What is the essence of the Norman theory? History and ethnology

Modern research on the origins of Rurik undermines the foundations of the Norman theory. The prince of Western Slavic origin arrived on a land where there was already a foundation and all the attributes of medieval statehood.

Announcement: German scientists read ancient Russian chronicles and retold them in the style of Western sarcasm.

In articles « » And « » we touched on the emergence "Norman theory". In this article we travel through the history of this issue. The Slavs called the peoples who lived in the West Normans (Murmans).

The "Norman theory" is a theory about the superiority of Western nations over the Slavs politically, economically and culturally. The theory arose in the second quarter of the 18th century on the initiative of German scientists who served in Russia at the court of the Empress Anna Ioannovna.

The reason was the attempts of the Germans to clarify the meaning of ancient Russian chronicles. They concluded that the Slavs were not capable of anything constructive. They said that only Prince Rurik, called from the West, created a state for the Slavs and established a clear political and economic system for them.

The “Norman theory” has a long life. Western scientists continue to propagate it in the 21st century. The point is that the Slavs are a backward, defective people, incapable of progress. Allegedly, without the help of the West, the Slavs cannot develop science, culture and democracy.

Of course, interaction with the West brings benefits. But the West needs us more than we need them. We have so many scientists and scientific discoveries, such a powerful, diverse culture. And the fact that Prince Rurik created a state in Rus' is a delusion of some scientists.

The supporters of the “Norman theory” are called "Westerners". Those who defend the honor of the Slavs are called "Slavophiles". Now we will look at the mistakes of Westerners and their “Norman theory”.

Firstly, about the origin of Rurik himself. According to the latest scientific information, Rurik was the son of Prince Godlib and the grandson of King Vitslav, from the Slavic tribes of the Vends (Vends) and Obodrites. Rurik had two younger brothers. The chronicle said that the princes were called from the Varangian lands. But Rurik Varangian can be called conditionally, not by nation, but by place of residence on the coast of the Baltic (Varangian) Sea. We conclude that the Varangians, Normans, or Germans had nothing to do with the formation of the state in Rus'.

Secondly, a tradition according to which foreigners sat on thrones in many countries of the world (England, Spain, France, China, etc.). The Slavs also invited a foreigner to rule. There's nothing special about it.

Third, The state system of the Slavs was already formed. United tribes, an apparatus of officials, armed forces, ancient laws, cities, crafts, everything already existed and developed. Rurik was called to stop disputes and bloody fights between tribes. He arrived in the state of the Slavs to establish a truce and prevent corruption.

Fourthly, allegations that Rurik taught the Slavs to create a state are unfounded. He came from his tribe, which lagged behind the lands of Northern Rus' in development. The Veneds and the Obodrites were at the stage military democracy with remnants of the primitive system, and in Rus' it had already begun early feudal monarchy. How could a person who lived during the disintegration of the tribal community teach Rus' the foundations of a feudal state? You can't teach something you've never seen before.

Here are some facts according to which the “Norman theory” can be considered untenable. This is a brief history of the problem.

At the end of every article on our site there is a question that is easy to answer. You can find out the correct answer to all questions on the site from me by correspondence. To be continued.

The history of Rus' in the pre-Christian period has many gaps. Modern researchers are trying to fill them out based on surviving documents. The earliest Russian chronicle dates back to the 12th century and is a narrative synthesized from its predecessors, which have sunk into oblivion, Greek chronicles and oral tales. The question of where Rus' began remains open to this day and has two main answers - Norman and Slavophile.

Early rulers of Rus' in foreign chronicles

The source of most historical information about the early Middle Ages is the chronicles of Byzantium and other states formed on the ruins of the Roman Empire. The birth of dynasties, wars and intrigues were described in vivid colors. The endless forests in the east were for a long time considered the limit of inhabited lands - until their inhabitants themselves began to visit their closest neighbors. For some time, contacts with the Rus were not the most pleasant for the Byzantines and were reflected in a series of agreements on conciliatory payments and trade concessions. Before the Greeks were able to make the northern barbarians brothers in faith, no less than five conflicts occurred, after which the guests invariably retired home with rich booty. However, information about the troublemakers was very strange: Byzantine authors described the attackers as a kind of warlike Scandinavian tribe, emphasizing their difference from the Slavs. The names of the leaders also have obvious northern roots. Igor, Oleg - there was a clear alien trace everywhere. Only starting with Svyatoslav did Kyiv rulers begin to bear Slavic names. And finally, “The Tale of Bygone Years” gives a final affirmative answer - yes, it was the Varangians, newcomers from the north, who became the first Russian princes at the invitation of the tribal council.

Creation of the Norman theory

The thesis about the northern origin of Russian statehood has a long history. It all started during the time of the last great Rurikovich, Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Swedish diplomats and historiographers of those years wrote entire works on the topic of the first Russian rulers. The reason for this was not interest in the culture of neighbors, but extremely difficult relations with them. A war that ended in failure and a treaty in favor of the enemy forced Scandinavian thinkers to pour out their indignation on paper. In Russian historiography, the Norman theory of the origin of the ancient Russian state was finally consolidated with the arrival of German scientists - I. Bayer, G. Miller and many others - in Russian science. Until some time, criticism of this direction was sporadic. It received a sharp response only from Lomonosov and Trediakovsky, who considered the concept a humiliating opinion about the backwardness of the Slavs.

