REGIONAL ETHNOGRAPHY

PEOPLES OF RUSSIA

As a result of studying the section, the student must:

• know
• number, settlement, anthropological features of the most numerous peoples of Russia;
• the main stages of ethnogenesis and ethnic history of the population of the regions of Russia (European Russia, Siberia, North Caucasus);
• regional features of the traditional culture of the peoples of Russia - economy, material and spiritual culture, main traditional social institutions;
• regional cultural models based on economic and cultural typology;
• the main trends of ethnic processes on the territory of modern Russia;
• be able to
• apply data on the ethnography of the peoples of Russia in the system of historical research;
• own
• skills in describing a specific people of Russia according to the scheme accepted in ethnography - settlement, ethnogenesis and ethnic history, culture of primary production, socionormative and humanitarian cultures.

ETHNOGRAPHY OF RUSSIANS

Russians are one of the largest peoples in the world, the “state-forming” ethnic group of the Russian Federation, where, according to the 2010 census, its representatives numbered just over 111 million people, with a share of the total population of 77.7%. The Russian language is part of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic group of the Indo-European family. Racially, Russians belong to the Caucasian race; according to the classification of V.V. Bunak, there are 16 anthropological types: Ilmen, Middle Volga, steppe, etc. In confessional terms, the overwhelming majority of Russian believers are Orthodox Christians.

Ethnogenesis and ethnic history of the Russian people

The ethnogenetic origins of the Russian ethnos go back to the period of the pan-Slavic community, which in turn separated from the Indo-European unity. The time and place of singling out the Slavs is debatable.

The dates proposed by linguists range from the 3rd to the beginning of the 1st millennium BC, and the territory of their initial residence is either the Danube region or the Vistula-Oder interfluve (sometimes with its expansion to the Middle Dnieper region and even the Don region). For the first time under their name in written sources, the Slavs appear only in the 6th century. AD, the first authentically Slavic archaeological culture of Prague-Korchak dates back to this time. Previously, perhaps, the Slavs were known under other names - Skolots, Stavans, Wends, etc., found in the works of ancient authors.

At the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. the process of disintegration of the linguistic unity of the Slavic world begins. "The Tale of Bygone Years" describes the Slavic groups (possibly tribes) of its eastern part - the Polyans, Drevlyans, Radimichi, Northerners, Slovenes, etc. From the 9th century. the process of their consolidation into a single nationality with the name “Rus” begins, in scientific literature called Old Russian. The origin of this ethnonym is controversial: it is traced either to the Scandinavian rutsi/motsi (“seafarers”), or to some Eastern European homonym - the people of Rosomon, r. Ros and others. Old Russian statehood, which at first represented a political unity, then splits into separate independent entities - lands, or reigns. After the invasion in the 30s and 40s. XIII century Mongol-Tatars, the eastern part of the Russian lands became subordinate to the Golden Horde, and the western part became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The struggle of the population of the eastern lands of Rus' to overthrow the yoke was a factor that consolidated it into an ethnic group that retained the same name, but with a slightly different vowel - Russians (Great Russians). On Western Russian lands, two other East Slavic ethnic groups are emerging - Ukrainian and Belarusian.

The formation of the Russian ethnic group occurs in the period of the XIV–XV centuries. on the territory of ancient Russian lands dependent on the Golden Horde. A new political center is being formed here - Moscow, gathering previously independent principalities into a single statehood. This process was completed by the beginning of the 16th century. and was accompanied by the struggle to overthrow the Horde yoke. It is the lands united by the Moscow principality that become the territory of the emerging Russian (Great Russian) ethnic group. Subsequently, there was an intensive process of growth of the territory of the Russian state, by the beginning of the 20th century. under the name of the Russian Empire, it covered almost all of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Kazakhstan, Siberia and the Far East. Given the multi-ethnic nature of Russian statehood, the Russian ethnos remained the largest in number, although its share in the country's population gradually fell as other territories and peoples were annexed. At the end of the 17th century. it was just over 70% by the end of the 18th century. - about 50%, and according to the general census of Russia in 1897 - 43.5%. With the expansion of the borders of Russian statehood, the ethnic territory of the Russian people grew, which from the Volga-Oka interfluve and part of the European north spread to the Middle and Lower Volga region, the Urals, the Northern Black Sea and Azov regions, the Stavropol and Kuban regions, Southern Siberia and the Far East.

