Mongol khanates, Muscovy, and the Ottomans, the Nogai had contradictory foreign policies that complicated their relations with other states in the region. However, since they wielded great military power, good diplomatic relations with the Nogai were sought after by the rival powers in the area. Aside from being occasional allies of the Muscovites, they were also key suppliers of horses, forwarding up to fifty thousand per delivery. In exchange, the Muscovites provided the No-gai with weapons, grain, textiles, and other goods that nomadic economies could not produce themselves. From the 1550s, the Nogai also acted as Muscovy’s intermediaries in relations with Central Asia. See also: ASTRAKHAN, KHANATE OF; CATHERINE II; GOLDEN HORDE; KALMYKS; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; RUSSO-TURKISH WARS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Golden, Peter B. (1992). An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag. Lantzeff, George A., and Pierce, Richard A. (1973). Eastward to Empire: Exploration and Conquest on the Russian Open Frontier to 1750. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
The term nomenklatura was often used in the USSR throughout the Stalin and post-Stalin periods to designate members of Soviet officialdom. The term was not generally known in the West until the 1960s. Members of the nomenklatura included Communist Party officials (particularly Party secretaries at any level of the Party organization), government officials, and senior officers in the Soviet armed forces who were Party members. Almost all members were, in fact, Communist Party members. At a minimum, the Party controlled access to nomenklatura jobs. Most often the term was used to describe full-time professional Party officials, also known as apparatchiki, since mere rank-and-file Party members did not hold important executive posts.
No definite tally of the number of the nomenklatura was ever published officially. But Russian and Western scholars generally agree that their numbers exceeded 500,000. Yet the entire membership of the Communist Party amounted on average to only about 7 percent of the Soviet population.
Wherever they served throughout the multinational Soviet Union, most of the nomenklatura were Russians, Ukrainians, or Belorussians. Almost always, native nomenklatura members posted in any of the non-Slavic Republics among the fifteen constituent republics of the USSR were supervised ultimately by ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, or Be-lorussians. See also: COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE SOVIET UNION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Weeks, Albert L., ed. (1991). Soviet Nomenklatura: A Comprehensive Roster of Soviet Civilian and Military Officials, 3rd ed. Washington, DC: Washington Institute Press. Voslensky, Michael. (1984). Nomenklatura: The Soviet Ruling Class, tr. Eric Mosbacher. New York: Dou-bleday.
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The Normanist Controversy is the most tendentious issue in early Russian history. It centers on the degree of influence Scandinavians had on the foundation of Kievan Rus and early Rus law, government, language, paganism, and trade. Normanist scholars argue for varying degrees of Scandinavian influence, and their opponents are anti- Normanists.
The controversy’s origins date to the mid-eighteenth century, when historians, many of ethnic German background, began to publish the medieval Russian sources. It initially focused on the ethnic attribution of the Rus tribe (Greek Ros, Arabic ar-Rus), the name for Rurik and his clan, who were allegedly invited by a confederation of Slavic and Finnic tribes to rule over them in 862. The first Normanist scholars (Bayer, M?ller, Schl?tzer) argued that the Rus were a tribe deriving their name either from their homeland, Roslagen in central Sweden, or from the Finnic word for Swedes, Ruotsi. Further, they noted the Norse personal names in the 911 and 940 treaties between the Rus and Byzantium, Constantine Porphyrogenitus’s listing of both Slavic and Norse names for the Dnieper cataracts, and more than fifty Norse words in the Russian language. Norse origins were also ascribed to early Rus law and the pagan Slavic pantheon. Mikhail Lomonosov and other early anti-Normanists argued that the Rus were Slavs who were named after a right-bank tributary of the Dnieper, the Ros River.
Nineteenth-century debates were shaped by German and Russian nationalism and the publication of more sources on the Rus, such as the medieval Arab and Persian geographical accounts (Ibn Khurdadbheh, Ibn Rusta, Ibn Fadlan), which mention a people called the ar-Rus who traded along the Russian river systems. The ar-Rus differed from other fair-skinned peoples of the north, including the Slavs (Saqalib). Although this theory is compelling, the medieval Islamic authors appeared to use ar-Rus as an occupational descriptive rather than an ethnic indicator, since they had not been to Rus themselves and could therefore not distinguish a Scandinavian from other peoples of the north. Nineteenth-century research also showed no more than sixteen Norse words in Russian, the independent development of Rus law and Scandinavian law, and a common Indo-European origin of both the Scandinavian and Slavic gods and languages. Having exhausted the written texts, the Nor-manist and anti- Normanist schools stood firmly entrenched in the early twentieth century. The new scientific archaeology and innovations in the methodology of historical numismatics, however, revealed fresh source material, and henceforth the Normanist Controversy became an archaeological and numismatic question. In 1914, Swedish archaeologist T. J. Arne argued for a mass Viking-age Scandinavian colonization of Eastern Europe. Arne’s theories remained largely unchallenged until the 1940s, when anti-Normanism, in part a reaction to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, was proclaimed official Soviet state dogma. Postwar USSR witnessed a golden age for Soviet archaeology, with the state sponsorship of thousands of archaeological excavations. Key to the anti-Normanist position were the excavations at Gnez-dovo and Staraya Ladoga, near Smolensk and Novgorod respectively. Normanists considered both to be Scandinavian settlements, but Soviet archaeologists (Artsikhovsky, Avdusin, Ravdonikas) claimed minimal evidence for Scandinavian residence at these sites. Soviet scholars did not deny the passage of Scandinavians through Russia for purposes of international trade between northern Europe and the Islamic caliphate; they simply rejected that a mass Scandinavian colonization took place or that the colonists founded the Kievan state.
The 1970s onward has witnessed a convergence between the extremes of the Normanist and anti-Normanist positions. More recent excavations at sites with Scandinavian material and long-distance trade goods (Islamic silver dirhams, Eastern beads), indicate that Scandinavians maintained an active exchange network in the late eighth and ninth centuries with the Near East and, in the tenth century, mainly with Central Asia. Based on the current state of research, therefore, it is possible to reconstruct the following chronology of Scandinavian activity in eastern Europe. From the 760s, Scandinavians lived part of the year at Staraya Ladoga on the lower Volkhov River, where goods were reloaded from large seagoing vessels to smaller craft more appropriate for the journey along eastern Europe’s often-treacherous rivers. By the early ninth century, when trade with the Near East was fully underway, other settlements formed to the south of Ladoga along the entire Volkhov River, which serviced the north-south trade. In the 860s, Rurikovo gorodishche, the Volkhov’s largest settlement, with strong Scandinavian and West Slavic elements and precursor to Novgorod, was founded.
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To the west, a second albeit less archaeologically discernible trade route with a few Scandinavian finds begins to the south of Lake Peipus at Izborsk, Kamno, and Pskov, possibly from the beginning of the ninth century. Both routes connect to the south and east, to the watersheds of the Western Dvina, Dnieper, and Volga rivers.
Archaeological and numismatic evidence implies that the 860s and 870s were a turbulent period: the burning down of Staraya Ladoga and Pskov, a smaller fire at Rurikovo gorodishche, and a marked increase in the deposition of coin hoards, suggesting times of danger. At the same time, the written sources speak of the invitation to Rurik and the unsuccessful Viking attack on Constantinople in 860. Finally, in the 880s and 890s there occurred a major decline in the import of silver and beads from the Near East. However, in around 900 new routes were opened with Central Asia, which provided an unprecedented new source of silver and other goods. Additionally, at this time Staraya Ladoga and Rurikovo underwent expansion, Scandinavian-style graves appeared to the southeast of Lake Ladoga, and the Lake Peipus trade was concentrated at a reconstructed Pskov.