Strengthening the anti-Normanists

In the middle of the 19th century, a united movement against the usual German theory arose in the scientific community. Against the backdrop of the political events of that time (the Crimean War and the attempt of the Russian Empire to realize its ambitions in the European field), the opposition quickly gained strength. The country needed historical confirmation of its strength and uniqueness. It was then that people started talking about the fact that The Tale of Bygone Years should not be accepted as the only true source, and the legend about the invitation of the Varangians to princes cannot be considered a historical fact (

The essence of the Norman theory

According to the Norman theory, based not on a misinterpretation of Russian chronicles, Kievan Rus was created by the German Vikings, subjugating the East Slavic tribes and constituting the ruling class of ancient Russian society, led by the Rurik princes.

This theory was based on the ancient East Slavic chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years", a source that should be noted to be quite dubious in its right to recognize an accurate interpretation of the events of those distant centuries. This is what the chronicle tells us:

In the summer of 6370. She drove the Varangians overseas, and did not give them tribute, and began to fight in themselves, and there was no truth in them, and generation after generation rose up, there was strife among them and they began to fight more and more against themselves. And we decided within ourselves: “Let us look for a prince who would rule over us and judge us rightfully.” And I went overseas to the Varangians to Rus'; For fear of this, they are called Varyazi Rus', as all the friends are called Svie, the friends are Urman, Anglyan, friends Gate, Tako and si. Resha Rus Chud, and Sloveni, and Krivichi: “all our land is great and abundant, but there is no outfit in it , yes, come and reign over us.” And 3 brothers were chosen from their clans, and girded all of Rus' around themselves, and came to the Slovenians first, and cut down the city of Ladoga, and the old Rurik sat in Ladoz, and the other, Sineus, on Bela Lake, and the third Izbrst, Truvor. And from those Varangians they were nicknamed the Russian Land..." This excerpt from an article in the PVL, taken on faith by a number of historians, marked the beginning of the construction of the Norman concept of the origin of the Russian state. The question of Rurik's nationality is a question of national identity. Was this the calling of the prince's relative, from the shores the Baltic Sea, inheriting the lands by right, or was it the calling of a foreigner from the people who often attacked and plundered the Slavic lands, associated with the inability to organize their own political system without outside help.

The emergence and development of the Norman theory

Historical science does not know when the Norman theory originated. We only know that by the 1st half of the 16th century. it existed.

Herberstein, having familiarized himself with the content of the Norman theory, expressed (1549) the idea that this was not so, that the Russians invited not the Germans, but the Western Slavs. His common sense could not reconcile with the arguments of the supporters of Normanism. There were other foreigners who spoke out against the Normanists. But there were no Russian anti-Normanists, because Russian science did not exist before Peter I.

The founder of the scientific theory of Normanism should be considered academician G. S. Bayer (d. in 1738), who substantiated it and brought new evidence in its favor (note, misinterpreted): the news of the Bertin Chronicle about the “ambassadors of the people of Ros” in 839; pointed out the Scandinavian nature of the “Russian” names of the Dnieper rapids; connected the Scandinavian “varings” with the “Varangians” of Russian chronicles and the “barangs” of Byzantine chronicles, etc.

Actually, the beginning of the dispute between Normanists and anti-Normanists should be considered the speech of Ak. G. F. Miller in 1749 “On the origin and name of the Russian people,” which caused a sharp rebuff from Lomonosov. Summarizing Miller’s thoughts, he wrote: “This is so wonderful that if Mr. Miller had been able to portray it in a living style, he would have made the Russians such a poor people as no other writer has ever represented the most vile people.” Lomonosov argued that there was no “great darkness of ignorance” in Rus', that Rus' had its own history even before it began to have “common sovereigns,” and traced its beginning to the ancestors of the Russians - to the Ants. He argued that Rus' as a state and Russian culture were created not by foreigners, the Varangians, but by the Slavs themselves. These Slavs were the indigenous population of the area between the Danube and Dniester rivers up to the spurs of the Carpathians. Lomonosov's voice, however, was not heard; he found himself in a decisive minority, and the first battle was decided in favor of Normanism, because Lomonosov's arguments, although worthy of attention, had not yet been sufficiently developed.

All further works - Frehn, Strube de Pirmont, Stritter, Tuyman, Krug, etc. - were aimed at substantiating the Norman theory. Schlözer, with his classic work Nestor, further established the authority of this theory. But (gradually) there were also foreigners - Storch (1800), Evers (1814) and others who objected to the Norman theory and collected solid material against it. Evers's work in particular gave a lot. He opposed the absurd assumption that the northern Slavs, having driven out the Varangians, again invited them. He refuted arguments regarding the understanding of the name of Rus' from roots like “Ruotsi”, “Roslagen”, etc. He objected to the derivation of ancient Russian names only from Scandinavian roots. He insisted on the existence of the name Rus in the Black Sea region. Etc. Unfortunately, his positive data in favor of the Slavic theory were destroyed by the false assumptions of his own concept, that the Kiev princes were from the Khazars, that Askold and Dir were Hungarians, that the “Volokhs” of the chronicle were Bulgarians, etc.

