine commander John during the campaigns against Rome and the conquest of southern Italy. Procopius reports about three hundred ants guarding the region of Lucania, while noting that "... these barbarians are the most skilled at fighting in hard-to-reach areas." It is further noted that “the Antes, with their inherent valor, together with the peasants from the Tullian detachment, overthrew the enemies ...” The Byzantine-Antian alliance probably did not concern all the Antes. According to Mauritius, who wrote at the same time, the Antes were enemies of Byzantium. It is suggested that the information of Mauritius refers to the Danube Antes, who threatened the neighboring fortresses of the Byzantine Empire and its Balkan possessions, and the Antes tribal union of the Middle Dniester was its ally. These same Antes may have helped Byzantium in the fight against the Dacian Slavs. In 602, the Avar Khagan, having learned about the attack of the Romans on the Dacian Slavs, at that time the allies of the Avars, sent a punitive expedition led by Apsih, "... to destroy the Antes tribe, which was an ally of the Romans." According to G. G. Litavrin, Apsykh's campaign was not completed, since at that time several formations of the Avars rebelled and went over to the side of Byzantium. The anti-Byzantine alliance remained in force, apparently, until 612, when the epithet disappeared from the title of Emperor Heraclius antsky .

In the Dnieper lands, most likely, another tribal group of Ants arose. From the information of the Byzantine historian Menander Protector (80s of the 6th century), it follows that around 560 there was an alliance of several Antic archon leaders. In connection with the invasion of the Avars on the Antian lands, the historian reports: "... when the rulers of the Antes were put in a distressed situation and fell into misfortune against their hopes, the Avars immediately began to devastate (their) land and rob (their) country" . Obviously, the Antes were deceived in their hopes of victory over the Avars. The embassy sent by the Ants to the Avar Khagan was not successful, and Mezamer, who led it, was killed by the Avars.

Ethnonym antes remained, presumably, for the bearers of the Penkovo ​​culture. So they were called by the Byzantines and the neighboring non-Slavic population. However, it was not the self-name of the North Black Sea Slavs. The Ants called themselves Slavs or, perhaps, tribal ethnonyms like Croats, Tivertsy, street and others. It is possible that some of them are named in the source of the 9th century. - "Geographer of Bavaria", which will be discussed in more detail below, as well as in the essay "On the Management of the Empire" by Constantine Porphyrogenitus.

The wide settlement of the Antes and the lack of a single political entity led to the fact that their ethnonym was forgotten over time. This was obviously facilitated by the design of the VIII-IX centuries. East Slavic tribal groups that emerged from the Antian cultural and tribal formation.

The Penkovskaya culture as a whole dates back to the 5th–7th centuries. Later, it evolves into the Sakhnov culture and related antiquities of the 8th–9th centuries. No significant transformations are observed. The appearance of the settlements, their topography, layout and dimensions, housing construction, and funeral rites are preserved. Only earthenware is somewhat modified. Many settlements of the Penkovo ​​culture continued to function in the 8th–9th centuries.

At that time, the range of the Antian tribes was limited to the lands to the west of the Dnieper - the forest-steppe regions of Ukraine and Moldova. To the east of the Dnieper near the turn of the 7th and 8th centuries. there was a resettlement of the Slavs of a different dialect-tribal grouping, to which a special section is devoted below. The descendants of the Antes mixed here with the newcomer Slavs.

In the lands to the west of the Dnieper in the VIII-IX centuries. there is some leveling of the Slavic antiquities of the forest zone and forest-steppe regions. The same type of house-building is taking shape, molded pottery appears in the settlements of the Penkovsky area, continuing the traditions of the Prague-Korchak. However, it is impossible to speak about the complete identity of the forest-steppe and forest areas, since they differ significantly in the development of the funeral ritual. In the Prague-Korchak region, kurgan ritualism is gaining ground, in the former Antian region, soil necropolises dominated undividedly, in which the rite of inhumation gradually supplanted cremations. The cartography of the latter (Fig. 5) indicates a wide infiltration of the descendants of the Ants into more northern regions, which was due to the constant pressure of the Turkic-speaking nomadic tribes. Another significant difference between the Penkovsky area and the Prague-Korchak area is the absence of temporal rings in the female attire of the Antes and their descendants.

rice. 5. Ground burials of the 10th–12th centuries. of the ancient Russian population that emerged from the Antes environment

a - ground burials;
b - the area of ​​the Prague-Korchak culture;
c - the area of ​​the Penkovo ​​culture

On Antian territory, the Tale of Bygone Years localizes three tribal formations recorded in Russian chronicles - Croats, Tivertsy and Ulichi.

The Croats of Eastern Europe are part of the once large Proto-Slavic tribe. The great Slavic migration shattered this tribal formation. It is known that around the turn of the VI and VII centuries. a large group of Croats settled in Dalmatia. Another group of them settled in the Czech Republic, where it was recorded by the charter of the Prague bishopric in 1086. In the charter of Henry II in 1108, the Croats who lived on the river were named. Saale. Croats are also known somewhere near the river. Moravia.

In the area of ​​the Penkovskaya culture, the following local groups are distinguished by geographical reasons: Upper Dniester, Middle Dniester, South Bug, Dnieper-Tyasma and Dnieper-Orelskaya, which are separated from each other by more or less wide uninhabited territories. East Slavic Croats on the Basis of Historical Data, Materials of Archeology and Toponymy in the 10th-12th Centuries. localized in the North-Eastern Carpathian region, mainly in the basin of the upper reaches of the Dniester. Consequently, the Upper Dniester group of Penkovo ​​antiquities can be attributed to this tribe. The Middle Dniester region coordinates them with the Tivertsy, the South Buzh region - presumably with the Buzhans, the Dnieper-Tyasma and Dnieper-Orelsky regions - with the early streets. In the Antian period, these were territorial formations (no ethnographic differences between the regions have yet been identified), which eventually took shape in separate tribal groups.

Under-slab graves became an ethnographic feature of the Croatian area of ​​the Upper Dniester region in ancient Russian times. These are burials according to the rite of inhumation, in soil pits marked on the surface with large stone slabs. The Carpathian Croats formed the backbone of the population of the Galician land.

The Tale of Bygone Years reports that “... Tivertsi sityahu bo along the Dniester, squat to Dunaev. Be a multitude of them; sedyahu bo along the Dniester to the sea, and the essence of their cities is to this day. Ethnonym Tivertsy, most likely, goes back to the ancient name of the Dniester - Tiras. If this is so, then Tivertsy literally means "Dniester" - the inhabitants of the Dniester region. hydronym Tiras formed from the Iranian turas - "quick". Starting with Herodotus, it is repeatedly found in the writings of ancient authors and at the beginning of the Middle Ages it was replaced by the name Dniester (Danaster - near the Jordan), which also has an Iranian origin.

According to archaeological materials, the Tivertsy are one of the groups of Antes that lived in the Dniester basin (except for its upper reaches). The settlements and soil burial grounds of the second half of the 1st millennium AD are quite well studied. e. this region. However, no specific features of the Tivertese culture of this time can be identified.

From the end of the ninth century Turkic nomads penetrate into the steppe regions of the range of the Tivertsy. As a result, in the southern part of the Dniester region in the X century. Tivertsy Slavs leave their settlements. In this regard, we can agree with the hypothesis developed by L. Niederle about the resettlement of some part of the Tivertsy under the onslaught of the Pechenegs, and then the Polovtsians to Ukrainian Transcarpathia and Semigrad Rus.

Until the middle of the X century. streets inhabited the Dnieper lands south of the Polyansky area. In the oldest annalistic code, fragments of which have been preserved in the Novgorod chronicle, it says: “And besha sit down down the Dnieper, and by seven go over between Bg and Dnestr, and sedosha tamo.” Based on the analysis of chronicle data, B. A. Rybakov showed that the migration of streets from the Dnieper to the Bug region and to the Dniester is quite real, and localized the street city of Peresechen in the Southern Dnieper. According to Konstantin Porphyrogenitus, the streets were neighbors with the Pecheneg tribes. Linguists believe that the name of this tribe is derived from the Slavic lexeme injection(injection > uglichi; Russian chronicles contain several different spellings of this ethnonym, including uglichi). The form convict appeared, in all likelihood, under the influence of the Turkic languages. Between the Dnieper and Orel, where the streets lived in the second half of the 1st millennium AD. e., there is a historical area Angle. From this toponym, obviously, the ethnonym was formed uglichi > convict.

The early streets are the Antian local group, which, as already mentioned, inhabited the Dnieper-Orel and Dnieper-Tyasma regions of the Penkovskaya, then Sakhnovskaya culture. In the X century. these lands were occupied by Turkic-speaking nomads. The streets were forced to move to the forest-steppe regions of the Southern Bug basin, where a large number of fortified settlements appeared just at that time.

