Information war against Russian history
Recently, the representatives of the named belief system have ceased to like the word “Normanism”. Voices began to be heard that there was no “Normanism” and the talk about “Normanism”, “Norman theory”, “Normanists” are phantoms that exist only in the imagination of anti-Normanists. This is the first reason for reflection: there is no Normanism and Normanists, but anti-Normanists are not canceled.
Further, supporters of the above belief system are trying to declare it the only correct teaching. However, over the years with 200 over the years, there is still a dispute over how to interpret the “coming” of the Scandinavians to Eastern Europe. Some say: it was a conquest, aggressive expansion. Well, yes, - others argue passionately. - Why did they conquer in the dark so that they didn’t mention in any source ?! No, it was the migration of colonists from Central Sweden (it’s the Roslagen coastal zone, it’s also the Uppsala linen in Svejland, which was not in the 9th century).
The fact is that the great mission of the "Scandinavians" in Eastern Europe was not reflected in any written sources - neither in the chronicles, nor in the Western European chronicles. Therefore, in the works of representatives of “professional circles” (to say Normanists, let us continue to call things by their names, regardless of whether someone likes it or not!), The image of “Scandinavians”, caused solely by the power of their imagination, is represented by a variety of types.
Those who are beckoning the battle scenes write about “Scandinavian military units”, “Viking detachments”, “Scandinavian squads”, “Norman fighters”, “Viking movement” to the north of the East European Plain, and also about “expansion Viking. As a result of this phantom, unnoticed by any chronicler or chronicler of the “movement” in Eastern Europe, a “background of the Scandinavian presence” was allegedly created, which was quickly formed into “Norman kaganates - principalities” that littered the entire Eastern Europe, but with a Normanist eye.
The more moderate-minded Normanist authors paint smooth, tranquil scenes of the “migrations of a free peasant population, mainly from Central Sweden” to Eastern Europe, similar to those of America. Sometimes migrations are carried out as “military and trade trips of Vikings to Kievan Rus” or as “a population of Normans spread across the East Slavic lands”. True, from time to time the characteristics of the mass presence of the Normans / Vikings in Russia are confused by the reservations that “the population of the Normans ... was relatively small, but influential, seized power. She contributed to Slavic culture, history and statehood ".
In surrogate history, surrogate sources: the most irrefutable "evidence" of the founding of Scandinavians in ancient Russian history, according to the Normanists, may well be the Norman campaigns from Western European history: “The Scandinavians conquered everything in Western Europe! How naive it is to be in order to think that they did not go to conquer Eastern Europe too! ”
In my opinion, such an argument, in the language of lawyers, is invalid, since if an event occurs in one place, it is not necessary that a similar event occurred in another place. In addition, the qualitative difference between the Norman predatory campaigns in the West known to us and those blissful scenes of the actions of the “Scandinavians” in Eastern Europe, whose specimens are well known for the works of the Normanists, is striking.
These differences are undoubtedly ascertained, but they do not lead anyone to embarrassment and are parried by the statements that “the Vikings, ruthless robbers and pirates who terrified all of Western Europe with sudden raids in Eastern Europe played a different, constructive role - the role of a catalyst, which accelerated social and political processes. ” Before explaining why "ruthless robbers and pirates", having come to Eastern Europe, suddenly began to act as some kind of "constructive catalysts", "professional circles" do not condescend.
In order to get out of this confusion, you should try to bring the existing material into a certain system. To begin with, I will list in what particular supporters of the coming of the Scandinavians to Eastern Europe see their role. In a generalized form, this role, in the conviction of the Normanists, manifested itself in three areas:
1. In the formation of the Old Russian state and the creation of the Old Russian Institute of supreme princely power. It seems to the Normanists that the contract with the leader of the Viking detachments Rurik, presumably from Central Sweden, provided control of these detachments over the waterways from Ladoga to the Volga and thus laid the foundation for the emergence of early state structures, primarily the institute of central authority in the chronicle Priilmensk slovenes. According to the same authors, another Scandinavian leader Oleg captured Kiev and, thus, united the Eastern European north with the center in Ladoga and the Eastern European south with the center in Kiev, due to which the Old Russian state, known in science as Kievan Rus, was born. Let me remind in passing that between the vocation of Rurik and Oleg's conviction in Kiev, only about two decades passed! (Gorsky A.A., Dvornichenko A.Yu., Kotlyar N.F., Melnikova E.A., Puzanov V.V., Sverdlov MB, Stefanovich PS, Shinakov E.A., etc. .)
2. Together with the above-mentioned contribution of the Vikings-Norman-Vikings to the ancient Russian history, they were credited with establishing control over the Baltic-Volga trade route, the opening and functioning of which was, according to Normanists' assertions, the result of Scandinavian merchants and soldiers: “... by the middle of the 9th century. the exit from the Ladoga and Volga regions to the Volga, as well as the movement along the Volga, were firmly mastered. This is evidenced by the appearance along the way of trade and craft settlements and military camps, where the Scandinavian ethnic component is everywhere or more. ” Thanks to this, according to the Normanists, a vast territory is consolidated, in which in the middle of the 9th century. there is a first early state education "(Melnikova EA).
3. The Varang-Norman-Vikings brought the very name of Russia to the Eastern European Slavs. Norman linguists formulate it in such a way that the word Rus can be constructed from other scandas. words on the basis of * roþs-, a type of roþsmenn with the meaning “a rower, a participant of a campaign on rowing ships”, which allegedly links the origin of the name Rus with the Swedish region Roslagen and the Swedish rowers-rhodes, but through the Finnish name of Sweden Ruotsi. It was from the Finns that the Slavs allegedly recognized the name of the Swedish rowers-rhodes, and from it formed the name Rus feminine.