It should be noted that while rejecting the Norman theory, anti-Normanists could not offer anything in return, and only by the middle of the twentieth century was a serious and complete theory developed based on the latest archaeological and linguistic data.

Partly for this reason, the Norman School grew and flourished not only among German scientists, whom it greatly flattered, but also among Russian scientists. Even Klyuchevsky, declaring that he is not a supporter of either side, citing facts, is not puzzled by the question of why the newly arrived Normans (as he claims, citing as an example the names of ambassadors to the Byzantine king) swear by the Slavic gods, and not the Scandinavian ones. And he interprets this obvious question as it suits him.

Why the works of such prominent historians as Gedeonov and Pogodin, and many others, could not overcome the wall of Normanism with their ironclad arguments, we will talk in the fourth part of this work, but for now let’s move on to the evidence of the Norman theory itself.

The main arguments of the Norman theory

Chronicle mention.

The first and fundamental argument of the Norman theory is an excerpt from the Tale of Bygone Years. But not only is the chronicle written by a visiting Christian monk about pagan times, that is, subject to all humiliation, taken as a basis, but it is also interpreted very freely.

There is not a word in the chronicle about the affiliation of Prince Rurik and Rus' from which he came to reign from the Baltic Sea. Moreover, the chronicle clearly separates Rus', the Swedes, the Norwegians, the British and the Danes.

The German Schlözer can be forgiven for pulling “a donkey by the ears,” but Pogodin, already a natural Russian historian, continues his work, attributing to the chronicler a hidden thought about the Normanity of all Varangians, although he has no sufficient grounds for understanding the chronicle story.

These structures were laid out in detail and thoroughly by Zabelin. Natalya Ilyina in her work “The Expulsion of the Normans” says:

That all Varangians were Germans, namely Normans, is a belief completely independent of Russian chronicles. The alienness of this judgment from the chronicle story is finally revealed with complete clarity from the very founder of the Norman system. The German scientist Bayer, who gifted Russian science with both the Norman theory and the main evidence of its correctness, did not study the Russian chronicles at all.

Zabelin, in relation to Bayer, says: “A great expert in languages ​​(not excluding Chinese), a great Latinist and Hellenist, during the 12 years of his stay in Russia, he did not learn, however, and never wanted to learn the Russian language.”

Koyalovich in his “History of Russian Self-Awareness” claims that Bayer read only excerpts of chronicles in poor translation.

Linguistic analysis of words

When the Normanists faced criticism against them and began to carefully study the chronicles, it was discovered that the ancient chronology of the “Tale” was not accurate and the story about the beginning of Rus' was only the fruit of the thoughts of its author. In this regard, the first Normanists began to look for other evidence of their theory. After critics of the story discovered the arbitrariness of some of its provisions, almost the entire burden of the “Norman system” fell on extra-chronicle arguments.

Norman roots began to be attributed to the word “Varangian”, supposedly it comes from the Swedish word “wara” - vow, oath through the supposed form waring - a warrior who has taken a vow. For some reason, this linguistic guess often takes the form of a proven truth. It should be noted that in Scandinavian writing the word vaeringjar appears for the first time in connection with the year 1020 (the saga of Bol Bolenson) and is applied only to the Normans who entered the Varangian corps of Byzantium, and in our chronicles we find mention of the Varangians in records associated with the 9th century.

Gedeonov finds among the Slavs of the Varangian Sea a living word of the Germanic root varag, warang - swordsman from which the Russian word “Varangian” can be derived, grammatically correct. The word “Varangian” in its meaning means a warrior or merchant-pirate, usually coming from overseas, and in itself does not indicate any specific tribe. The Eastern Slavs called all the Baltic pirates this way - Swedes, Norwegians, Obotrits, Marcomanni - Varigs.

“He argues unjustly, he attributes the one hundred Varangian name to one people,” says Lomonosov, “Many strong evidence assures that they consisted of different tribes and languages ​​and were united by only one thing - robbery by the seas, which was then common.”

Linguistic considerations about the word “Varangian” are not sufficient to clarify the unclear sayings of the chronicle.

This ambiguity is not eliminated by the attempt of historians to determine the Varangian nationality by the names of the first princes, their boyars and ambassadors.

Following Bayer and Schlözer, Russian Norman historians recognize these names as Scandinavian, and find them in the Icelandic sagas and in the historical writings of the Germanic north. Rurik, in their opinion, is not a Slavic name, but a Danish or Norwegian Hrorecur, Hraerek. Sineus comes from Snio or Sninnuitz, etc. Normanists decide differently which of the many Scandinavian names has turned into one or another Slavic name. For example, Bayer suggested Roghwaltr for Rogvold, although the root “volod” (to own) is a common component of princely Russian names. Other scientists consider the names of both governors and princely servants to be Norman (Pogodin), others recognize the names of Malusha, Malka, Dobrynya as Slavic (Kunik).