The widespread settlement of the Russian ethnic group in regions with different environmental conditions, the borrowing of other ethnic elements of culture, close contacts with the local population, including marriage, as well as the preservation by some parts of the Russian ethnic group of archaic forms of culture, confessional and social factors led to the formation of the Russian people territorial groups with peculiar features of economy, way of life, sometimes even language and anthropological appearance. There are two types of them: ethnographic groups - which do not have a special, different from the all-Russian, self-awareness, and subethnic groups - which have it, which is manifested in their name. The main ethnographic groups in the European part of Russia are the Northern Russian, Southern Russian and the Central Russian transitional between them, as well as the Northeastern, Southeastern and Western groups. In Siberia, the cultural and everyday characteristics of the Russian population were determined by the source region of migration. Subethnic groups include various groups of Cossacks (Don, Kuban, Semirechensk, Amur, etc.), as well as Pomors, Ust-Tsilemtsy, Tsukans, Karyms, Kamchadals, etc. In total, there are about three dozen of them in the Russian people.

During the Soviet period, with an increase in the total number of Russians, their percentage in the population of the USSR, as census data show, decreased from 52.9% (1926) to 50.6% (1989), while in the RSFSR it was usually just over 80%. As in previous times, the resettlement of Russians to other (“national”) regions continued. However, since the 1970s. in a number of territories of the USSR, in particular in Transcaucasia, Central Asia and Moldova, as a result of a decrease in the birth rate, as well as the policy of “hidden” nationalism, a decrease in both the percentage of Russians and their absolute number began to be observed.

After the collapse of the USSR and the formation of independent states in place of the former republics, a significant part of the Russian population migrated from their territory to the Russian Federation. While the number of Russians according to the 2010 All-Russian Census is 111 million people. (with the inclusion in this number of Cossacks specially identified by the census - 67.6 thousand and Pomors - 3.1 thousand people) they made up 80.9% of the country's population.

In approximately half of the national-state formations of the Russian Federation (republics, autonomous okrugs, autonomous regions), Russians are the most numerous ethnic group, usually making up more than half of the population. They form the majority in all regions of the Russian Federation, where their share reaches 90% or more. As for the number of Russians outside Russia, it is difficult to determine it for a number of reasons. In the near abroad it is approximately 18 million people, in the far abroad it is about 12–13 million people; in total there are approximately 146–147 million Russians in the world.

As throughout the world, the traditional cultural and everyday way of life of the Russian people, under the influence of the processes of industrialization and urbanization, has largely lost its original features. This transformation occurred most intensively in the last decades of the 19th – early 20th centuries. Therefore, the culture of the Russian ethnic group is usually characterized as of this time, paying special attention to peasant culture, which preserves traditional elements to the greatest extent.

Where did the Slavic people come from? There are quite a lot of theories about this. In this article we will try to understand what ethnogenesis is. Let's find out what hypotheses exist about the origin of the Eastern Slavs.

What is ethnogenesis?

Nations did not arise overnight. Different people united in small groups, which gradually expanded. Small communities grew into entire tribes. In living together, they developed their own foundations, habits, rules and traditions that distinguished them from other groups.

What is ethnogenesis? This is the initial stage of the formation of nations. The process of transition from individuals to a group with the same way of life, the same culture. The formation of an ethnos, that is, a people, occurred due to various reasons and factors.

Each nation has a different history of origin. The emergence and formation of a nationality or nation can be influenced by the geographic environment, religion, and neighboring groups of people. Settlers and invaders also make their contribution to the development of the people. Some peoples, for example, the Germans, Americans, and Swiss arose as a result of an external challenge.

Slavs

In cultural and ethnological terms, a people is a community of people united by certain characteristics. Previously, they were blood relationships, but over time, language, religion, historical past, traditions and culture, and territory began to be considered such signs.