Notes

• Khavlyuk P. I. Early Slavic settlements in the basin of the Southern Bug // Early medieval East Slavic antiquities. L., 1974. S. 181-215.
• Goryunov E. A. Early stages of the history of the Slavs of the Dnieper Left Bank. L., 1981. S. 66-79.
• Berezovets D. T. Burial grounds near the valley of the river. Tyasmin // Words "Jano-Russian Old Life". Kiev, 1969. S. 67-68.
• Rafalovich I. A. The study of early Slavic settlements in Moldova // Archaeological research in Moldova 1970-1971. Kishinev, 1973, pp. 134-144; Rafalovich I. A., Lapushnyan V. L. Works of the Reut archaeological expedition // Archaeological research in Moldova 1972. Kishinev, 1974. P. 110-147; Them. The burial ground and the early Slavic settlement near the village. Selishte // Archaeological research in Moldova 1973. Chisinau, 1974. P. 104–140.
• Braychevsky M.Yu. Works on the Pastirsky settlement in 1949 // KSIIMK. Issue. XXXVI. 1951, pp. 155-164; His own. New finds of the 7th–8th centuries n. e. on the Shepherd settlement // KSIAU. Issue. 10. 1960. S. 106-108; Braychevsky M. Yu. Pastirsky belongings born in 1949 // Archeology. T. VII. Kiev, 1952. S. 163-173; He is. New excavations at the Pastirsky settlement // Archaeological memorials of the URSR. T. V. Kiev, 1955. S. 67-76; Braichevskaya A. T. Smithy at the Pastirsky settlement // KSIAU. Vip. 103.
• Bidzilya V.I. Cold-smelting furnaces of the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e. on Pivdenny Buzi // Archeology. Vip. 14. Kiev, 1963. S. 123-144.
• Berezovets D. T. Burial grounds of streets ... S. 58-70; Rafalovich I. A. Research of early Slavonic settlements... P. 141-143; Rafalovich I. A., Lapushnyan V. L. Works of the Reut Archaeological Expedition... P. 136-141; Them. A burial ground and an early Slavic settlement ... S. 104-140.
• Rybakov B. A. Ancient Rus // SA. T. XVII. 1953. S. 76-89.
• Vinokur I. S., Megey V. P. Jewelery maisterna of early-middle words "yan" // Archeology. Kiev, 1992. No. 3. S. 82-95; Vinokur I. S. First livar form for finger fibulae // Old-timers Ukraini, Kiev, 1994, pp. 23-27. His words "Janian jewelers of Podnistrov": For materials, the Bernashivsky complex of the middle of the 1st millennium AD Kam "yanets-Podilsky, 1997. pp. 53-56; Vinokur I. S. Bernashevsky jewelry complex of the Anti-Slavinian frontier // Society, economy, culture and art of the Slavs: Proceedings of the VI International Congress of Slavic Archeology. T. 4. M., 1998. S. 223-232.
• Sedov V.V. Slavs in the Early Middle Ages. M., 1995. S. 84-90.
• Jordan. On the origin and deeds of the Getae. Getica. M., 1960. S. 72.
• Procopius of Caesarea. War with the Goths. M., 1950. S. 156, 298, 384; Collection of the oldest written news about the Slavs. T. 1. M., 1991. S. 170-250.
• Sedov V.V. Slavs of the Middle Dnieper region (according to paleoanthropology data) // Sov. ethnography. 1974. No. 1. S. 16-31.
• Abaev V.I. On the origin of the phoneme g (h) in the Slavic language // Problems of Indo-European linguistics. M., 1964. S. 115-121.
• Abaev V. I. Preverbs and perfectivity: On one Scythian-Slavic isogloss // Problems of Indo-European linguistics. M., 1964. S. 90-99.
• Toporov V. N. About one Iranian-Slavic parallel from the field of syntax // Brief reports of the Institute of Slavic Studies. Issue. 28. M., 1960. S. 3-11; His own. On the Iranian element in Russian spiritual culture // Slavic and Balkan folklore. M., 1989. S. 23-60.
• Sedov V. V. Dialect-tribal differentiation of the Slavs at the beginning of the Middle Ages according to archeology // History, culture, ethnography and folklore of the Slavic peoples. X International Congress of Slavists: Reports of the Soviet Delegation. M., 1988. S. 173-175.
• Abaev V. I. Scythian-European isoglosses: At the junction of East and West. M., 1965. S. 115-117.
• Abaev V. I. Scythian-European isoglosses... P. 110-111; His own. Pre-Christian Religion of the Alans // XXV International Congress of Orientalists: Reports of the USSR Delegation. M., 1960. S. 5-7.
• Ivanov Vyach. Vs., Toporov V.N. About ancient Slavic ethnonyms: main problems and prospects // Slavic antiquities: Ethnogenesis, material culture of Ancient Russia. Kyiv, 1980; Khaburgaev G. A. The ethnonymy of The Tale of Bygone Years in connection with the tasks of reconstructing the East Slavic glottogenesis. M., 1979. S. 98. According to O. N. Trubachev, the Serbs are an Indo-Aryan ethnonym that entered the Proto-Slavic environment somewhere in the Southern Bug region (Etymological Dictionary of Slavic Languages. Proto-Slavic Lexical Fund. Issue 8. M., 1981. S. 181).
• Filin F. P. Education of the language of the Eastern Slavs. M., 1962. P.60.
• Trubachev O.N. Linguistic periphery of the ancient Slavs: Indo-Aryans in the Northern Black Sea region // Vopr. linguistics. 1977. No. 6. P. 25. On the non-Slavic origin of the ethnonym antes and about the periodic enmity of the Antes with other Slavs, see: Schreiner P. Studia Byzantino-Bulgarica. Vienna, 1986. S. 357; Kramar I. Antskat of a corpse in Slavic and svetlinata in datireneto, localization and etymology in the name “anti” // Historical Pregled. Sofia, 1988. 6. S. 19-33). However, this circumstance cannot in any way be used to deny the Slavic affiliation of the Antes. Information from Procopius and Mauritius, and mainly archaeological materials, reliably indicate that the Ants belonged to the early medieval Slavs.
• Jordan. On the origin and deeds of the Getae... S. 115.
• Code of ancient written news... T. 1. S. 183.
• There. S. 197.
• Duychev I. Attacks and settling on the Slavs on the Balkan Peninsula // Military Historical Collection. T. 26. Issue. 1. Sofia, 1977. S. 73.
• Code of ancient written news... T. 1. S. 187.
• Litavrin G. G. On the campaign of the Avars in 602 against the Ants // Slavs and their neighbors. M., 1989. S. 22-27.

Old Russian nationality and its historical destinies have been the subject of discussion in historical science for a long time. This discussion began in the 1950s, when between M.P. Pogodin and M.A. Maksimovich, a dispute arose about who should be considered true "Russians", southerners or northerners, and who, therefore, truly belongs to the Kyiv period of Russian history, the merit of creating the Russian state and nationality. In the future, the opposition of the southerners ("Little Russians") to the northerners ("Great Russians") acquired a very sharp outline, resulting in the historical concept of N.I. Kostomarov, which was built on the opposition of two principles: democratic, federal, embodied in the "South Russian" or "Little Russian" people, and "monocracy", personified by the Great Russian people.

N.I. Kostomarov spoke about the profound difference in the psychology of a Ukrainian and a Great Russian. He saw this difference in hoary antiquity, going back to Kiev times. According to N.I. Kostomarov, "Southern Russian" is the bearer of people's freedom: he is full of hatred for violence, we are tolerant, he has no sense of national arrogance; he is an anarchist by nature, in him "there was nothing forcing, leveling, there was no politics, there was no cold calculation, firmness on the way to the intended goal." As for the Great Russian, he allegedly had such mental properties as slavish obedience to autocratic, despotic power, "the desire to give strength and formality to the unity of his land." N.I. Kostomarov wrote: “In the Great Russian element there is something huge, creative, the spirit of harmony, the consciousness of unity, the dominance of practical reason, able to withstand difficult circumstances, catch the time when one should act, and use it as much as necessary ... This was not shown by our South Russian tribe. His free element led either to the disintegration of social ties, or to a whirlpool of motives that turned the people's historical life like a squirrel wheel. These two Russian peoples have been shown to us by our past.”

Subsequently, the theory of the contrast of two nationalities degenerated into a nationalist theory, the apostle of which was M.S. Grushevsky, who completely denied any connection between Kievan Rus and North-Eastern Rus, the Great Russian people with the Old Russian.

It must be said that the formation of such currents in historical thought was objectively facilitated by the works of the largest representatives of pre-revolutionary science, who opposed the development of Kievan, Dnieper and Southern Russia to what was being done in Vladimir-Suzdal, and later Muscovite Russia. Among them were such authoritative researchers of Russian antiquity as S.M. Solovyov and V.O. Klyuchevsky, for whom North-Eastern Russia became the cradle of new relations in the economic, social and political spheres. The view of North-Eastern Russia as something original, unlike the previous history, has become the property of the general public, penetrating into publications intended for self-education. In one of them one could, for example, read: “The Dnieper Rus is the most ancient period of our history, not only chronologically, but also really very far from the subsequent history of Russia proper, which grew out of the specific principality of North-Eastern Russia. Russia Dnieper and Russia North-Eastern - two completely different historical reality; the history of the one and the other is not equally created by two different departments of the Russian nationality.

To the credit of pre-revolutionary scientists, it must be said that among them there were historians who strongly objected to attempts to tear Muscovite Rus from Kievan Rus, the Great Russian people from the Old Russian. A.E. belonged to them. Presnyakov is a subtle and thoughtful researcher of Russian history. In 1915-1916. for students of the Faculty of History and Philology, he gave a course of lectures on Kievan Rus, where he said with all certainty that in historical reality “the past is up to the 11th-12th centuries. inclusive - and later - XVII-XIX centuries. - so closely belong equally to the history of both branches of the Russian people or both Russian nationalities - Great Russian and Ukrainian, that without prejudice to the completeness and correctness of scientific study, without betraying historical truth, it is impossible to break off the study of their destinies "A.E. Presnyakov proceeded from the concept of "the unity of the Russian people", that is, Great Russians and Ukrainians. Therefore, he insisted that "the Kyiv period should be considered as a prologue not to South Russian, but to all-Russian history."