“The names of the first Russian princes - the Varangians and their warriors are almost all of Scandinavian origin,” writes Klyuchevsky and adds to this in another place: “In the list of 25 ambassadors” - we are talking about Igor’s treaty with the Greeks - “there is not one Slavic name; out of 25 or 26 merchants, only one or two can be recognized as Slavs.”

Gedeonov establishes that the name Rurik is found among the Slavs: among the Poles - governor Ririk (Pskov Chronicle, 1536); among the Czechs - Rerich as the name of the genus; in Lusatia - Peter Rerik. Among the Vends, the name Rerikov - Reregi was the nickname of the Obotrite princes and can be compared with the Czech word Raroh or the Polish Rarag (meaning falcon). Since the transition of “a” to “e”, “o” to “i” is characteristic of the Slavic language.

The same careful study of the names of other princes, their governors, as well as the names of ambassadors, partly distorted by the Greeks who wrote the treaties and the Bulgarian translators, makes the following conclusion possible: in all treaties with the Greeks, the names of the princes and boyars are Slavic; Norman names are found only among ambassadors and guests, but even there there are no more than 12-15 of them.

Gedeonov notes that “the linguistic question cannot be separated from the historical, the philologist from the historian. In the absence of other positive traces of Norman influence on the internal life of Rus', the Normanization of all historical Russian names before the 11th century is in itself not a feasible matter.” Zabelin also supports a similar point of view. In his book “The History of Russian Life” he warns against being carried away by philology as a method of historical research. “In other cases, linguistics greatly contributes to the emergence and widespread development of various phantoms. This danger is especially great when the subject of study is only proper names,” writes Zabelin.

Rus - Norwegian tribe

The Scandinavianism of the Rus, which explains the Scandinavianism of the recognized Varangians, is the stone on which the Norman theory is based. The judgment that the Normans created the Russian state presupposes at its core the judgment that Rus' is a Scandinavian people.

The “Ruotsi” argument, well known in the history of Norman teaching, is based on the consonance, or more precisely, on the sound similarity in the owls “Ruotsi” and “Rus”. The Finns call the Swedes Ruotsi and this name, as the Normanists say, is in the form of Rus, just as the Finnish “Suomi” turned into the Russian “Sumi”. Ruotsi itself arose from the name of the Upland coast of Sweden, Roslagen, or from the Ross tribe in Roslagen (Schlözer). To this, Academician Lamansky replies that “there is no reason to consider the form Rus to be alien to our and the Slavic language in general; the forms “sereby”, “volyn” and many others are similar to it.”

Gedeonov in his book “Varangians and Rus'” also breaks this construction; moreover, he notes that considerations about Roslagen turned out to be unconvincing even for the Normanists. This name began to be called only in the 13th century for the coastal region of southern Sweden, inhabited by communities of Rhodes, that is, oarsmen who had nothing to do with either the name or the Rus tribe.

The little convincing evidence denoted by the word “Ruotsi”, however, continues to live in historical science. In Shakhmatov’s opinion, the main and decisive argument (in favor of the Norman theory) is that Western Finns still call Scandinavia “Russia”.

Lomonosov rejects the "Ruotsi" proof in his criticism of Miller's dissertation. He reasons as follows: “Didn’t he clearly show here a predilection for his unfounded guesses, basing them on such fictions that almost anyone could dream of in a dream? The example from the English and Franks, added here from him, does not confirm his invention, but serves to refute it, for there the vanquished received their name from the victors, but here it is not the victors from the vanquished, nor the vanquished from the victors, but all from the Chukhonians.”

Dnieper rapids

The second of the three main proofs of the Norman theory is based on a Greek source. In the “Book on State Administration,” written in the middle of the 10th century (948–952), the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus talks about the trade campaign of Russian merchants from Novgorod to Constantinople. Having reached the description of the crossing of the Dnieper rapids, the author of the book gives their name, and it turns out that all the rapids, except two, have two names; one of them is always Slavic, and the other seems to refer to another language, a foreign one; but it is difficult to decide which name, since the name is written in a distorted form. When naming the rapids, the emperor adds: “in Slavic” before the Slavic name, “in Russian” before the foreign one.

The distortion of the “Russian” names of the thresholds in the Greek translation does not make it possible to reliably determine from which dictionary they were taken and, on the contrary, makes possible the most contradictory opinions. From a historical point of view, it is not important that all or not all rapids bear Scandinavian names; the assimilation of foreign geographical names is common, and now the first rapid bears the Tatar name - Kaydaksin (Gedeonov’s “Varangians and Rus'”).