There are approximately 70 peoples living in Europe, some of which are Slavs. They represent the largest settlements in Central, Southern, Eastern Europe, the Far East and the Asian part of Russia. Worldwide, their number is approximately 350 million.

There are eastern, southern and western branches of the Slavs. Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are classified as Eastern Slavs due to their closer cultural and linguistic ties. According to some researchers, the ancestors of these peoples constituted the main population of the Old Russian state in the Middle Ages, representing one nationality.

Ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs

Under the name of the Wends, the Slavs appear in various written sources back in the 1st millennium BC. Before this, there were several pre-Slavic ethnic cultures (for example, Przeworsk), which most likely gave rise to these peoples. However, the problem of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs still remains open. And now the opinions of scientists on this matter differ.

The Slavs are believed to belong to the Indo-European language family, which includes many other peoples. And they come from the central and eastern regions of Europe. According to various hypotheses, this is the territory between the Oder and the Vistula, the Middle Danube, Pripyat Polesie, etc.

It is assumed that they lived in small tribes, and after the first millennium they began to unite into larger formations - tribal unions. Gradually they divided into western and eastern branches, and over time the southern branch also appeared. The Eastern Slavs are often called Ants. They lived next to the tribes of Avars, Goths, Khazars, Pechenegs, and Polovtsians.

All these tribes had a significant influence on the ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs. There were often wars and raids between them. The Khazars even managed to impose tribute on the Slavs. Researchers do not exclude the possibility that modern East Slavic peoples may be descendants of joint marriages between Slavs and East European tribes.

Theories of the origin of the Eastern Slavs

There are various hypotheses about the origin and spread of the Slavic tribes. Thus, the autochthonous theory of ethnogenesis reports that the Slavs did not come from other territories, but arose in the valleys of the Dnieper and Dniester.

According to the migration theory, during the 3rd-7th centuries they settled in the territory between the Dnieper and the Dniester, in the eastern valleys of the Dnieper. Later, some of them spread to the territory of southern Ukraine, the Southern Bug and modern Moldova. The other part, having encountered the Varangians, stopped in the north-west of Russia and founded Veliky Novgorod, also occupied the territory of Beloozero and the Tver region.

There is also a mixed theory that suggests that migration among the Slavs occurred. Only not everyone moved; some remained on the territory of their historical homeland, continuing their usual way of life.

Conclusion

What is ethnogenesis? This is the process of the birth and formation of a people. Although the term also includes its further development. The study of ethnogenesis includes the study of the linguistic, cultural, historical characteristics of a certain people, their way of life, geographical location and movements throughout their existence.

The origin of the Eastern Slavs still leaves more questions than answers. There are many theories, historical and semi-legendary documents about its formation, but there is no consensus in scientific circles.

The Russian ethnic group is the largest people in the Russian Federation. Russians also live in neighboring countries, the USA, Canada, Australia and a number of European countries. They belong to the large European race. The modern territory of settlement of the Russian ethnic group stretches from the Kaliningrad region in the west to the Far East in the east and from the Murmansk region and Northern Siberia in the north to the foothills of the Caucasus and Kazakhstan in the south. It has a complex configuration and has developed as a result of long migrations, cohabitation in the same regions with other peoples, assimilation processes (for example, some Finno-Ugric groups) and ethnic division (with Belarusians and Ukrainians).

The name of the people “Rus” or “ros” appears in sources in the middle of the 6th century. There is no clarity in the origin of the word “Rus”. According to the most common version, the ethnonym “Rus” is associated with the name “ros”, “rus”, which goes back to the name of the Ros River, a tributary of the Dnieper. The word "Rus" was common in Europe.

Anthropologically, Russians are homogeneous in the sense that they are all part of the large Caucasian race. However, differences are observed between individual groups. Among the Russian population of the northern regions, signs of the Atlanto-Baltic race predominate, the Russians of the central regions constitute the East European type of the Central European race, the Russians of the north-west are represented by the East-Baltic type of the White Sea-Baltic race, among the Russians of the south signs of an admixture of Mongoloid and Mediterranean elements are found.