Revealing signs for distinguishing and defining nationality in general and the Old Russian nationality in particular, A.E. Presnyakov names anthropological signs, language, territory and state organization. However, he put cultural and psychological characteristics at the forefront, paying tribute to the bourgeois sociology of the early 20th century.

In Soviet historiography, the question of the Old Russian nationality occupied one of the central places. True, in the first years of its development, there was no scientific understanding of the term “nationality”. The theory of K. Marx, F. Engels and V.I. Lenin about the stages of the ethnic evolution of society did not immediately enter our science. This position is well traced in studies of the Eastern Slavs, Russians. Despite the fact that historians resorted to the term "nationality", they still did not put into it the scientific meaning that is accepted now. That is why a variety of names were used to designate the ethnic formation of the Eastern Slavs during the period of Kievan Rus: “Russian people”, “Russians”, “Russian Slavs”, “Slavs”, “Eastern Slavs”. A.A. Shakhmatov considered it possible to speak even of a "Russian tribe." How far scientists stood from the problem of the formation of the ancient Russian people is evidenced by the fact that the ancient Russian society of the 10th century. was portrayed by some authors not as an ethnically consolidating society, but as disintegrating into numerous tribes, mentioned in the Tale of Bygone Years.

The dominance of the doctrine of the language of N.Ya. Marr with his stages in the development of speech, four-term analysis and other things pushed back the solution of the question of the essence and nature of ethnic formations in the era of the decomposition of the primitive communal system. The Japhetic ancestors of the Eastern Slavs "Et-Rus-ki", "Ras-Ena", ascending to one of the four elements "Rosh", ethnic categories that have become social, and vice versa, that is, the concepts inherent in the "new teaching" about language."

Throughout the 1930s, this issue was still in the shadows. It was not even delivered in a direct and clear form. This was explained, in addition to the indicated influence of the teachings of N.Ya. Marr, also by the fact that the main efforts of our researchers were then concentrated on the study of the socio-economic and political system of Kievan Rus.

A good example of this is the work of B.D. Grekov, although in his writings, which appeared at the designated time and later, the term “Russian people” appears. B.D. Grekov noted that the “Russian people” appeared on the historical stage in the 6th century, that they were not separate tribes of the Slavs of Eastern Europe, but a wider association, although the author does not give a definition to it, emphasizing only the ethnic unity of the Russian people in the Kyiv period of its history and pointing out that the Kiev state "contributed to the merging of the Slavic tribes into a single Russian people", and the concepts of "Eastern Slavs" and "Russian people" act as equivalent to him. Only in one place B.D. Grekov speaks of nationality, indicating that the ethnogenic process ended with the "formation of the Slavic nationality." He marks two ethnic units - a tribe and a people. The historian uses the term "Old Russian" but only in relation to the language. "The Old Russian language, - in his opinion, is the local Slavic language." B.D. Grekov emphasizes the unity of the Russian language of Kievan times, primarily the literary language, the feeling of the unity of Russia and the Russian people, ending these considerations with a conclusion; "The Kiev state is the cradle of the Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples."

Thus, in relation to the Eastern Slavs of the Kievan times, B.D. Grekov used the term "Russian people". We meet the same in the works of N.S. Derzhavin, who titled one of his books “The Origin of the Russian People”. In it, he declares that the East Slavic tribes in fact constitute the "Russian people." In another book by N.S. Derzhavin also argued that the Eastern Slavs form "themselves as a whole the Russian people."

The first formulation of the question of the Old Russian nationality takes place in the works of V.V. Mavrodina. In the monograph "Formation of the Old Russian State" (1945), the author writes about the Old Russian people primarily in theoretical terms. He believes that social development, the result of which was the creation of the Old Russian state, was of great importance in the formation of the Old Russian nationality. The Kiev state politically united the East Slavic, Russian tribes, connected them with a common political life, culture, religion, a common struggle against external enemies and common interests in the international arena, historical traditions, contributed to the emergence and strengthening of the concept of the unity of Russia and Russians. All these phenomena together led to the formation of the Old Russian nationality. This process was based not only on the common origin of the Eastern Slavs and their way of life, but also on the unity of the historically established forms of socio-political, state life, the unity of culture and religion, the commonality of traditions, state borders and interests. Therefore, about the Russians of the 9th-11th centuries. the author speaks not as a conglomerate of tribes, but as a single nationality, an ethnic community following the tribes and unions of tribes, which he calls the Old Russian nationality. He gives the same characteristic of the Eastern Slavs of the times of the Kievan state in the book "Ancient Russia".

However, V.V. Mavrodin draws attention to the fact that at the time under consideration the process of folding a single ancient Russian people did not end. The ensuing feudal fragmentation divided the ancient Russian people into parts, predetermined the emergence of ethnic formations from the time of the “national regions” (V.I. Lenin). In this case, the author mixed two phenomena, namely, the formation of the ancient Russian nationality and its future fate. Subsequently, V.V. Mavrodin emphasized that the collapse of the ancient Russian people was not so much a consequence of the incompleteness of the process of its formation, but rather the result of the historical conditions that developed in Russia as a result of the Batu invasion and the seizure of its lands by Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, the Golden Horde, the Order and Moldavia. Although he dwelled on this issue in his work “The Formation of the Old Russian State”, he still did not draw the necessary conclusions.

Developing the concept of B.D. Grekova, V.V. Mavrodin attaches great importance to the national consciousness and self-consciousness of the Russian people of the Kiev era, the consciousness of the unity of Russia and the Russian people. Later, following B.D. Grekov and N.S. Derzhavin, he prefers to use the term "Russian people" in relation to the Eastern Slavs of the times of the Old Russian state. At the same time, V.V. Mavrodin points out that the concept of "people" should not be used in the social sense ("working masses"), but as an ethnic category. According to V.V. Mavrodin, the nationalities were the Great Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians of the XIV-XVI centuries, but they were ethnic formations that were not identical to the nationality that developed in Kievan Rus. Therefore, perhaps the term "Russian people" should be assigned to the latter.

At the beginning of 1950, V.V. Mavrodin presents the article "The main stages of the ethnic development of the Russian people." In it, he poses a number of fundamental theoretical problems. The author has no doubt that in the IX-XI centuries. “the Russian people formed”, and immediately raises the question of the scientific understanding of the very term “Russian people”. He writes: “Often the term “Russian people” is used to refer to both Russians, the times of Oleg and Igor, and Russians of our day. This is not true". Arguing with A.D. Udaltsov, V.V. Mavrodin emphasizes that the people are not some special ethnic category that arose after the union of tribes and the previous nationality, and believes that during the time of the Kievan state, the Eastern Slavs consolidated into a single Russian nationality. In order to eliminate the possibility of confusion of the concepts of "nationality" in relation to the Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples of the XIV-XVI centuries. and the “nationality” of the Russian IX-XI centuries, he proposes “to recognize as legitimate after the term “Old Russian language”, “Old Russian literature”, “Old Russian art” and the term “Old Russian nationality””.

In the same article, the author raises the question of the evolution of the East Slavic ethnos in a different way in the period following the collapse of the Old Russian state. He does not consider feudal fragmentation to be the main reason for the division of the Old Russian people into three later peoples of the Eastern Slavs. V.V. Mavrodin believes that the process of further consolidation and development of a single nationality of the Eastern Slavs was interrupted “mainly” (this factor played a decisive role) by the Batu invasion, the rejection of Russian lands, and the seizure of many Russian lands by neighboring states.

In his subsequent works, V.V. Mavrodin developed the views on the ancient Russian people expressed in 1945. About the Russian people of Kiev times V.V. Mavrodin writes in the book "The Formation of a United Russian State". Noting the fact that all the East Slavic tribes merged into the Old Russian people, he also singled out the unity of language, territory, culture, mental makeup, the consciousness of the unity of all Russians, characteristic of the Old Russian people. In the book on the Old Russian state, in which the whole chapter (VII) is called "Old Russian nationality", he wrote that one of the most important phenomena associated with Kievan Rus, with the formation and development of the Old Russian state, is the folding of the Eastern Slavs into the Old Russian nationality. The tribe, the ethnic category of primitive society, along with the establishment of feudal relations in Russia, is being replaced by another, more perfect ethnic category - nationality. Over time, all the tribes and territorial-ethnic associations of the Eastern Slavs merged into the Old Russian nationality. The same considerations were expressed by him in a lecture given in 1957 at the Leningrad Party School.

A significant impact on the study of the Old Russian nationality was made by the discussion open by Pravda on questions of linguistics and the publication of the work of I.V. Stalin "Marxism and questions of linguistics". The appearance of this work left a sharp imprint on the nature of the study by specialists of the problems of the history of the ancient Russian people. Dogmatic adherence to Stalin's provisions for some time paralyzed the creative study of the issue of ancient Russian nationality. Efforts were made to consider them in the light of the statements of I.V. Stalin on the development of language and the formation of nations.