However, we should not forget that in the book of the Greek emperor the words “in Russian” are not always associated with the “Norman” name; after all, the first threshold is called “Nesupi” in both Russian and Slavic - don’t sleep, which, of course, contradicts the assumption about the normism of the Russian language. The same Konstantin Porphyrogenitus once calls the Kyiv Slavs Russians. The Russian chronicle identifies the Russian and Slavic languages: “The teacher of the Slovenian language is Paul, from whom we also have the language of Rus': the teacher of the same for us in Rus' is Paul the Apostle, who taught us the Slovenian language and appointed a bishop and governor for himself Andronnik Slavenescu language. But the Slovenian language and the Russian language are the same, from the Varangians they were called Russia, and first came to Slovenia; Even if Polyana was a matchmaker, the Slavenian speech would be. The glades were nicknamed for the tenderness of sitting in the field, the Slovenian language was the only one for them” (Rodzilov Chronicle).

Contrasting the Russian language as a foreign language with the local Slavic already in view of this evidence becomes impossible, and the difference that the Byzantine emperor makes is much more easily explained by the everyday differences between the Russians of the Kyiv region and the Slovenes of the Novgorod region. The difference between the Russian and Slavic languages ​​is, therefore, a difference between two dialects, a tribal difference, not a folk one. Moreover, it is strange to look for the Swedish language in Rus' in the middle of the 10th century, if the Normans had already become “Slavic” under Oleg and worshiped the Slavic gods.

But the main flaw of the Dneproporozhian proof is rooted in the exclusivity of the fact to which it refers: double names occur only in this case; this duality, as Gedeonov puts it, is only a linguistic oddity. It is not permissible to draw a general historical conclusion from this phenomenon.

Bertina Chronicle

In one of the monasteries of Western Europe, in Bertinsky, ancient chronicles have been preserved - a source of information that, according to historians, deserves complete trust. Under the year 839, the Bertine Chronicle talks about one mysterious incident, which, due to the low persuasiveness of the linguistic evidence of the Norman theory, received great significance in it.

An embassy from the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus arrived in the city of Ingelheim on the Rhine, where the Frankish Emperor Louis the Pious was then located. With this embassy, ​​Theophilus sent some people and a letter explaining that these people “called themselves Russia (Rhos)”, and that “their king sent them to him (Theophilus), with the name “Hakan” for the sake of friendship, as they claimed " In the mentioned letter, Theophilus asked Louis to give these people the opportunity to return safely to him through his power and to help them, since the path along which they came to Constantinople passes among barbarian tribes, wild and therefore ferocious, and he does not want to send those people away down this dangerous path. Louis, having diligently investigated the “reason” of their arrival, found out that they belonged to the Swedes, determined that they were rather scouts sent to the Frankish and Greek powers than supplicants for friendship, and ordered to detain them until it was possible to find out reliably. they came to him with honest or dishonest intentions. Louis explained to Theophilus through his legates, and also in a letter, that out of love for him, he would willingly agree to send those people and give them benefits and protection, unless they turn out to be deceivers, otherwise they should be sent with ambassadors to him, Theophilus for for him to decide what to do with them.

The chronicle does not tell how the inquiry ended and what the fate of the unknown people was.

In the story of the Bertin Chronicle, the Normanists consider the following news to be the most significant: the people who came to Constantinople and declared that they were from the Rus tribe turned out, according to the Franks, to be Swedes. If the ambassadors of Rus' are Swedes, then Rus' is a Swedish tribe.

The Bertin Chronicles do not classify Rus' among the Scandinavians, historians do this on the basis of the Scandinavian origin of the ambassadors, but if the Franks, who are little familiar with the Swedes and do not know Rus' at all, decide that the ambassadors of Rus' are Swedes, does this mean that they were actually Swedes ? If in fact these ambassadors are Swedes, does this mean that Rus' is a Swedish people?

A number of historians believe that the Russian ambassadors may not have been Swedes, and that there was a mistake on the part of the Franks who investigated this matter. “The representatives of Rus' were recognized by the Swedes,” writes Academician Vasilevsky, “neither the inquiry procedures nor the grounds for such a conclusion were indicated to us.” Zabelin considers it possible that the ambassadors were not Swedes, but Kyiv Rosas or Baltic Varangian Slavs who served in the squad of the Kyiv prince; the chronicle does not indicate on what basis they were recognized as Swedes. “It could happen that they are Slavs and live next door to the Sveons, and that out of these two names, one of these two names seemed more suitable and more familiar to Louis’s officials - Sveons. This confusion of names is allowed by Ilovaisky, who points out that there was a Slavic tribe, the Svenyans, on the Baltic Sea.

The first Normanists realized, of course, that the Swedish nationality of the ambassadors did not yet provide sufficient evidence about Norman Rus' and made up for this deficiency with the guess that the “Hakan” of the Bertin Chronicles was none other than Hakon, a certain unknown Swedish King who had conceived, whether would establish diplomatic relations with Byzantium (Schlözer). But Gedeonov completely smashed and refuted these statements, showing that “Hakan” is not a name, but a royal (princely) title that existed at that time in Rus'. The Slavic identity of Rus', from which the ambassadors, according to them, came to Greece, is indicated, among other things, by the following detail in the text of the chronicle of 839: it gives a Latin translation of the letter of Emperor Theophilus and the name Rus' retains in this translation the Greek indeclinable form (Rhos), which can only correspond to the Slavic form Rus; in Scandinavian languages, a folk name cannot take the same form for the singular and plural.