This is how the Normanists see the role of the Scandinavians in Russian history. The next question that needs to be answered is the question of what kind of objective prerequisites natives of the Scandinavian countries had for carrying out the mission attributed to them. The “Western Front” of the actions of the Normans, who are identified only with people from the Scandinavian countries (as far as this is true, let's talk later), is well known - there was no need for Scandinavians to participate in political genesis, in the construction of trade and craft settlements that existed before the Norman campaigns and other .
And in Eastern Europe, the Scandinavians are credited with a fundamental (or significant, as some cautious Normanists stipulate) role in the process of political evolution and in capital-intensive projects to create a network of craft-trading and political centers, i.e. practically - the foundation of urban culture.
Since the Bertinsky annals and the Finnish name of Sweden Ruotsi firmly tie the Normanists to Sweden, therefore we will consider the level of the sociopolitical evolution of the main areas of the future Sweden in the early medieval period. These were the areas of the getot and the Sveev - ethnic groups, often defined as tribes and tribal associations in the territory of medieval Sweden.
The name Sweden comes from the Sveev name: Svea rike or the Kingdom of Sveev. The name of the city is traced in the names of such historical regions as Westergötland with the city of Gothenburg and Östergötland with the main city of Linköping. Svei and gyotas were the main ethnosocial subjects in the process of formation of the state in Sweden. How is this process characterized in science?
According to the works of the Swedish medievalists, the creation of Swedish statehood was protracted, long-lasting, the signs of the early state are revealed no earlier than the second half of the 13th - early 14th centuries. The contemporary researcher of the problems of the Swedish socio-political genesis T. Lindquist, stipulating that the design of statehood includes such a criterion as the creation of “territory under the authority of a single political leadership”, notes that only from the second half of the 13th century. The royal power in Sweden began to speak “as a form of a relatively thin political organization, as a state power.
It was during this period that privileged noble estates grew up with precisely defined rights and obligations to serve in favor of the king and society. The codification and writing of laws, as well as the streamlining of political institutions, are typical of this period. At the turn of the XIII-XIV centuries. the royal power and the young classes of clergy and secular nobility were state power.
Late 13th century was the end of that specific and long historical process of social transformations characteristic of Sweden in that period, which, according to traditional terminology, can be called as transitional from the Viking period to the early medieval period ”(Lindqvist Th. Plundring, skatter och den feodala statens framväxt. Organisatoriska tendenser i Sverige under övergången från vikingatid till tidig medeltid. Uppsala, 1995. S. 4-5, 10-11). The Viking history in Swedish history is the period 800-1050, followed by the Medieval period 1050-1389.
T. Lindquist emphasizes not only the late formation of a Swedish state, but also its secondary nature: “... It arose later on in many states in Europe and even in Scandinavia. A number of phenomena and ideas were exogenous: they were “introduced” from the outside. The ideas about the meaning and functions of royal power, the rules and rituals for the bearers of the new state power were introduced from the side ”, i.e. from the European continent (Ibid.)
He develops these same views in one of his works, written jointly with Maria Schöberg. Based on the Life of St. Ansgar, the Bishop of Hamburg and the propagator of Christianity in Northern Germany, Denmark and Sweden, who visited 830 with his mission in Birka and captured some of the features of social and political relations among the sveev, T. Lindquist wrote that the territory of Sveev consisted of a number of small possessions that did not have a certain structure or hierarchy, the power of the king was limited to the national assembly; no centralized or supreme royal power existed, which is why it is impossible to determine the degree of its influence on the life of society. About the same picture, T. Lindquist stresses, draws to us and the chronicler Adam of Bremen in 1070 after more than 200 years (Lindkvist Th., Sjöberg M. Det svenska samhället. 800 - 1720. Klerkernas och adelns tid. Studenttextur. Schil. Tel.. .23-33).
The historian Dick Harrison summed up the outcome of the traditional quest for the beginnings of Swedish political genesis:
“... at Jordan, Cassiodorus and Procopius ... created an image of Scandinavia, characterized by the presence of many small political units ... it is absolutely impossible to reconstruct the political boundaries of regions in the Wendel or Viking periods, based on the names found in sources of the XIII-XIV centuries. ... The area, which in Swedish historiography usually finds itself at the center of arguments about power and the kingdom in the pre-Christian era, is Upland ... In the period of great power in the 17th century, or in the period of development of nationalist tendencies in the 19th century. Upland was regarded as the cradle of Swedish statehood, and the kings from the Saga of the Ingling were crowned as the all-Swedish ancient monarchs ...
Today, science has cast aside these misconceptions as an anachronism and sent them to the dustbin of history, although from time to time they appear in tourist brochures or in outdated historical reviews. ”(Harrison D. Sveriges historia. 600-1350. Stockholm, 2009. S. 26- 36).
So, the creation of statehood in Sweden, which at least implies a shift from autonomous possessions or peasant communities towards the supercommunal organization and the unification of the territory under the rule of one ruler (king, prince), the creation of the institution of supreme power, took about 300 years The early features of this process appeared in the first half of the eleventh century. or 200 years after Rurik. And for many centuries before, counting from the 9th century, the territory of the future Sweden was a conglomeration of small possessions, none of which could nominate a leader who would subordinate these lands to his power.
- Lydia Grotto
- http://www.km.ru/v-rossii/2016/12/17/istoriya-rusi/790887-informatsionnaya-voina-protiv-russkoi-istorii
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