First of all, it is necessary to mention the works of B.A. Rybakov. In one of them, the author defines nationality as an ethnic community of the era of the formation of a slave-owning or feudal society, which arose on the basis of a long-standing linguistic relationship. He considers the common language (in the presence of dialects), territory, culture, economic life and the presence of economic ties to be signs of nationality. The Old Russian nationality was preceded by a single Slavic nationality of the II-IV centuries. n. e., which belongs to the Chernyakhov culture. The Russian (Old Russian) nationality began to separate and form in the east of the Middle Dnieper region in the 1st-7th centuries. In the IX-X centuries. “The early period of the formation of the Old Russian nationality ended,” which was consolidated by the formation of the Old Russian state.

Then a new work by B.A. Rybakova “The problem of the formation of the Old Russian nationality in the light of the works of I.V. Stalin." In this article, the author repeated the definition of the Old Russian nationality, formulated by him earlier, clarifying it with the characteristics of economic ties, depicted in the form inherent in the feudal economy. He speaks about the formation of the Old Russian people in the X-XI centuries. only after the annalistic tribes finally disappeared. B.A. Rybakov also clarifies the very name of the nationality, recommending "in order to avoid confusion" that it be called not "Russian", but "Old Russian". Developing his idea about the transformation of the Eastern Slavs into a people in the east of the Middle Dnieper in the 5th-7th centuries, the author suggests that the core of the ancient Russian people of the 9th-10th centuries. was the union of the East Slavic "tribes of Russia" VI-VII centuries. The further course of this thought took place in the article by B.A. Rybakov "Ancient Rus", published in 1953. It reproduces the previous definition of the concept of "nationality", emphasizes the role of the Old Russian state in strengthening the unity of the Old Russian people. According to B.A. Rybakov, the beginning of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality should be considered the 6th-7th centuries, and its design - the 9th-10th centuries. The beginnings of this process were deposited in the so-called "Antiquities of the Rus" ("antiquities of the Antes" by A.A. Spitsyn) in the east of the Middle Dnieper.

Simultaneously with B.A. Rybakov on the history of the ancient Russian people was made by A.N. Nasonov, who emphasized the huge role in the formation of the East Slavic or Old Russian nationality of the political factor - the emergence of the Old Russian state, which merged the northern and southern groups of East Slavic tribes. In a monographic study devoted to the study of the formation of the territory of the Old Russian state, A.N. Nasonov notes that in this study he does not consider the plot of the Old Russian people, which developed around the 6th-11th centuries, but the very wording expressed by him gives reason to believe that the author accepts the term "Old Russian people" to designate the Eastern Slavs of the era of Kievan Rus .

D.S. Likhachev, exploring the process of the emergence of Russian literature, touched upon some aspects related to the ancient Russian people. He believes that "with the development of the feudal system and the collapse of the relations of the tribal society, the transition from the East Slavic tribes to a single ancient Russian people was determined." At the same time, “the process of formation of the Old Russian nationality began, apparently, long before the appearance of the early feudal Old Russian state. An external manifestation of this process of folding the East Slavic tribes into the Old Russian nationality was the emergence of various political associations among them, such as, for example, the state association of the Dulebs and others. D.S. Likhachev speaks about the linguistic, economic, territorial, mental and cultural community of the ancient Russian people. But, unlike the nation, the listed elements of the community of the ancient Russian people were not stable. Noting the fact that Russian literature of the XI-XIII centuries. grew up “on a single basis of the Old Russian nationality”, D.S. Likhachev emphasizes that literature, in turn, "contributed to the formation of this nationality, creating that community of culture, which is one of the necessary signs of the formation of a nationality, and then a nation."

In 1954, our country celebrated the 300th anniversary of the reunification of Ukraine with Russia. The theses of the Central Committee of the CPSU were published for the celebration, which stated: "The Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples originate from a single root - the ancient Russian people who created the ancient Russian state - Kievan Rus." The interest of scientists to the problem of the ancient Russian nationality has intensified. Several works on this topic have been published, written by M.N. Tikhomirov, A.N. Kozachenko, V.I. Dovzhenko and others.

Article by M.N. Tikhomirov was entitled "The Significance of Ancient Russia in the Development of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian Peoples". Of great importance in the formation of the ancient Russian nationality M.N. Tikhomirov attached to economic ties and consciousness of the unity of Russia and Russians. At the same time, he points to the commonality of language and territory as characteristic features of the Old Russian people.

As for V.I. Dovzhenko, already in 1953 he delivered a report “On the question of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality”, where he noted that the time of the formation of the nationality was the period of the decomposition of the primitive communal system and the transition to a class society. According to V.I. Dovzhenka, an ethnic community of the Eastern Slavs of the middle of the 1st millennium AD. e., i.e., the era of the Ants, "was not yet a nationality." The Kiev state played a certain role in the formation of the ancient Russian people, but it was based on a cultural and ethnic community. IN AND. Dovzhenok believes that the unity of the ancient Russian people was broken not by feudal fragmentation, but by the Tatar invasion. However, in a later article by V.I. Dovzhenok refers the beginning of the formation of the Old Russian people precisely to the time of the Antes.

The statement of V.I. Dovzhenko that “the question of the composition of the ancient Russian nationality is new” and that “it became possible to raise it only after the publication of the work of I.V. Stalin in Linguistics. That the question of the ancient Russian nationality was by no means new and was raised in our Soviet historical science before 1950, is evidenced, albeit indirectly, by V.I. Dovzhenok, arguing with V.V. Mavrodin, whose works on the Old Russian people were published five years before the discussion about the language.

The first attempt to give a historiography of the ancient Russian people was undertaken by A.I. Kozachenko. He noted that V.V. Mavrodin belongs to the leadership in posing the question of the ancient Russian nationality. According to A.I. Kozachenko, the Old Russian nationality is characterized by a common language (at the same time, the language of writing played an important role in its formation), territory, which was largely due to the formation of the Old Russian state, as well as economic, religious and consciousness of the unity of all Russian people. A.I. Kozachenko divides the formation of the ancient Russian nationality into three stages: 1) VII-IX centuries. - the period of formation and the beginning of the development of the ancient Russian people; 2) X - the first half of the XIII century. - the heyday of the ancient Russian people; 3) the second half of the XIII century. - the collapse of the ancient Russian people.

A number of studies in the field of the history of the formation and development of the Old Russian people were written by L.V. Tcherepnin. In the chapter “The Emergence of the Old Russian Nationality”, prepared for the “Essays on the History of the USSR”, which appeared in 1953, L.V. Cherepnin speaks of those phenomena, as a result of which the ancient Russian nationality arose. He thinks that it was formed from separate Slavic tribes in the era of the decomposition of the primitive communal system and the emergence of a class society. According to L.V. Tcherepnin, we have grounds to speak of a certain commonality of territory, language, mental make-up of the ancient Russian people. At the same time, all these forms of community could take place "only on the basis of a well-known (albeit very relative in the era of early feudalism) economic community." L.V. Cherepnin attaches great importance to the linguistic community of the Old Russian people and especially to the feeling of unity of all Russian people and Russia, national consciousness, patriotism, which pervades the folklore, literary works and annals of Kievan Rus.

L.V. Tcherepnin owns a rather detailed work on the history of the Old Russian people of a generalizing nature, in which the results of what has been done in this area are summed up and tasks for further research are outlined. According to L.V. Tcherepnin, "nationality is a historical category following the clan and tribe and preceding the nation." He connects the formation of nationalities with the process of "decomposition of the primitive communal system, the transition from patriarchal-clan relations to territorial associations, the emergence of commodity production, the formation and development of new production relations" typical of class societies. Addressing the Russian people, L.V. Cherepnin believes that when considering it, one should proceed from the idea of ​​it as a historically emerging and developing feudal mode of production on the economic basis, a community of people with their own language, territory and culture. Old Russian nationality performs at L.V. Cherepnin as a stage in the development of the Russian people. The author proposes the following periodization of the formation of the Russian nationality: “1) VI-IX centuries. - the period of decomposition of the primitive communal system and the genesis of feudalism among the Eastern Slavs, when the prerequisites for the emergence of the ancient Russian people are created; 2) IX - the beginning of the XII century. - the early feudal period in Russia, the time of the further development of the ancient Russian people; 3) XII-XIII centuries. - the period of feudal fragmentation, when the prerequisites are created for the formation of the Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities on the basis of the Old Russian people; 4) XIV-XV centuries. - the period of gradual overcoming of feudal fragmentation, the time of the formation of the Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities; 5) the end of the XV - the beginning of the XVII century. - the time of the formation and strengthening of the Russian centralized state, when the Great Russian nationality finally took shape.

Thus, VI-IX centuries. for L.V. Cherepnin is the first stage in the development of the Russian people and, at the same time, the initial stage in the formation of the Old Russian people, which was the result of the separation of the Eastern Slavs from their western and southern counterparts, as well as the result of the consolidation of the East Slavic tribes. In the course of the consolidation of the Eastern Slavs, the prerequisites for the emergence of the Old Russian nationality were created, which was facilitated by the emergence of large tribal unions and territorial-political associations, constant movements and wars that undermined tribal foundations. L.V. Cherepnin emphasizes that the formation of the ancient Russian people during the VI-IX centuries. was associated with "new phenomena in the socio-economic life of the Eastern Slavs", which contributed to its rapprochement and merger. One of the main factors of the socio-economic order was the feudalization of the East Slavic society, during which the formation of the Old Russian people took place, accompanied by the formation of the Russian state. It was on feudalism that L.V. Cherepnin draws attention. The feudal mode of production, established by the 9th century. in the most developed socio-economic areas, served as the basis for the formation of the ancient Russian people.