The randomness of facts is inherent in all the main arguments of the Norman theory and shows the arbitrariness of its judgments. Its judgments do not follow naturally and logically from actual events, from their organic development, but are imposed on the past by groundless assumptions, therefore they can only be confirmed by the whims of historical life: the random consonance in the words “Urotsi” and “Rus”, the double names of several thresholds, the dark an episode in the stories of the Bertin Chronicles. The Norman theory, as a result of studying its basic principles, turns out to be an artificial superstructure over genuine life.

The most interesting thing is that the same Bertin Chronicle completely refutes the Norman theory. The chronicle gives brief information about the people “Rus”, who, under the control of the Khakan, live somewhere in the south of our country. Anti-Normanists took advantage of this news to formulate the Norman problem very clearly. If “Rus” was known on our plains already in 839, that is, before the calling of the Varangians in 862, then it could not be brought to life by these “Varangians-Rus”, and the question of its normism disappears by itself, regardless of the nationality of those called princes and squads.

One can continue to cite countless examples that refute the Norman theory, but I think the above is quite sufficient. Let's move on to a more interesting question for research. How is it that such a theory, fabricated by visiting foreigners, not only took place, but, despite its non-scientific nature, continues to hold its place as the main theory of the origin of Russian statehood in historical science.

The phenomenon of the survivability of the Norman theory

Since childhood, we learn in history lessons that our ancestors, having no ideas of their own, invited foreigners from overseas to reign, and from these foreigners the line of Russian princes came. Yes, and literacy was brought to us by the Greeks, and before that we were like wild animals. Unlike Academician Klyuchevsky, I do not divide the Russian people into people living now and natives who lived in the 9th century. In one of the historical encyclopedias I read that - “The Slavs lived in the forests, when the enemy approached, they buried all their things in the ground and ran away into the forests,” then in the same encyclopedia it is written: “Since the Slavs often had to fight, it was a strong and a mighty people,” in my opinion, these two statements contradict each other. Here is an example of one of the many chimeras generated by the Norman theory. It should be noted. that the majority of “Russians” are satisfied with this state of affairs; we are accustomed to living without a past.

By the time the German scientists arrived, who scientifically substantiated the Norman theory, some of its rudiments had already taken place, because Herberstein already in 1549 refuted it. Where did she come from?

With the advent of a new religion in Rus', the struggle of the new system with old beliefs began, priests were destroyed, old customs were destroyed, and with them the memory of the people.

- “Not everyone who accepted our holy faith then accepted it out of love, some only out of fear of the one who commanded it” (Archbishop Macarius, History of the Russian Church, St. Petersburg, 1868, p. 27).

- “Paganism was still strong, it had not yet outlived its time in Rus', it resisted the introduction of Christianity; Therefore, the government is taking violent measures to spread Christianity, resorting to fire and sword in order to introduce the gospel teachings into the hearts of the pagans. And the servants of Christ do not arm themselves against such means; on the contrary, they justify them and erect the cross of Christ on corpses.” (church magazine “Ringer”, No. 8 1907)

The Iakimov Chronicle testifies to the burning of rebellious Novgorod by Dobrynya, who refused to accept the new faith; this information is confirmed by archaeological excavations by the Soviet archaeologist V.L. Yanin.

Also, archaeological excavations in Novgorod show universal literacy in the 9th-10th centuries. A large number of birch bark letters containing notes from everyday life were found.

Under the influence of the struggle of Christianity with paganism, and the subsequent Mongol-Tatar yoke, literacy and historical records became the prerogative of the church, which interpreted history as it was beneficial to it. The strong and enlightened state of pagan Rus' did not fit into the worldview theory of Christianity. This is where the Norman theory takes its origins.

With the advent of the first university in Russia, the Norman theory received rapid development with the help of German professors, who were very flattered by this state of affairs. Of great importance for the Norman theory is its convenience for those in power, both for the clergy and for the royal dynasty. Firstly, this theory justifies permanent marriages with foreign women, and secondly, reporting that the ancestors called princes from abroad to rule, it confirms the cultural and other reforms of Peter I. Thus, in Tsarist Russia, the Norman theory remained a political necessity.

With the advent of Soviet power, the situation did not change much. Many historians who fled abroad and smashed the Norman theory to smithereens in their homeland still remain little known (Natalya Ilyina, Sergei Lesnoy, etc.). Soviet historians Grekov, Tikhomirov, Nasonov, Tretyakov and many others did a lot of work, but did not contribute anything fundamentally new. All of them brilliantly proved (especially archaeologists) that the roots of Russian culture are completely original, that there is no need to talk about the influence of the Normans. However, they still recognized the princely dynasty as Norman. Here the anti-Norman theory again encounters a political problem; in the era of universal equality and brotherhood of the proletariat, national history becomes irrelevant, the existing system is interested in the struggle of the people against the tsarist power. And it seems that science, freed from church pressure, comes under the pressure of the Soviet political worldview.

At present, the political system goes hand in hand with the Russian Orthodox Church. For the existing totalitarian system, which is fighting against any manifestations of national identity, the Norman theory remains the only true one.

