as by some non-Indo-Europeans, notably by different Turkic tribes - some of which have already been mentioned - the Mongols, and Finno-Ugrian elements.
Languages are organically and intrinsically related within the same subfamily and also within the same family. By contrast, no fundamental connection, as distinct from chance borrowing, has been firmly established between languages in different families, for example, the Indo-European and the Ural-Altaic. In fact, there is even an opinion that speech originated on our planet in a number of separate places, division thus being the rule in the linguistic world from the very beginning. To explain the relatedness of the languages within a family and the much closer relationship of the languages of the same subfamily, scholars have postulated an original language and homeland for each family - such as for all Indo-European peoples whence they spread across Europe and parts of Asia -and later languages and homelands for different linguistic subfamilies before further separation and differentiation. Within the framework of this theory, the Slavs have usually been assigned a common homeland in the general area of the valley of the Vistula and the northern slopes of the Carpathians. Their split has been dated, by Shakhmatov and others, in the sixth century a.D., and the settlement by the East Slavs of the great plain of European Russia in the seventh, the eighth, and the ninth. In reconstructing Slavic migrations, allowance has frequently been made for the fact that the East Slavic languages are closer to the South Slavic than those of either of these branches to the West Slavic ones. It should be emphasized that in relying on original languages and their homelands one is dealing with languages, not races. The categories listed above are all linguistic, not racial, and do not necessarily correspond to any physical traits. Besides, intermarriage, conquest, imitation, as well as some other factors, have repeatedly changed the number and composition of those speaking a given language. Today, for instance, English is the native tongue of African-Americans as well as of Yorkshiremen. An entire people can lose a language and adopt a new one. Invaders have often been absorbed by the indigenous population, as in the case of the Turkic Bulgars in the Balkans. Other invaders have been able to overwhelm and incorporate native peoples. Thus some historians explain the Germanic expansion in eastern Europe by a Germanization, not an extermination, of different Slavic and Lithuanian tribes. There are also such puzzling cases as the language of the Lapps in the far north of Scandinavia and Russia: it is a Finno-Ugrian tongue, but, in the opinion of certain specialists, it appears to be superimposed on a radically different linguistic structure.
Recent scholarship has subjected the theory of original languages and homelands to a searching criticism. At present few specialists speak with any confidence about the historical homeland of the Indo-Europeans, and some reject it even as a theoretical concept. More important for students of
Russian history, the Slavic homeland has also been thoroughly questioned. The revaluation has been largely instigated by discoveries of the presence of the Slavs at a much earlier time and over a much larger area in Russia than had been traditionally supposed. To meet new evidence, some scholars have redefined the original Slavic homeland to include parts of Russia. Others have postulated an earlier dispersal of the Slavs, some suggesting that it proceeded in several waves to explain both their ancient presence on the Russian plain and their later migration thither. Still others have given up the Slavic homeland altogether. While recent work concerning Slavic prehistory has produced many new facts, it has lacked a convincing general theory to replace that which has been found wanting.
The first extant written references to the Slavs belong to the classical writers early in our era, including Pliny the Elder and Tacitus. Important later accounts include those of the sixth century produced by the Byzantine historian Procopius and the Gothic Jordanes. The terms most frequently used to designate the Slavs were 'Venedi' and 'Antes,' with the latter coming to mean the East Slavs - although 'Antes' has also been given other interpretations, such as pre-Slavic Iranian inhabitants of southern Russia or Goths. Soviet archaeologists insist that Slavic settlements in parts of Russia, notably in the Don area, date at least from the middle of the first millennium b.c. It is now assumed by some historians that the Slavs composed a significant part, perhaps the bulk, of the population of southern and central Russia from the time of the Scythians. For instance, they may be hidden under various designations used by Herodotus, such as 'Scythian ploughmen.' It is known that the East Slavs fought against the Goths, were swept westward with the Huns, and were conquered by the Avars; certain East Slavic tribes were paying tribute to the Khazars at the dawn of Kievan history. At that time, according to our main written source, the Kievan
By the ninth century A.D. East Slavic economy, society, and culture had already experienced a considerable development. Agriculture was well and widely established among the East Slavs. Other important occupations included fishing, hunting, apiculture, cattle-raising, weaving, and pottery-making, as well as other arts and crafts, such as carpentry. The East Slavs had known the use of iron for centuries. They had also been engaging in varied and far-flung commerce. They possessed a remarkable number of towns; even Tikhomirov's count of them, some 238, is not complete.
Certain of these towns, such as Novgorod, Smolensk, and Kiev, a town belonging to the tribe of the Poliane, were to have long and important histories. Very little is known about the political organization of the East Slavs. There exist, however, a few scattered references to the rulers of the Antes and of some of the component tribes: for example, Jordanes's mention of Bozh, a prince of the Antes at the time of the Gothic wars; and the statement of Masudi, an Arabian writer, concerning Madzhak, apparently a prince of the East Slavic tribe of the Duleby in the Avar period.
Part II: KIEVAN RUSSIA
I I I
They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Russes.
The problem of the origin of the first Russian state, that of Kiev, is exceedingly complex and controversial. No other chapter of Russian history presents the same number and variety of difficulties. Yet the modern student of the subject, although he can by no means produce all the answers, should at least be able to avoid the cruder mistakes and oversimplifications of the past.
The first comprehensive, scholarly effort to explain the appearance of the Kievan state was made in the eighteenth century in terms of the so-called Norman theory. As formulated by Bayer, Schlozer, and others, this view stressed the role of the vikings from Scandinavia - that is, Norsemen, or, to follow the established usage in Russian historiography, Normans - in giving Russia government, cohesion, and, in large part, even culture. The Norman period of Russian history was thus postulated as the foundation for its subsequent evolution. In the course of over two hundred years the Norman theory has been developed, modified, and changed by many prominent scholars. Other specialists, however, opposed it virtually from the very beginning, offering instead a dazzling variety of possibilities. More recently Soviet historians turned violently against it, and it remained largely out of bounds for Soviet scholarship until 1985 and
In estimating the value of the Norman theory it is important to appreciate its drastic limitations in the field of culture. The original assertion of the Norman influence on Russia was made before the early history of southern Russia, outlined in the preceding chapter, had been discovered. With our present knowledge of that history there is no need to bring in the Norsemen to account for Kievan society and culture. What is more, Scandinavia itself, located in the far north, lay at that time much farther from cultural centers and crosscurrents than did the valley of