Later, during the 9th - early 12th centuries, the development of the Old Russian people was, as before, associated with the growth of feudalism. IX-XI centuries - the era when the ancient Russian nationality took shape, which happened with the active influence of the state. The accelerating moment in the process of its folding was the "struggle against the steppe nomads." In general, military affairs contributed to the formation of the ancient Russian nationality: “During the campaigns in the militias, in which a large number of Russian warriors gathered, territorial and cultural ties were formed, the features of the future national state were formed.”

A certain role in the development of the ancient Russian nationality L.V. Cherepnin dismisses the adoption of Christianity in Russia. “A very complex issue,” the author writes, “is the relationship between the problem of the formation of a nationality and the problem of the class struggle. During the IX - beginning of the XII century. class contradictions in ancient Russia, inherent in the feudal formation, became more and more aggravated, and this aggravation found its manifestation in anti-feudal movements. But in the course of these movements, the remnants of tribal ties were destroyed, new relations were formed between the broad masses of the producing part of the population, based on territorial ties, in the conditions of strengthening the feudal mode of production. And in this sense, when studying the process of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality, one cannot get rid of questions relating to the history of the class struggle.

Characterizing the ancient Russian nationality of the 9th - early 12th centuries, L.V. Cherepnin talks about the relative commonality of the language (with the presence and persistence of dialect differences), culture, and territory.

By the XII-XIII centuries. refers to the third stage of the history of the Russian people in general and Old Russian in particular. It was distinguished by the emergence of prerequisites "for the fragmentation of the ancient Russian nationality, as a result of which the Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities are subsequently formed." Revealing the reasons for the creation of three nationalities on a common basis, L.V. Cherepnin disagrees with those scientists who saw them in foreign policy upheavals (the Tatar-Mongol invasion), which caused the separation of North-Eastern, North-Western and Southern Russia, as a result of which the hitherto united ancient Russian nationality fell apart. L.V. Cherepnin does not observe the collapse and disintegration of either the Old Russian state or the Old Russian people. Simply “there was a dismemberment of the early feudal state into a number of feudal lands and principalities as a result of the further process of feudalization. And the prerequisites were created for crushing ancient Russian people". L.V. Cherepnin is convinced that “to reduce the reasons for the emergence of the Great Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian peoples on the basis of the ancient Russian nationality to the Tatar-Mongol invasion and conquest and to the transition of the territory of ancient Russia to different states, and not to take into account the significance of feudal fragmentation in this process, is to underestimate that feudal fragmentation is a natural stage in the development of peoples in the era of feudalism and clearly exaggerate the economic community in the period of the early feudal state. Hence L.V. Cherepnin concludes that the emergence of "the prerequisites for the formation of the Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities is not at all the result of the collapse or collapse of the Old Russian nationality, but a natural consequence of its development." L.V. Cherepnin for the period XII - early XIII century. states the relative unity of the ancient Russian people and the territory inhabited by this people. But at the same time, at the indicated time, the boundaries of the territories of the Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities were already outlined, that is, “the process of fragmentation of the ancient Russian nationality began, which much later led to the formation of three East Slavic nationalities.”

Of considerable interest is the book of P.N. Tretyakov "At the origins of the ancient Russian nationality", published in 1970. In this book, the author studies the process of formation of the ancient Russian nationality - one of the most important issues in the ancient and early medieval history of our country. He points out that the term "Old Russian nationality" makes it possible not to confuse the ethnic association of the Eastern Slavs of the times of Kievan Rus with the Russian nationality of the XIV-XVI centuries. Noting that the formation of a nationality is a natural phenomenon characteristic of the period of early class society, P.N. Tretyakov defines nationality as the forerunner of the nation, a historical community formed from various tribal groups based on economic ties in the era of the decomposition of primitive communal relations and the collapse of the tribal system, the emergence of class society and the state. The formation and development of the Old Russian state played a significant role in the formation of the Old Russian nationality. Speaking about the stages of the formation of the Old Russian nationality, P.N. Tretyakov refers the process of formation of the ancient Russian people to the turn of the 1st and 2nd millennium AD. e., but its beginning dates back to an earlier time. He considers the founders of the ancient Russian people the creators and bearers of the Zarubintsy culture, who dominated the forest-steppe Dnieper region and Polesie, on the Lower Desna and on the Seimas from the 2nd century BC. BC e. and up to the II century. n. e. From here they advanced into the Upper Dnieper. Having absorbed and assimilated the eastern Balts, they rushed from the Upper Dnieper region to the north, northeast and south, to the Middle Dnieper region. These were the ancestors of the annalistic tribes of the Polyans, Slovenes, Krivichi, Vyatichi, Severyans, in the formation of which the Balts played a significant role. Other, western origin Dregovichi, Drevlyans, Volhynians. Speaking about the tribes of the Tale of Bygone Years, P.N. Tretyakov defines them as "territorial-political unions", and not tribes in the proper sense of the word. They were "primitive peoples, or" people ", located at different levels of consolidation and little by little absorbed by the emerging ancient Russian people." Its primary core was formed in the Middle Dnieper, where the Slavic tribes, who assimilated the Balts, penetrated from the north, from the Upper Dnieper.

The work of M.Yu. Braichevsky, for whom the formula "Old Russian nationality is the common ancestor of the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples" is unsuccessful and therefore unacceptable. Russia, according to his opinion, constituted an ethnic community not absolute, but relative. Without taking this circumstance into account, it is difficult to understand the very fact of the division of the Eastern Slavs into the three peoples mentioned. M.Yu. Braichevsky believes that the ancient Russian people had a complex structure based on deep genetic foundations. He proves that each of the specific chronicle tribes grew out of a special ethnic substrate: the Polans - from the tribes of the Chernyakhov culture, the Drevlyans - from the Milograd culture, the northerners - from the Yukhnov culture, etc. In the process of the formation of the Old Russian nationality, the linguistic and ethnographic features of the East Slavic tribes did not disappear. Consolidation of the Eastern Slavs is observed around three centers: southern, northeastern and northwestern. That is why the main core of the formation of the Ukrainian nationality was the Polyanskaya forest-steppe, the Russian one - the upper reaches of the Dnieper, Oka and Volga, and the Belarusian one - the region of the Dregovichi and Polochans. Russia (Old Russian nationality) is a stage in the ethnic history of Eastern Slavs, when tribal division was basically overcome, and a new structure, characterized by the separate emergence of three East Slavic peoples (Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian) is not yet complete.

Interest in the problem of ancient Russian nationality has not waned in recent times. Again and again V.V. Mavrodin. In 1971, his book "The Formation of the Old Russian State and the Formation of the Old Russian Nationality" was published, which is a course of lectures given to students of the historical faculty of Leningrad State University. Here the author emphasizes that the term "Old Russian nationality" most accurately corresponds to the ethnic community of the era of Kievan Rus. According to V.V. Mavrodin, the ancient Russian nationality was preceded by ethnic communities that were no longer either tribes or unions of tribes, but had not yet formed into a nationality - these are, say, Volhynians, Polochans, Krivichi. Speaking about the ancient Russian nationality, V.V. Mavrodin points to the commonality of language, political and state life, territory, economy, material and spiritual culture, customs, life, traditions, religion, characteristic of it. He attaches an important role to the consciousness of the unity of Russia and the Russian people, to national consciousness and self-knowledge, and the author uses the terms “nationality” and “nationality” alternatively.

"The Origin of the Russian People" - another book by V.V. Mavrodin, where the process of formation of the ancient Russian nationality is considered. As in the previous work, it is noted here that the term “Old Russian nationality” was adopted by Soviet historians due to its greatest correspondence with the ethnic community of the times of Kievan Rus: “The nationality of that time cannot be called Russian, because this would mean putting an equal sign between the nationality in which the Slavs in the IX-XI centuries, and that Russian people of the times of Dmitry Donskoy and Ivan the Terrible, which united only a part of the Eastern Slavs.

Once again V.V. Mavrodin reveals the signs of nationality as an ethnic entity. “Nationhood,” he writes, “is characterized not only by a common language, which by no means eliminates local dialects, but also by a single territory, common forms of economic life, a common culture, material and spiritual, common traditions, a way of life, peculiarities of the mental warehouse, the so-called “ national character." Nationality is characterized by a sense of national consciousness and self-knowledge. At the same time, the term "national consciousness" should be understood as the consciousness of the unity of people belonging to a given nationality. Finally, such factors as a single statehood and even belonging to a certain religion are of no small importance ... "

V.V. Mavrodin argues that nationality arises at a certain stage of social development, in the era of class society, since nationality is an ethnic formation that is characteristic of a class society. As for the ancient Russian nationality, the beginning of its formation “should be considered the 9th-10th centuries. - the time of the emergence of feudal relations in Russia and the formation of the Old Russian state.