History of development

For the first time, the thesis about the origin of the Varangians from Sweden was put forward by King Johan III in diplomatic correspondence with Ivan the Terrible. The Swedish diplomat Peter Petrei de Erlesund tried to develop this idea in 1615 in his book “Regin Muschowitici Sciographia”. His initiative was supported in 1671 by the royal historiographer Johan Widekind in “Thet svenska i Ryssland tijo åhrs krijgs historie”. Olaf Dahlin's History of the Swedish State had a great influence on subsequent Normanists.

The Norman theory became widely known in Russia in the 1st half of the 18th century thanks to the activities of German historians in the Russian Academy of Sciences Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer (1694-1738), later Gerard Friedrich Miller, Strube de Pyrmont and August Ludwig Schlözer.

M.V. Lomonosov actively opposed the Norman theory, seeing in it the thesis about the backwardness of the Slavs and their unpreparedness to form a state, proposing a different, non-Scandinavian identification of the Varangians. Lomonosov, in particular, argued that Rurik was from the Polabian Slavs, who had dynastic ties with the princes of the Ilmen Slovenes (this was the reason for his invitation to reign). One of the first Russian historians of the mid-18th century, V.N. Tatishchev, having studied the “Varangian question”, did not come to a definite conclusion regarding the ethnicity of the Varangians called to Rus', but made an attempt to unite opposing views. In his opinion, based on the "Joachim Chronicle", the Varangian Rurik was descended from a Norman prince ruling in Finland and the daughter of the Slavic elder Gostomysl.

The subject of discussion was the localization of the unification of the Rus with the Kagan at its head, which received the code name Russian Kaganate. Orientalist A.P. Novoseltsev was inclined to the northern location of the Russian Kaganate, while archaeologists (M.I. Artamonov, V.V. Sedov) placed the Kaganate in the south, in the region from the Middle Dnieper to the Don. Without denying the influence of the Normans in the north, they still derive the ethnonym Rus from Iranian roots.

Normanists' arguments

Old Russian chronicles

Later chronicles replace the term Varangians with the pseudo-ethnonym “Germans,” uniting the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples.

The chronicles left in Old Russian transcription a list of the names of the Varangians of Rus' (before 944), most of them with a distinct Old Germanic or Scandinavian etymology. The chronicle mentions the following princes and ambassadors to Byzantium in 912: Rurik(Rorik) Askold, Dir, Oleg(Helgi) Igor(Ingwar), Karla, Inegeld, Farlaf, Veremud, Rulav, Goods, Ruald, Karn, Frelove, Ruar, Aktev, Truan, Lidul, Fost, Stemid. The names of Prince Igor and his wife Olga in Greek transcription according to synchronous Byzantine sources (the works of Constantine Porphyrogenitus) are phonetically close to the Scandinavian sound (Ingor, Helga).

The first names with Slavic or other roots appear only in the list of the treaty of 944, although the leaders of the West Slavic tribes have been known by distinctly Slavic names since the beginning of the 9th century.

Written evidence from contemporaries

Written evidence from contemporaries about Rus' is listed in the article Rus' (people). Western European and Byzantine authors of the 9th-10th centuries identify the Rus as Swedes, Normans or Franks. With rare exceptions, Arab-Persian authors describe the Rus separately from the Slavs, placing the former near or among the Slavs.

The most important argument of the Norman theory is the essay of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus “On the Administration of the Empire” (), which gives the names of the Dnieper rapids in two languages: Russian and Slavic, and interpretation of names in Greek.
Table of threshold names:

At the same time, Constantine reports that the Slavs are “tributaries” (Paktiots - from lat. pactio"agreement") Rosov.

Archaeological evidence

In 2008, at the Zemlyanoy settlement of Staraya Ladoga, archaeologists discovered objects from the era of the first Rurikovichs with the image of a falcon, which may later become a symbolic trident - the coat of arms of the Rurikovichs. A similar image of a falcon was minted on English coins of the Danish king Anlaf Guthfritsson (939-941).

During archaeological studies of the layers of the 9th-10th centuries in the Rurik settlement, a significant number of finds of military equipment and clothing of the Vikings were discovered, objects of the Scandinavian type were discovered (iron hryvnias with Thor hammers, bronze pendants with runic inscriptions, a silver figurine of a Valkyrie, etc.), which indicates the presence immigrants from Scandinavia in the Novgorod lands at the time of the birth of Russian statehood.

Possible linguistic evidence

A whole series of words in Russian are considered Germanisms, Scandinavianisms, and although there are relatively few of them in the Russian language, most of them belong specifically to the ancient period. It is significant that not only words of trade vocabulary penetrated, but also maritime terms, everyday words and terms of power and control, proper names. This is how, according to a number of linguists, proper names appeared Igor, Oleg, Olga, Rogneda, Rurik, words

History of Normanism and Anti-Normanism

The Norman theory was formulated in the 1st half of the 18th century under Anna Ioannovna by the German historian at the Russian Academy of Sciences G. Bayer (1694-1738), later by G. Miller and A. L. Schlözer.