The ethnogenesis of the Russian ethnos is closely connected with the origin of the Old Russian people, in the formation of which, in turn, East Slavic tribes played an important role. The Old Russian nationality with a pan-East Slavic identity was formed during the period of the unity of the Old Russian early feudal Kievan state (Kievan Rus of the 9th - early 12th centuries). During the period of feudal fragmentation, general self-awareness was not lost, which affected, in particular, the formation of ethnonyms denoting in subsequent centuries the three East Slavic peoples - Great Russians, Little Russians, and Belarusians.

The process of development of the Russian nationality proceeded in parallel with the formation of the Ukrainian and Belarusian nationalities. A certain role in this was played by the gradual accumulation of local differences in the conditions of the collapse of the unified ancient Russian state. The ethnocultural differences of the three peoples, which were formed in subsequent centuries, are explained both by the tribal division of the Eastern Slavs of the pre-state era, and by socio-political factors. In the conditions of the liberation struggle against the Horde yoke (mid-XIII - late XV centuries), the ethnic and ethno-confessional consolidation of the principalities of north-eastern Rus' took place, which formed in the XIV - XV centuries. Moscow Rus'.

By the period when a new process of unification of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians in the Russian state began, the ethnic differentiation of the Eastern Slavs, which developed in the 14th - 17th centuries, had gone quite far (although it was not completely completed until the 19th - 20th centuries) and turned out to be irreversible . The Eastern Slavs continued to develop in conditions of intense interethnic contacts, but as three independent peoples.

The most important features of the ethnic history of Russians were the constant presence of sparsely populated territories and the centuries-old migration activity of the Russian population. The period preceding the formation of the Old Russian state, as well as the era of Kievan Rus, was marked by the movement of the East Slavic ethnic massif to the north and northeast and the settlement of those regions that subsequently formed the core of the Russian (Great Russian) ethnic territory.

The ethnic core of the Russian people took shape in the 11th - 15th centuries. within the lands lying in the Volga-Oka interfluve and the borders of Veliky Novgorod, during fierce resistance to Mongol-Tatar dependence.

After liberation from the Horde yoke, the secondary settlement of the “wild field” began, that is, the southern Russian regions devastated by the Horde raids. Relocations followed to the Volga region in the 17th - 18th centuries, to Siberia, the North Caucasus, and later to Kazakhstan, Altai and Central Asia. As a result, a vast ethnic territory of Russians gradually formed. During the Russians' exploration of new territories, intensive interethnic contacts took place with representatives of a number of other peoples. These and other factors contributed to the fact that special (separate) ethnographic, ethno-confessional, and ethno-economic groups were preserved or formed within the Russian people.

In the XVIII - XIX centuries. The Russian nation is gradually being formed. We can say that in the second half of the 19th century. basically the Russian nation was formed. Reforms of the 60s XIX century gave a strong impetus to the development of capitalism in Russia. During the 19th century. The formation of the Russian intelligentsia took place, major successes were achieved in the field of literature, art, science, and social thought. At the same time, archaic forms of traditional culture were preserved to a certain extent.

The formation of the Russian ethnic group was greatly influenced by the natural and climatic features of the country: the virtual absence of mountain ranges, the presence of a large number of forests and swamps, harsh winters, etc. The intensity of agricultural work, especially the need to manage the harvest on time and without losses, contributed to the formation of the Russian national character, the ability to withstand extreme stress, which turned out to be life-saving and necessary during periods of enemy invasions, famine, and serious social upheavals. Periodically repeated attacks on the external borders of the country strongly encouraged the Russian population to fight for liberation and unity. Under these conditions, the state played an exceptional role in the formation and strengthening of the Great Russian nationality, and then the Russian nation.

In the absence of summary statistical data, up to the 17th century, according to various estimates, in the Russian state in the middle of the 15th century. there were 6 million people in the first half of the 16th century. 6.5 - 14.5, at the end of the 16th century. 7 - 14, and in the 17th century. 10.5 - 12 million people.

In the 18th century The demographic state of the Russian state and the Russian people is presented in the following form. In 1719, the entire population of Russia was 15,738 million people, including Russians - 11,128 million. In 1795, out of a population of 41,175 million, Russians numbered 19,619 million people, or 49% of the total population. The given data does not take into account the Russian population living in the Baltic states, Belarusian and Ukrainian provinces, in the area of ​​the Cossack troops (Don and Ural).