Ethnic development of Russia in the era of "feudal fragmentation" of the XI-XIII centuries. became the subject of study by P.P. Tolochko. Having examined the opinions of his predecessors who dealt with this problem, he came to the conclusion that “the main conclusions of the researchers boil down to the following: 1) the ancient Russian people did not represent a completely stable ethnic community, and its decomposition was determined by the state disintegration of Russia in the era of feudal fragmentation; 2) the ancient Russian nationality was a stable ethnic community and significantly outlived Kievan Rus; 3) Old Russian people of the XII-XIII centuries. experienced a period of further consolidation and was one of the main elements of the unity of the country until the Mongol-Tatar invasion. P.P. Tolochko asks which of the listed conclusions is most consistent with historical truth. And he leans towards the third of them. True, the author believes that this conclusion, although correct, needs further substantiation. P.P. Tolochko and tries to give him his own justification. First of all, the scientist turns to the language and establishes the linguistic unity of the ancient Russian lands of the XII-XIII centuries. “Created on the basis of the language of related East Slavic tribes and formed in the conditions of a single state, the Old Russian language,” notes P.P. Tolochko, - not only did not fall apart in the XII-XIII centuries, but significantly survived Kievan Rus. The activity of the socio-political life of Russia in the era of feudal fragmentation not only did not contribute to regional linguistic isolation, but practically excluded it.

In addition to the linguistic community inherent in the consolidating Old Russian people of the 12th-13th centuries, P.P. Tolochko observes a territorial community, cultural unity, a well-known economic and state community.

To the problems of the history of the ancient Russian people P.P. Tolochko returns again in his recent book on the socio-political system of Ancient Russia. Here he speaks of the need for further study of the ethnic development of Russia, both at the stage of the initial formation of the ancient Russian people, and in the era of feudal fragmentation of the 12th-13th centuries. Such a study, in the author's opinion, should be closely connected with the study of the political and state evolution of the East Slavic society, which had a profound impact on the process of formation of the ancient Russian nationality. In fact, ethnic and political phenomena were intertwined, mutually conditioning each other: “At a certain stage in the development of the East Slavic tribes (VI-VIII centuries), due to their internal consolidation - linguistic, cultural and economic - it became necessary and possible to create first several, and then and unified public education. Born on a territorial basis of kindred East Slavic tribes, the Old Russian state of the 9th-10th centuries. itself became a necessary condition for their further consolidation, their transformation into a single ancient Russian people”). In general, “the activation of the processes of social development, which led to the change of the primitive communal system in Russia by the feudal one; the emergence of classes, the strengthening of trade ties, the emergence of writing, and then the literary language - all this led to the overcoming of tribal isolation and the formation of a single ancient Russian people.

The awakening of the consciousness of the unity of the Eastern Slavs is the main thing, according to P.P. Tolochko, achieving their ethnic development.

Speaking against the reassessment of the influence of feudal fragmentation on the historical fate of the ancient Russian people and arguing with historians, N.S. Derzhavin and V.V. Mavrodin, linguists L.A. Bulakhovsky and R.I. Avanesov, the author notes that these scientists do not have convincing arguments and most often refer to “the formula of feudal fragmentation, in which economic, cultural and political ties between individual lands seem to stall. The unproven thesis about the collapse of the Old Russian state, thus, turned into the main proof of the decomposition of the Old Russian people.

P.P. Tolochko, as before, discovers in Russia the XII-XIII centuries. ethnic, political and territorial community. He perceives the Old Russian nationality as one of the main factors of "the unity of the Russian lands of the era of feudal fragmentation." According to him, “Old Russian nationality was such a monolithic ethnic formation that even under the conditions of foreign domination - first by the Mongol-Tatar khans, and then by the Lithuanian princes, Polish and Hungarian kings - in different parts of the former territory of Ancient Russia, a lot of common language remained, culture, way of life, customs, traditions.

V.V. sees the mechanism of formation of the ancient Russian people somewhat differently. Sedov. He notices the transformation of the Slavic tribes, which occupied the vast expanse of Eastern Europe, into the Old Russian (or East Slavic) people in the VIII-IX centuries. V.V. Sedov believes that the ancient Russian people at that time had "basically a Slavic population, united not on an ethno-dialect, but on a territorial basis", since the settlement of the Eastern Slavs in the wide expanses of Central and Eastern Europe in the 6th-7th centuries "led to the disunity of the evolution of various language trends. This evolution began to bear not a general, but a local character. Of paramount importance in the formation of the ancient Russian nationality V.V. Sedov gives to the state. He writes: “The leading role in the formation of this nation, apparently, belongs to the ancient Russian state. After all, it is not for nothing that the beginning of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality coincides in time with the process of the formation of the Russian state. The territory of the Old Russian state also coincides with the area of ​​the East Slavic people. The emergence of an early feudal state with a center in Kyiv actively contributed to the consolidation of the Slavic tribes that made up the Old Russian nationality. The creative role of the state can also be traced in the 9th-12th centuries: "The Old Russian state united all the Eastern Slavs into a single organism, connected them with a common political life, and, of course, contributed to strengthening the concept of the unity of Russia."

The formation of the Old Russian people in the Upper Volga region is the subject of research by I.V. Dubova. Ethnic changes observed in this region since the 9th century, he believes, “stem from a general historical phenomenon - the formation of an early feudal society... manifestations of feudalism.

I.V. Dubov emphasizes that not only Slavic settlers, but also local residents, the Finno-Ugric peoples, took part in the ethnic consolidation of North-Eastern Russia. According to him, "the phenomenon of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality" in the Upper Volga region is extremely complex and multifaceted. Here we can see the settlement of the Slavs, their assimilation of the local Finno-Ugric peoples, and acculturation, thanks to which Finno-Ugric features clearly appear in the material and spiritual culture of the North-East of Russia.

It should be noted that significant attention was paid to the issue of the ethnic components of the ancient Russian nationality in Soviet science. In the process of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality of the times of Kievan Rus, some researchers attached great importance to non-Slavic ethnic groups, in particular (and first of all) the Finno-Ugric peoples; others, on the contrary, denied the foreign-speaking population as an integral element of the Eastern Slavs. Speaking about the tribes of the Finno-Ugric languages ​​absorbed by Russians, M.N. Pokrovsky claimed that "80% of their blood flows in the veins of the Great Russians." Speech by M.N. Pokrovsky, of course, is talking about the Great Russians as the descendants of the Russians of the Kiev period of national history, who assimilated mery, all, muroma. A diametrically opposite point of view was held by D.K. Zelenin, who in the article “Did the Finns take part in the formation of the Great Russian nationality”, proved that the Finns did not take any part in the formation of the Russian nationality, nor in the development of its culture. Ideas D.K. Zelenin were criticized by S.P. Tolstov.

It must be said that Soviet researchers once paid tribute to N.Ya. Marr about ethnogenesis in general and the ethnogenesis of Russians in particular. N.Ya. Marr wrote: “What is meant by a tribe? Creatures of the same species, zoological type with congenital ab ovo breeding characteristics, like breeding horses, breeding cows? We don’t know such human tribes when it comes to language.” And language is the basis of an ethnic group. It is no coincidence that the fifth volume of selected works by N.Ya. Marra is called "Ethno- and glottogony of Eastern Europe", which emphasizes the commonality of the process of ethnogenesis and language development.

Applying this idea of ​​his to the Eastern Slavs, N.Ya. Marr noted: “In the formation of a Slav, a specific Russian, as, indeed, by all appearances, and Finns, the actual historical population should be taken into account not as a source of influence, but as a creative material force of formation ...”

In the works of our scientists (V.V. Mavrodin, B.A. Rybakov, L.V. Cherepnin, V.T. Pashuto, P.N. Tretyakov), dedicated to the ancient Russian people, it is said that in the ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs, non-Slavic population, ethnic formations of the Finno-Ugric, Baltic, Iranian and Turkic languages ​​took an active part in the formation of the ancient Russian nationality.

Finno-Ugric, Baltic, Iranian and Turkic elements of the Old Russian language were the subject of research by Soviet linguists F.P. Filina, P.Ya. Chernykha, A.M. Selishcheva, S.B. Bernstein, L.P. Yakubinsky, N.A. Meshchersky and Dr.

Traces of the material culture of the non-Slavic population in the culture of the Eastern Slavs of the era of the Old Russian people were studied by Soviet archaeologists (V.I. Ravdonikas, A.V. Artsikhovsky, H.A. Moora, L.A. Golubeva, A.P. Smirnov, E.I. Goryunova, P. N. Tretyakov, V. V. Sedov, F. D. Gurevich, J. V. Stankevich, T. N. Nikolskaya, M. I. Artamonov, S. A. Pletneva, M. V. Fekhner, I.V. Dubov).

Anthropologists (G.F. Debets, V.V. Bunak, T.A. Trofimova, N.N. Cheboksarov and others) have traced the ancient ethnosubstratum and the racial types introduced from outside into the Slavic environment, in particular moderately Mongoloid ones. Their research showed that in Eastern Europe the racial type was more stable than the language.

Recently, much attention has been paid to the question of the role of the Balts in the process of ethnic development of the Eastern Slavs, in the formation of the ancient Russian people (P.N. Tretyakov, V.V. Sedov, V.N. Toporov, O.N. Trubachev, A.G. . Mitrofanov). P.N. Tretyakov emphasizes important role Balts in the formation of the Old Russian nationality, and V.V. Sedov gives them this role in the formation of the Belarusian nation. Opponents V.V. Sedov noted that he, in fact, speaks of the influence of the Balts on the ancient East Slavic population, on the Old Russian, and not just the Belarusian people.

As a result of lengthy research, Soviet scientists came to the conclusion that the Slavicization of the ancient Baltic and Finno-Ugric populations of Eastern Europe was a significant factor in the formation and development of the Old Russian state, which took shape as an economic, political and cultural unity of not only Slavic, but also non-Slavic tribes.