The nationalist-patriotically minded M.V. Lomonosov, who was joined in the 19th century by D.I. Ilovaisky and others (proposing a different, non-Scandinavian identification of the Varangians). Lomonosov, in particular, argued that Rurik was from the Polabian Slavs, who had dynastic ties with the princes of the Ilmen Slovenes (this was the reason for his invitation to reign). The weakness of the first anti-Normanists includes their versions, based mainly on logic and intuition, but not supported by historical evidence.

One of the first Russian historians of the mid-18th century, V.N. Tatishchev, having studied the “Varangian question”, did not come to a definite conclusion regarding the ethnicity of the Varangians called to Rus', but made an attempt to unite opposing views. In his opinion, based on the so-called Joachim Chronicle, the Varangian Rurik was descended from a Norman prince ruling in Finland and the daughter of the Slavic elder Gostomysl.

In the 1930s, Soviet historiography, after a short break, returned to the Norman problem at the state level. The political confrontation with Nazi Germany forced the leadership of the USSR to intervene in the historical dispute from an ideological position. The main argument was recognized as the thesis of one of the founders of Marxism, F. Engels, that “the state cannot be imposed from the outside,” supplemented by the pseudoscientific autochthonist theory of the linguist N. Ya. Marr, officially promoted at that time, which denied migration and explained the evolution of language and ethnogenesis with class point of view.

The ideological setting for Soviet historians was the proof of the thesis about the Slavic ethnicity of the “Rus” tribe. Characteristic excerpts from a public lecture by Doctor of Historical Sciences Mavrodin, given in 1949, reflect the state of affairs in Soviet historiography of the Stalin period:

“It is natural that the “scientific” servants of world reaction strive at all costs to discredit and denigrate the historical past of the Russian people, to belittle the importance of Russian culture at all stages of its development. They “deny” the Russian people the initiative to create their own state.[…]
These examples are quite enough to come to the conclusion that the thousand-year-old legend about the “calling of the Varangians” Rurik, Sineus and Truvor “from beyond the sea,” which long ago should have been archived along with the legend about Adam, Eve and the serpent, the tempter, the global flood, Noah and his sons, is being revived by foreign bourgeois historians in order to serve as a weapon in the struggle of reactionary circles with our worldview, our ideology.[…]
Soviet historical science, following the instructions of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, based on the comments of comrades Stalin, Kirov and Zhdanov on the “Synopsis of a textbook on the History of the USSR”, developed a theory about the pre-feudal period, as the period of the birth of feudalism, and about the barbarian state emerging at this time, and applied this theory to specific materials from the history of the Russian state. Thus, in the theoretical constructions of the founders of Marxism-Leninism, there is and cannot be a place for the Normans as the creators of the state among the “wild” East Slavic tribes.”

Normanists' arguments

Old Russian chronicles

Later chronicles replace the term Varangians with the pseudo-ethnonym “Germans,” uniting the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples.

The chronicles left in Old Russian transcription a list of the names of the Varangians of Rus' (before 944), most of them with a distinct Old Germanic or Scandinavian etymology. The chronicle mentions the following princes and ambassadors to Byzantium in 912: Rurik(Rorik) Askold, Dir, Oleg(Helgi) Igor(Ingwar), Karla, Inegeld, Farlaf, Veremud, Rulav, Goods, Ruald, Karn, Frelove, Ruar, Aktev, Truan, Lidul, Fost, Stemid. The first names with Slavic or other roots appear only in the list of the treaty of 944.

Written evidence from contemporaries

Written evidence from contemporaries about Rus' is listed in the article Rus' (people). Byzantine and Western European authors identify the Rus as Swedes (Annals of Bertin, 839), Normans or Franks. With rare exceptions, Arab-Persian authors describe the Rus separately from the Slavs, placing the former near or among the Slavs.

The most important argument of the Norman theory is the essay of Konstantin Porphyrogenitus “On the management of the empire” (g.), which gives the names of the Dnieper rapids in two languages: Russian and Slavic, and interpretation of names in Greek.
Table of threshold names:

At the same time, Konstantin reports that the Slavs are tributaries (paktiots) of the Ros.

Archaeological evidence

see also

Notes

Links

• E. S. Galkina, “Secrets of the Russian Kaganate” - in chap. “The First Battles for the Russian Kaganate” examines the history of Normanism.

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• Norman Conquest
• Norman

See what the “Norman theory” is in other dictionaries:

NORMAN THEORY Big Encyclopedic Dictionary

NORMAN THEORY- NORMAN THEORY, a direction in Russian and foreign historiography, whose supporters considered the Normans (Varangians) to be the founders of statehood in Ancient Rus'. Formulated in the 2nd quarter of the 18th century. G. 3. Bayer, G. F. Miller and others N. t ... Russian history

Norman theory- a direction in Russian and foreign historiography, whose supporters considered the Normans (Varangians) to be the founders of the state in Other. Rus'. Formulated in the 2nd quarter. 18th century G.Z. Bayer, G.F. Miller and others. The Norman theory was rejected by M.V.... ... Political science. Dictionary.