A history of Russia

the Dnieper. Not surprisingly, once the Kievan state emerged, its culture developed more richly and rapidly than that of its northern neighbor; whether we consider written literature and written law or coin stamping, we have to register their appearance in Kievan Russia a considerable time before their arrival in Scandinavian

Detailed investigations of Scandinavian elements in Russian culture serve to emphasize their relative insignificance. Norman words in the Russian language, formerly supposed to be numerous, number actually only six or seven. Old Russian terms pertaining to navigation were often Greek, those dealing with trade, Oriental or native Slavic, but not Scandinavian. Written literature in Kiev preceded written literature in Scandinavia, and it experienced clear Byzantine and Bulgarian rather than Nordic influences; under these circumstances, persistent efforts to link it to the Scandinavian epic fail to carry conviction. Claims of Norman contributions to Russian law have suffered a fiasco: while at one time scholars believed in the Scandinavian foundation of Russian jurisprudence, it has in fact proved impossible to trace elements of Kievan law back to Norman prototypes. Similarly, there is no sound evidence for Norman influence on Kievan paganism: Perun, the god of thunder and the chief deity of the East Slavic pantheon, far from being a copy of Thor, was described as the supreme divinity of the Antes by Procopius in the sixth century; a linguistic analysis of the names of East Slavic gods reveals a variety of cultural connections, but none of them with Scandinavia. Other assertions of Norman cultural influences, for instance, on the organization of the Kievan court or on Russian dress, tend to be vague and inconclusive, especially when compared to the massive impact of Byzantium and the tangible effects of some Oriental cultures on Russia.

But, while the importance of Scandinavian culture for Russian culture no longer represents a major historical issue, the role of the Normans in the establishment of the Kievan state itself remains highly controversial. The question of the origin of the Kievan state is very closely connected with a group, tribe, or people known as the Rus, and it is also from the Rus that we derive the later name of the Russians. Almost everything connected with the Rus has become a subject of major controversy in Russian historiography. Under the year a.D. 862 the Primary Chronicle tells briefly about the arrival of the Rus following an invitation from the quarreling Slavic tribes of the Sloveni and the Krivichi and some Finnish tribes:

They accordingly went overseas to the Varangian Russes: these particular Varangians were known as Russes, just as some are called Swedes, and others Normans, Angles, and Goths, for they were thus named. The Chuds, the Slavs and the Krivichians then said to the people of Rus, 'Our whole land is great and rich, but there is no order in it. Come to rule and reign over us!' They thus selected three brothers, with their kinsfolk, who took with them all the Russes and migrated. The oldest, Rurik, located himself in Novgorod; the second, Sineus, in Byeloozero; and the third, Truvor, in Izborsk. On account of these Varangians, the district of Novgorod became known as the land of the Rus. The present inhabitants

of Novgorod are descended from the Varangian race, but aforetime they were Slavs.*

The proponents of the Norman theory accepted the Chronicle verbatim, with the understanding that the Rus were a Scandinavian tribe or group, and proceeded to identify the Rus- Ros-Rhos of other sources with the Scandinavians. However, before long grave complications arose. A group called Rus could not be found in Scandinavia itself and were utterly unknown in the West. Although the Chronicle referred to Novgorod, Rus became identified with the Kievan state, and the very name came to designate the southern Russian state as distinct from the north, Novgorod included. Still more important was the discovery that the Rus had been known to some Byzantine and Oriental writers before a.D. 862 and was evidently located in southern Russia. Finally, the Primary Chronicle itself came to be suspected and underwent a searching criticism.

As one of their first tasks, the supporters of the Norman view set out to find the Scandinavian origin of the name Rus. Their search, from the time of Schlozer to the present, has had mixed success at best. A number of derivations had to be abandoned. The deduction of Rus from the Finnish word for the Swedes, Ruotsi, developed by Thomsen and upheld by Stender- Petersen and others, seems linguistically acceptable, but it has been criticized as extremely complicated and unlikely on historical grounds.