Of undoubted value are works that reveal the ethnic self-consciousness of the ancient Russian people.

So, the work of our researchers created the concept of the Old Russian people. To designate the ethnic formation of the Eastern Slavs of the era of Kievan Rus, the term "Old Russian nationality" was established in science.

The achievement of Soviet historians is their dynamic approach to the Old Russian people as an ethnic community undergoing a process of development. The role of non-Slavic ethnic elements in the formation of the Old Russian nationality is determined.

In the scientific literature, a view has developed on the Old Russian nationality, the fundamental criterion of which is, first of all, the commonality of the language, which, however, retains local dialects. For the ancient Russian people, a common territory is characteristic, which, according to scientists, coincides with a political community in the form of the Old Russian state, which united all the Eastern Slavs. It also recognizes a well-known economic community, the unity of material and spiritual culture, religion, which in ancient times acted as a universal, all-encompassing form of ideology. The same traditions, customs, mores, customary law, law and court, military structure contributed to the consolidation of the Eastern Slavs into a single nation. The commonality of interests in the struggle for the independence of Russia also played a big role. All Soviet researchers attach very significant importance to the national consciousness of the unity of Russia, self-knowledge and a sense of patriotism.

Finally, the fact has been finally established that the ancient Russian nationality was the common ancestor of the three later Slavic nationalities - Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians ..

So, there are indisputable successes achieved by modern Soviet science in the field of studying the history of the ancient Russian people. But it would be a mistake to think that all problems have been solved exhaustively and definitively. Some of the most important questions relating to the Old Russian people need further research. It is impossible, for example, to overestimate the importance of territorial-communal ties among the Eastern Slavs in the 6th-9th centuries. as one of the essential conditions for the formation of the Old Russian nationality. The tribal system at the indicated time still dominated the East Slavic world. Recognition of this fact makes it necessary to make adjustments to the dating of the initial stage of the formation of the Old Russian people.

It is also necessary to find out the degree of influence of the Old Russian statehood on the formation of the Old Russian nationality, since the latest ideas about this are based on the questionable thesis about the state unity of Russia, which allegedly already at the end of the 10th century. constituted an early feudal monarchy. As the analysis of sources shows, in the 10th century, under the hegemony of Kyiv in Eastern Europe, a grandiose intertribal alliance, and by no means an early feudal monarchy, was formed. The cohesion of this union was very relative. In addition, at the end of the X century. there are clear signs of degradation.

There are good reasons to object also to the too straightforward and rigid dependence of the emergence of the Old Russian nationality on the processes of class formation, which is proved by modern researchers. In Kievan Rus, classes had not yet taken shape, but the nationality already existed. Apparently, the beginning of the formation of the nationality refers to the period when tribal orders are replaced by territorial ones. And this happens as a result of the decomposition of tribal relations. The collapse of the tribal system falls at the end of the X - the beginning of the XI century. It was a time of deep "destruction of closed tribal cells", the irrepressible disintegration of tribal ties, the transition "from the vervi-clan to the vervi-community ... from collective tribal agriculture to more progressive then - individual." It is no coincidence that in Kyiv during the reign of Vladimir Svyatoslavich, there are beggars and wretched people - a clear sign of the decomposition of tribal groups. These poor people served as the source of the emergence of such a variety of slavery as servility. The formation of servility, completed at the expense of fellow tribesmen, became a powerful factor in the collapse of tribal relations. Under the same Prince Vladimir, robberies, that is, all kinds of crimes, multiplied in Russia. Traditional tribal protection, therefore, no longer provided inner peace, which also testifies to the crisis state of the tribal system. Ancient Russia was entering a new, transitional era from a pre-class society to a class society, which A.I. Neusykhin, in relation to the Western European countries of the early Middle Ages, called the "pre-feudal period". The social organization that was taking shape during this period, with its inherent community without primitiveness (without tribal archaism), gave a powerful impetus to the process of formation of the ancient Russian people.

With such a formulation of the question, we must talk about the interdependence, interdependence of class formation and the subsequent development of the ancient Russian people. But this process took place outside the history of Ancient Russia and proceeded in the XIV-XV centuries, when the ancient Russian people turned into the Great Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples.

"The Slavic tribes that occupied the vast territories of Eastern Europe are going through a process of consolidation and in the 8th-9th centuries form the Old Russian (or East Slavic) people. Common features in modern Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian languages ​​show that they all emerged from one common Russian language. On In the Old Russian (East Slavonic) language, such monuments as "The Tale of Bygone Years", the oldest code of laws - "Russian Truth", the poetic work "The Tale of Igor's Campaign", numerous letters, etc.

The beginning of the formation of the common Russian language is determined by linguists - as 8-9 centuries.

The consciousness of the unity of the Russian Land was preserved both in the era of Kievan Rus, and in the period of feudal fragmentation. The concept of "Russian Land" covered all the Eastern Slavic regions from Ladoga in the north to the Black Sea in the south and from the Bug in the West to the Volga-Oka interfluve inclusive in the east.

At the same time, there was still a narrow concept of Russia, corresponding to the middle Dnieper (Kyiv, Chernigov and Seversk lands), preserved from the era of the 6th-7th centuries, when a tribal union existed in the Middle Dnieper under the leadership of one of the Slavic tribes - the Rus. The population of the Russian tribal union in the 9th-10th centuries. served as the core for the formation of the Old Russian people, which included the Slavic tribes of Eastern Europe and part of the Slavic Finnish tribes.

What are the prerequisites for the formation of the East Slavic people?

The widespread settlement of the Slavs in Eastern Europe falls mainly on the 6th-8th centuries. It was still the Proto-Slavic period, and the settled Slavs were united linguistically. Migration did not come from one region, but from different dialect areas of the Proto-Slavic area. Consequently, any assumptions about the "Russian ancestral home" or about the beginnings of the East Slavic people within the Proto-Slavic world are not justified in any way. The Old Russian nationality was formed over vast expanses and was based on the Slavic population, united not on ethno-dialect, but on territorial soil.

The leading role in the formation of this nation, apparently, belongs to the ancient Russian state. After all, it is not for nothing that the beginning of the formation of the ancient Russian nationality coincides in time with the process of the formation of the Russian state. The territory of the Old Russian state also coincides with the area of ​​the East Slavic people.

Russian land or Rus, began to call the territory of the ancient Russian early feudal state. The term Rus is used by PVL and foreign countries of Europe and Asia. Russia is mentioned in Byzantine and Western European sources.

The formation of ancient Russian statehood and nationality was accompanied by the rapid development of culture and economy. The construction of ancient Russian cities, the rise of handicraft production, the development of trade relations favored the consolidation of the Slavs of Eastern Europe into a single nationality.

In the formation of the Old Russian language and nationality, an essential role belonged to the spread of Christianity and writing. Very soon the concepts of "Russian" and "Christian" began to be identified. The Church played a multifaceted role in the history of Russia.

As a result, a single material and spiritual culture is being formed, which is manifested in almost everything - from women's jewelry to architecture. (22, p.271-273)

"When, as a result of the Battle of Kalka and the invasion of the hordes of Batu, not only the unity of the Russian land, but also the independence of the scattered Russian principalities, was lost, the consciousness of the unity of the entire Russian land became even more acutely felt in literature. The Russian language became the unified expression of Russian unity throughout the entire territory of the Russian land , and conscious - all Russian literature. "The Word about the destruction of the Russian land", "The Life of Alexander Nevsky", the cycle of Ryazan stories and especially the Russian chronicles reminded of the former historical unity of the Russian land and thus, as it were, called to regain this unity and independence. " (9 a, p. 140)

According to the views shared by most researchers of the history of Ancient Russia, this is an East Slavic ethnic community (ethnos), formed in X- XIII centuries as a result of the merger of 12 East Slavic tribal unions - Slovenes (Ilmen), Krivichi (including Polochan), Vyatichi, Radimichi, Dregovichi, Severyans, Polyans, Drevlyans, Volynians, Tivertsy, Ulichs and White Croats - and was a common ancestor of those formed in XIV - XVI centuries three modern East Slavic ethnic groups - Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. The above theses turned into a coherent concept in the 1940s. thanks to the works of the Leningrad historian V.V. Mavrodina.

It is believed that the formation of a single ancient Russian people was facilitated by:

The linguistic unity of the then Eastern Slavs (the formation on the basis of the Kiev Koine of a single, all-Russian spoken language and a single literary language, called Old Russian in science);

The unity of the material culture of the Eastern Slavs;

Unity of traditions, customs, spiritual culture;

Achieved at the end of IX - X centuries. political unity of the Eastern Slavs (unification of all East Slavic tribal unions within the boundaries of the Old Russian state);

Appearance at the end of the tenth century. the Eastern Slavs have a single religion - Christianity in its Eastern version (Orthodoxy);

The presence of trade links between different areas.

All this led to the formation of a single, all-Russian ethnic identity among the Eastern Slavs. The formation of such self-consciousness is indicated by:

Gradual replacement of tribal ethnonyms by the common ethnonym "Rus" (for example, for the Polyans, the fact of this replacement was recorded in the annals under 1043, for the Ilmen Slovenes - under 1061);

The presence in the XII - early XIII centuries. unified (Russian) ethnic identity among princes, boyars, clergy and townspeople. So, the Chernigov abbot Daniel, who arrived in Palestine in 1106, positions himself as a representative not of Chernigov, but of "the entire Russian land." At the princely congress of 1167, the princes - heads of sovereign states formed after the collapse of the Old Russian state, proclaim their goal to protect "the entire Russian land." The Novgorod chronicler, when describing the events of 1234, proceeds from the fact that Novgorod is part of the "Russian land".