After Estland and Livonia, and later Courland, became part of the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Nystad (1721), at the beginning of the 19th century. Finland and Bessarabia, and in the second half of the century in Central Asia and the Far East, Russians began to populate these regions. Thus, the migration movements of the Russian people in the 19th - early 20th centuries. did not stop, new centers of Russian settlement were formed. As a result of these movements, the Russian population in the Central Industrial and Northern regions of the European part of the country grew more slowly than in the southern populated regions.

According to the 1897 census, the entire population of the country numbered 125.6 million people, of which Russians made up 43.4% of its composition (55.7 million people), most of them were in the European part of the country.

By 1990, the number of Russian ethnic groups reached 145 million (actually in Russia - almost 120 million people), or 82.6% of the total population. 49.7% of Russians inhabit the center of the European part of Russia, the north-west, the Volga-Vyatka region and the Volga region; in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East - 23.9%. In the near abroad, the majority of Russians are in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus.

Russian blood in global politics

Recently, the “Russian theme” has become very relevant, actively used in the political sphere. The press and television are full of speeches on this topic, usually muddy and contradictory. Some say that the Russian people do not exist at all, who consider only Orthodox Christians to be Russians, who include in this concept everyone who speaks Russian, etc. Meanwhile, science has already given absolutely definite answer to this question.

The scientific data below is a terrible secret. Formally, this data is not classified, since it was obtained by American scientists outside the scope of defense research, and even published here and there, but organized around it CONSPIRACY silence is unprecedented. The atomic project at its initial stage cannot even be compared, then some things still leaked into the press, and in this case, nothing at all.

What is this terrible secret, the mention of which is a worldwide taboo?

This the mystery of the origin and historical path of the Russian people.

Why information is hidden, more on that later. First, briefly about the essence of the discovery of American geneticists. There are 46 chromosomes in human DNA, half of which are inherited from the father and half from the mother. Of the 23 chromosomes received from the father, only one - the male Y chromosome - contains a set of nucleotides that is passed on from generation to generation without any changes for thousands of years. Geneticists call this set haplogroup. Every man living today has in his DNA exactly the same haplogroup as his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, and so on for many generations.

Our ancestors migrated from the ethnic home not only to the east, to the Urals, and to the south, to India and Iran, but also to the west, to where European countries are now located. In the western direction, geneticists have complete statistics: in Poland, the owners of the Russian (Aryan) haplogroup R1a1 make up 57% male population, in Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic and Slovakia – 40% , in Germany, Norway and Sweden – 18% , In Bulgaria - 12% , and in England the least - 3% .

Unfortunately, there is no ethnogenetic information on the European patrimonial aristocracy yet, and therefore it is impossible to determine whether the share of ethnic Russians is evenly distributed across all social strata of the population or, as in India and, presumably, Iran, the Aryans made up the nobility in the lands where they came . The only reliable evidence in favor of the latter version was a by-product of a genetic examination to establish the authenticity of the remains of the family of Nicholas II. The Y chromosomes of the king and heir Alexei turned out to be identical to samples taken from their relatives from the English royal family. This means that at least one royal house of Europe, namely the house of the Germans Hohenzollern, of which the English Windsors are a branch, has Aryan roots.

However, Western Europeans (haplogroup R1b) in any case are our closest relatives, oddly enough, much closer than the Northern Slavs (haplogroup N) and southern Slavs (haplogroup I1b). Our common ancestor with Western Europeans lived about 13 thousand years ago, at the end of the Ice Age, five thousand years before gathering began to develop into crop farming, and hunting into cattle breeding. That is, in the very gray Stone Age antiquity. And the Slavs are even further from us in blood.

The settlement of Russian-Aryans to the east, south and west (there was simply nowhere to go further to the north, and so, according to the Indian Vedas, before coming to India they lived near the Arctic Circle) became a biological prerequisite for the formation of a special language group, Indo-European. These are almost all European languages, some languages ​​of modern Iran and India and, of course, the Russian language and ancient Sanskrit, which are closest to each other for the obvious reason - in time (Sanskrit) and in space (Russian language) they stand next to the original source, the Aryan proto-language , from which all other Indo-European languages ​​grew.

The above are irrefutable natural scientific facts, moreover, obtained by independent American scientists. Disputing them is the same as disagreeing with the results of a blood test in a clinic. They are not disputed. They are simply hushed up. They are hushed up unanimously and stubbornly, they are hushed up, one might say, completely. And there are reasons for this.

The first such reason is quite trivial and boils down to scientific false solidarity. Too many theories, concepts and scientific reputations will have to be refuted if they are revised in the light of the latest discoveries of ethnogenetics.

For example, we will have to rethink everything that is known about the Tatar-Mongol invasion of Rus'. The armed conquest of peoples and lands was always and everywhere accompanied at that time by the mass rape of local women. Traces in the form of Mongolian and Turkic haplogroups should have remained in the blood of the male part of the Russian population. But they are not there! Solid R1a1 and nothing more, the purity of the blood is amazing. This means that the Horde that came to Rus' was not at all what is commonly thought of it; if the Mongols were present there, it was in statistically insignificant numbers, and who was called “Tatars” is generally unclear. Well, which scientist would refute scientific principles supported by mountains of literature and great authorities?!

No one wants to spoil relationships with colleagues and be branded an extremist by destroying established myths. This happens all the time in an academic environment - if the facts don't match the theory, so much the worse for the facts.

The second reason, incomparably more significant, belongs to the sphere of geopolitics. The history of human civilization appears in a new and completely unexpected light, and this cannot but have serious political consequences.

Throughout modern history, the pillars of European scientific and political thought proceeded from the idea of ​​Russians as barbarians who had recently climbed down from the trees, backward by nature and incapable of creative work. And suddenly it turns out that Russians are those same arias, which had a decisive influence on the formation of great civilizations in India, Iran and Europe itself. What exactly Europeans owe Russians to so many in their prosperous lives, starting with the languages ​​they speak. It is no coincidence that in recent history, a third of the most important discoveries and inventions belong to ethnic Russians in Russia itself and abroad. It is no coincidence that the Russian people were able to repel the invasions of the united forces of continental Europe led by Napoleon and then Hitler. And so on.

It is no coincidence that behind all this there is a great historical tradition, thoroughly forgotten over many centuries, but remaining in the collective subconscious of the Russian people and manifesting itself whenever the nation faces new challenges. Manifesting itself with iron inevitability due to the fact that it grew on a material, biological basis in the form Russian blood, which remains unchanged for four and a half millennia.

Western politicians and ideologists have a lot to think about in order to make their policy towards Russia more adequate in the light of the historical circumstances discovered by geneticists. But they don’t want to think or change anything, hence the conspiracy of silence around the Russian-Aryan theme. However, the Lord is with them and with their ostrich politics. What is much more important for us is that ethnogenetics brings a lot of new things to the Russian situation itself.

In this regard, the main thing lies in the very statement of the existence of the Russian people, as a biologically integral and genetically homogeneous entity. The main thesis of the Russophobic propaganda of the Bolsheviks and current liberals is precisely the denial of this fact. The scientific community is dominated by the idea formulated Lev Gumilev in his theory of ethnogenesis: “from a mixture of Alans, Ugrians, Slavs and Turks, the Great Russian people developed”. “National Leader” repeats the common saying “scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar.” And so on.

Why do the enemies of the Russian nation need this?

The answer is obvious. If the Russian people as such do not exist, but some kind of amorphous “mixture” exists, then anyone can control this “mixture” - be it Germans, be it African pygmies, or even Martians. The denial of the biological existence of the Russian people is ideological justification for the dominance of the non-Russian “elite” in Russia, formerly Soviet, now liberal.

But then the Americans with their genetics intervene, and it turns out that there is no “mixture”, that the Russian people have existed unchanged for four and a half thousand years, that Alans and Turks and many others also live in Russia, but these are separate, distinctive peoples and etc. And the question immediately arises: why then are Russia not ruled by Russians for almost a century? Illogical and wrong Russians should be ruled by Russians.

The Czech Jan Hus, a professor at the University of Prague, argued in a similar way six hundred years ago: “...Czechs in the Kingdom of Bohemia, by law and by the dictates of nature, should be first in positions, just like the French in France and the Germans in their lands”. This statement of his was considered politically incorrect, intolerant, inciting ethnic hatred, and the professor was burned at the stake.

Now morals have softened, professors are not burned, but so that people are not tempted to succumb to Hussite logic, in Russia non-Russian authorities simply “cancelled” the Russian people– mixture, they say. And everything would have been fine, but the Americans jumped out from somewhere with their analyzes and ruined the whole thing. There is nothing to cover them with, all that remains is to hush up the scientific results, which is done to the hoarse sounds of an old and hackneyed Russophobic propaganda record.

A highly developed civilization 6000 years ago! Falsification of Russian history

More details and a variety of information about events taking place in Russia, Ukraine and other countries of our beautiful planet can be obtained at Internet Conferences, constantly held on the website “Keys of Knowledge”. All Conferences are open and completely free. We invite everyone who wakes up and is interested...

The Russian ethnos arose on the basis of the Eastern Slavs. The very question of the origin of the Slavs is complex, there is a lot of unknowns. As sources, it is necessary to compare messages from Russian chronicles, chronicles of Roman, Byzantine, oriental authors, archaeological data, languages, and place names. Scientists are still arguing where the ancestral home of the Slavs was, when and how they settled across the East European Plain. There are many theories. Slavic peoples speak Indo-European languages. The time of separation of the Slavs (their ancestors) from the Indo-European linguistic and ethnic community dates back to the 2nd - 1st millennium before the birth of Christ, that is, 3 - 4 thousand years ago, these tribes settled throughout Europe, their language began to stand out. These were settled agricultural tribes, conditionally Let's call them “peoples of the forest.” In addition to the Slavs, other peoples lived in Eastern Europe - Finnish-speaking tribes (the ancestors of the Mordvins, Mari, Udmurts, etc.). The Slavs were engaged in settled agriculture, hunting, forest beekeeping, fishing, and livestock raising. For the first time in written sources, Roman historians of the 1st centuries Pliny, Tacitus, Ptaligeus wrote about them. They called the Slavs Wends or Ants. They wrote that they lived in the basins of the Vistula River and along the shores of the Venedian Bay (Baltic Sea). The Slavs raided the outskirts of the Roman Empire (Byzantium). South of the forest there was a steppe zone. The steppe strip of Eastern Europe has been a place of nomadic pastoral tribes for centuries. More militant, mobile. For centuries they slowly moved across the steppes of Eurasia from east to west. Let's call them "Peoples of the Steppe". This was the era of the Great Migration of Peoples (VIII BC - VII AD). The peoples of the forest and steppe were in contact (military skirmishes, raids, political alliances, trade, long-term proximity, marriages), i.e. these peoples influenced each other. The peoples of the steppe also participated in the ethnogenesis of the Slavs. By the 8th century, the Slavs were divided into southern, western and eastern, but the common culture and similarity of languages ​​were still preserved (Southern Slavs are the ancestors of Serbs, Croats, Butars, Western Slavs - Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Eastern - Ukrainians , Russians, Belarusians) The Eastern Slavs gradually formed a new ethnic community, which was conventionally called the Old Russian nationality. These were Slavic tribal unions, but this is not yet a Russian ethnic group. Kievan Rus was dominated by pagans, even after the adoption of Christianity in 988. Only by the 13th century did Orthodox Christianity become the basis of the spiritual life of the majority of the population. It was Orthodoxy that became the unifying Orthodox idea and on this basis in the 14th – 15th centuries the Russian ethnos arose. At the same time, Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnic groups were formed on the territory of Ukraine and Belarus.

Ethnonym "Russians"

1. In the Carpathian region (Ukraine) there is a river Ros. The chronicler Nestor believed that the ethnonym “Russians” came from the name of the river.

2. Lev Gumilyov put forward a theory according to which the “Russians” descended from the Scythian tribe - the Rassovans.

3. From the Old Scandinavian language the word “Rus” is translated as “oarsman”, the leader of which founded the Old Russian state.