Because they considered the Rus a Scandinavian group, the proponents of the Norman theory proceeded to interpret all references to the Rus in Norman terms. Under the year a.D. 839 a Western source, The Bertinian Annals, tells about the Rus ambassadors who came to Ingelheim through Constantinople and who were men of Khakan-Rus, but who turned out to be Swedes. Some scholars even concluded that the ambassadors must have come all the way from Sweden, and they read khakan to mean Haakon. But the Russian khakanate was probably located in southern Russia, and the title of khakan suggests Khazar rather than Norman influence. The early date made certain other scholars advance the hypothetical arrival of the Scandinavian Rus into Russia from a.D. 862 to 'approximately a.D. 840.' A slight change in the original chronology also enabled these specialists to regard as Scandinavian the Rus who staged an attack on Constantinople in a.D. 860 and who were described on that occasion by Patriarch Photius.

In the tenth century Bishop Liutprand of Cremona referred to the Rusios in his description of the neighbors of the Byzantine Empire. A controversy

* I am using the standard English translation of the Primary Chronicle by Professor S. Cross (The Russian Primary Chronicle, Laurentian Text. Cambridge, Mass., 1930), although I am not entirely satisfied with it either in general or in this particular instance.

still continues as to whether Liutprand described his Rusios as Normans or merely as a northern people. Also in the tenth century the Byzantine emperor and scholar Constantine Porphyrogenitus gave the names of seven Dnieper rapids 'in Slavic' and 'in Russian.' The 'Russian' names, or at least most of them, can best be explained from Scandinavian languages. This evidence of 'the language of the Rus' is rather baffling: there is no other mention of any Scandinavian tongue of the Rus; on the contrary, the Chronicle itself states that the Slavic and the Russian languages are one. The supporters of the Norman theory were quick to point to the Scandinavian names of the first Russian princes and of many of their followers listed in the treaties between Kievan Russia and Byzantium. Their opponents challenged their derivation of some of the names and stressed the fact that the treaties were written in Greek and in Slavic and that the Rus swore by Slavic gods.

Certain Arabic authors also mention and sometimes discuss and describe the Rus, but their statements have also been variously interpreted by different scholars. In general the Rus of the Arabic writers are a numerous people rather than a viking detachment, 'a tribe of the Slavs' according to Ibn-Khurdadhbih. The Rus had many towns, and its ruler bore the title of khakan. True, the Rus are often contrasted with the Slavs. The contrast, however, may refer simply to the difference between the Kievan Slavs and other Slavs to the north. Some of the customs of the Rus, described in Arabic sources, seem to be definitely Slavic rather than Norman: such are the posthumous marriage of bachelors and the suicide of wives following the death of their husbands. The Rus known to the Arabs lived most probably somewhere in southern Russia. Although Arabic writers refer primarily to the ninth century, the widespread and well-established relations of the Rus with the East at that time suggest an acquaintance of long standing.

Other evidence, it has been argued, also points to an early existence of the Rus in southern Russia. To mention only some of the disputed issues, the Rus, reportedly, attacked Surozh in the Crimea earlyin the ninth century and Amastris on the southern shore of the Black Sea between A.D. 820 and 842. Vernadsky derives the name of Rus from the Alanic tribe of the Roxo-lans. Other scholars have turned to topographic terms, ranging from the ancient word for Volga, Rha, to Slavic names for different rivers. An ingenious compromise hypothesis postulates both a Scandinavian and a southern derivation of Rus-Ros and the merger of the two.

The proponents of the Norman view have reacted in a number of ways to assertions of the antiquity of the Rus and their intrinsic connection with southern Russia. Sometimes they denied or challenged the evidence. Vasiliev, for instance, refused to recognize the early attacks of the Rus on Surozh and Amastris. The first he classified as apocryphal, the second as referring in fact to the well-known campaign of Igor in a.d. 941. Other

specialists, in order to account for all the events at the dawn of Russian history and to connect them with the Scandinavian north, have postulated more than one separate Scandinavian Rus, bringing, rather arbitrarily, some of