Early Russian history

The Rus were Vikings but they ruled over a Slav population.The word Slaves comes from Slav people because they were constanty stolen by the Khazars who sold them to the middle east as Slaves.

Originally posted by BigL The Rus were Vikings but they ruled over a Slav population.The word Slaves comes from Slav people because they were constanty stolen by the Khazars who sold them to the middle east as Slaves.

Which is probably the worst of the available derivatives of the etho-term Slavs. Not to mention that Slave is only on modern English, on Bulgarian f.e. "slave" is "rob". The two main theories for the original meaning of the word Slavs are these:

1. Deriving from the Slavic word "slava", meaning "glory". I.e. "Slaviani" should mean, according to this, glorious people.

2. IMHO, more plausible one - Deriving from the Slavic word "slovo", meaning "word, speech", as opposed to "niemtsi" (used even today for Germans), meaning "mute people". Something like the Greeks - "We can speak a language, which could be understood, the barbaroi are just saying nonsense". So, Sloveni should then be "people of speech".

I would say that Novgorod was powerful since it's creation. It occasionalyl controlled the entire northern areas, up to Karelia and much farther north than Laadoga.

Yah, this is an interesting topic, in fact a master's dissertation was written by a fellow student of mine at the University evaluating the pro- and anti-normanist theories concerning the Rus impact on Russian history. The pro-normanists seek to establish that the Viking invasions were fundamental to the creation of major political entities in the region (mainly Novgorod, Kiev and Smolensk as far as I know), while the anti-normanists rather focus on the Slavic contribution. Naturally, it is fundamental in this debate to what extent, and how early, the Rus were assmilited into Slavic culture.

I think that the situation resembles the one in Normandy, for even though the areas are greatly different in size the developments seem the same. A Viking elite achieves control of a foreign land, and instead of instituting apartheid they handle the new conquest by blending with the local culture. As the generations pass they adopt the names of the region and marry native women, gradually watering out their own distinctive traits. Of course, immigration from Scandinavia didn't stop with the initial wave, but it was not significant enough for the elite to remain culturally seperate. This, I'd expect, would've been especially true for Kiev, somewhat less for Novgorod where interaction with Scandinavia was greater.

Another essential topic is the relationship with Byzantium, which from the outset was characterized by hostility, the Rus conducting savage raids in the Aegean and twice attempting to take Constantinople without luck (read: Greek fire). The Battle of Arcadiopolis in 970 was decisive in favour of the Byzantines, and the Rus became more inclined towards a peaceful co-existence. During the reign of Vladimir I of Kiev, the son of the Svyatoslav I who waged war on Byzantium, the Rus were officially christened and a marriage alliance was sealed with the union of one of the Emperor's daughters and Vladimir himself (who, despite being Christian, still kept a large harem, numbering about 800 women according to one source).

Returning to the former topic, it should be noted that when Vladimir only inherited half his father's realm, the rest being given to Svyatoslav's illegitimate son Yaropolk, he visited some of his kinsmen in Scandinavia to gather men, with whom he claimed the rest of his heritage by force.    
    
    

Edited by Reginmund - 25-Aug-2006 at 09:12

"So are modern russians a hybrid of viking and slavs?"-Infact they are a hybrid of many more: Finno-Ugrian, Turkic, Germanic and Iranian-speaking tribes. The slavs and scandinavians are just the most important components.
It's the same as to ask whether the population of UK are just Anglo-Saxons and Normans.

Slavs and Scandinavians. The discussion seems to be how Ryurik came to Rus and established rule there. I don't think he took so many thousands of Scandinavians with him to really have an affect on the Russian ethnicity and looks. The Russians numbered even then more than the Scandinavians. How large of an impact could they have made, as the Finns were in between the two nations aswell?

That was about modern Russians. There was no Empire in middle ages indeed. Just huge territorн of several Byzantine Empires in size  But starting from Ivan IV Rus starts to add territories not inhabited with slavs.

The bloody problem is that I have latin, cyryllic and scandinavian in my comp. I mix them sometimes  As for the topic, official Russian historiography accepts that Varjags (as they are called in Russia) were not high in number and were sort of war aristocracy in Novgorod and Kiev and later in other cities. They are accepted to be sort of Vikings but some dudes consider them as slavs from the region of present eastern Germany or Poland as far as I remember. Just mention this fact to show that there are different opinions on the question. As I remember one of those dudes was Mikhailo Lomonosov, the guy whom one should believe   

They are believed to be invited by slavs.