A sharp reduction after the Mongol invasion of Russia of ties between the northwestern and northeastern lands of Ancient Russia, on the one hand, and the southern and southwestern, on the other, and also began in the second half of the 13th century. the inclusion first of the western, and then the southwestern and southern lands of Ancient Russia into the state of Lithuania - all this led to the disintegration of the Old Russian people and the beginning of the formation of three modern East Slavic ethnic groups on the basis of the Old Russian people.

Literature

1. Lebedinsky M.Yu. On the question of the history of the ancient Russian people. M., 1997.
2. Mavrodin V.V. The formation of the Old Russian state and the formation of the Old Russian people. M., 1971.
3. Sedov V.V. Ancient Russian people. Historical and archaeological research. M., 1999.
4. Tolochko P.P. Old Russian nationality: imaginary or real? SPb., 2005.

A new period in the ethnic history of the Eastern Slavs is associated with the 10th-13th centuries.

Its interpretation laid the foundation for differences between researchers in understanding the process of formation of the Belarusian ethnic community. These discrepancies are due not only to cognitive difficulties, but also, as already noted, to the social and worldview positions of the scientists themselves. The subject of disagreement is the problem of the Old Russian people. Its decision also predetermines the essence of the proposed concepts for the emergence of the Belarusian, as well as Russian and Ukrainian, community.

The essence of this problem lies in the answer to the question: did such a historical community of people as the ancient Russian people really exist, or is it just a figment of the imagination of researchers? Depending on the content of the answer, interpretations of the process of formation of the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian ethnic communities are also given. If it existed, then the formation of these three communities occurred as a result of the process of differentiation of the ancient Russian people; if it is a figment of the imagination of scientists, then the formation of the Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian communities is derived from the process of direct consolidation of various groups of chronicle tribes.

We note right away that the concept of the Belarusian statehood, which is the basis of official publications on the history of Belarus, proceeds from the fact of the existence of the Old Russian nationality in the past. Further, the relevant arguments will be given, but first we will consider the meaning of the concept of "nationality".

There are no special differences between domestic researchers regarding what a nationality is and what features it has. Almost all of them agree that this is a territorial community of people, which, in terms of the level of sociocultural development, occupies an intermediate position between the union of tribes and the nation, and which is characteristic of early class societies. Among the signs of nationality, state and territorial unity, the presence of a common name (or self-name), common language, culture, religion, and legislation are usually indicated.

The term "Old Russian nationality" came into use in the middle of the 20th century. and is used to denote the ethnic unity of the Eastern Slavs of the times of Kievan Rus. At the same time, it is used to distinguish the inhabitants of ancient Russia, who called themselves Russians or Russians, from modern Russians. Prior to that, the terms "Russian nationality", "Russian people", "Russian Slavs", "Eastern Slavs", "Slavic nationality" were used with the same meaning. At present, the term “Old Russian nationality” is the most common in the literature, although others are also used, depending on the context of the presentation, in relation to the population of ancient Russia. Let us return to that period of the ethnic history of the Eastern Slavs, the starting point of which dates back to the end of the 9th - beginning of the 10th centuries. and ends in the middle of the thirteenth century. It was the era of Kievan Rus - the time of the emergence and existence of the largest medieval state in Eastern Europe. As for the ethnogenetic processes that took place on its territory, the famous Ukrainian historian and archaeologist P.P. Tolochko said this about them: “If you do arithmetic addition expressed during more than 200 years of research of thoughts, the vast majority will be what one way or another affirmed the ethnic unity of the Eastern Slavs of Kievan times. Historians, on the other hand, who claimed that already in the era of Kievan Rus, three East Slavic peoples were actually defined - Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians - constitute an insignificant minority. True, in the post-Soviet period, when these peoples gained their state sovereignty, some historians again began to revive this idea. These are the researchers who perceived the new realities as a kind of social order for the ideological justification of the current political and ethno-cultural situation by historical traditions.

Almost all the huge factual material relating to the Kievan era of the history of the ethnic development of the Eastern Slavs irrefutably testifies to the existence of a special ethno-territorial community - the Old Russian people. Its emergence was the result of a process of smoothing out the tribal differences of the Eastern Slavs, which was due to the needs of their political, economic and cultural development.

According to modern ideas about ethnogenesis, the formation of a nation and a state are interdependent historical processes. In this case, first in the Middle Dnieper at the turn of the IX-GC centuries. the state formation of Rus is formed with the center in Kiev, which then assumes the function of protecting all East Slavic lands from external conquerors. So in the last quarter of the ninth century. the state of the Eastern Slavs Rus arose, the book name of which is the Old Russian state, or Kievan Rus. This huge state formation by medieval standards was ruled by the Russian princes of the Rurik dynasty. At the same time, the process of consolidation of the Eastern Slavs into a single ethno-cultural community took place. In this state, there was a single language, culture and legislation, and since 988 Christianity in its Greek-Byzantine variety - Orthodoxy - began to assert itself in it. Gradually, the population of the Old Russian state abandoned tribal self-names and began to recognize their belonging to Russia. For example, the last mention in the annals of the glades dates back to 944, the northerners - 1024, the Drevlyans - 1136, the Dregovichi - 1149, the Krivichi - 1162, the Radimichi - 1169 [13]. At the same time, in the annals of the XII-XIII centuries. “Rus”, “Rusichs”, “Rusyns”, “Russians” was the population of almost all major cities of this state, including Polotsk, Vitebsk, Turov, Pinsk, Mensk, Berestye, Gorodnya, etc.

It should be noted that already in the “Sermon on Law and Grace” of the Kiev Metropolitan Hilarion, a literary monument of 1049, the concept “Russian people” is used. Consequently, the famous Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky admits, at least, inaccuracy, arguing that "nowhere, in any monument we will meet the expression of the Russian people," and even more so he is wrong in his judgment that in the middle of the 11th century. "this people itself did not yet exist." On these provisions V.Oh. Klyuchevsky is certainly referred to by those domestic researchers who question or completely deny the existence of the Old Russian people and the Old Russian state itself. This is despite the fact that V.O. Klyuchevsky did not deny the existence of the Russian people, but believed that “by the middle of the 11th century. only ethnographic elements were ready, from which the Russian nationality is then worked out by a long and difficult process.

The most convincing evidence of the existence already in the XI century. of the ancient Russian people and its statehood is the self-consciousness of the Eastern Slavs at the indicated time, which received its consolidation in their self-name - the Russian people (language), as well as in the name of the territory belonging to them or, if we use the modern term, the country of their residence - the Russian land, or simply Russia.

Name "Rus"

The word "Rus" originally referred to the East Slavic principality with its center in Kiev and its population; subsequently, the name "Rus" began to be applied to all the Eastern Slavs and their statehood. The ancestors of modern Belarusians were also aware of their belonging to Russia. There are several versions regarding the origin of this name. According to one chronicle, the name Rus goes back to the name of the Scandinavian (Norman) Viking Vikings from the Rus tribe that appeared on the Slavic lands. According to another version, also based on an annalistic report (its author is the historian B.A. Rybakov) - this was the name of a tribe neighboring the glades, which was located on the Ros River, a tributary of the Dnieper, and the name of this river is associated with the name of the tribe. Subsequently, these two tribes - Ros and Polyana - merged into one, which was assigned the name Rus. The fact of their merger, Rybakov believes, is reflected in the chronicle phrase: "Glade, even now calling Rus." According to the third assumption, which is shared by a number of researchers, the term "Rus" has deep roots in the eternal Slavic world and the Slavs in the original area of ​​​​their formation, who then spread it throughout the space of their settlement, could have had such a name. Therefore, over time, it was not the glades that began to be called Rus, but part of Rus-si began to be called glades after the settlement of the Eastern Slavs, just as others received the complementary names of Drevlyans, Dregovichi, Radimichi, Severyans, Vyatichi, Krivichi, etc. The question of the origin of the name "Rus" remains open to this day.

Sources: Belarusian encyclopedia: at 18v. Minsk, 2001, vol. 13, pp. 422-473; Rybakov, B.A. Birth of Russia / B.A. Rybakov. M., 2003. S. 46; Zagarulski, E.M. Western Russia: IX-XIII centuries. /EM. Zagarulski. Minsk, 1998, pp. 52-58.

Thus, in the IX-XI centuries. as a result of the consolidation of various East Slavic communities - Polyans, Drevlyans, Severians, Volynians, Croats, Dregovichi, Radimichi, Vyatichi, Krivichi, Slovenes and others - a new, East Slavic ethnic community was formed - the Old Russian nationality. Its unity turned out to be so strong that in the era of the feudal fragmentation of Russia, the nationality itself not only did not disintegrate, but even more consolidated. According to B.A. Rybakov, up to the XIV century. - the time of the Battle of Kulikovo - the Eastern Slavs continued to consider themselves as one. The strength of the ancient Russian nationality is also evidenced by the fact that after the rupture of ties between the Russian lands under the blows of the Mongols, not 15 territorial communities arose, as was the case during the period of fragmentation of Kievan Rus [18], but three East Slavic peoples - Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians.