What Russian Finno-Ugrians called Russian princes, served them and suffered from them

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The Finno-Ugric peoples are closely inscribed in the history of not only Russia, but also the formation of Russian principalities from their very foundation. In the chronicles we can find many tribes: some of the first Rurikovichs collaborated with the Finno-Ugric peoples, others conquered them with fire and sword or drove them away. Chud, merya, em, cheremis, muroma - who is hiding behind these bizarre names and how was the fate of these peoples?

Where did the Russian land come from?

For a long time they thought a lot about where the word "rus" came from and who it meant initially. By ear, it sounds very similar to how different Finno-Ugric times were designated in Old Russian. Maybe the first Russians were definitely Finno-Ugric - the most Eastern Europeans?

Now the dominant version is that “Rus” is a Slavic distortion of the nickname given by the northern Finno-Ugric tribes to the Varangians who passed along their rivers on oars. The Varangians were called the Swedes and other Scandinavians who were hired to serve the Byzantine emperors. The very word "rus" from the Finnish word for "paddle" (or any other kindred to the Finns "paddle") occurs. Obviously, in order to think of representing themselves as “Rus”, the Varangians had to start contacting the Slavs later than with the Finno-Ugrians, so that such an external nickname could be established. In principle, this is logical. The northernmost eastern Slavs still lived south of the Scandinavians, there were other peoples between them.

The version looks logical in the light of the clearly Scandinavian names of the Rurik dynasty in its early history, and the name of its legendary founder, and their dynastic preferences (the princes from Rurik liked to marry Scandinavians or German women). But the first "Rus" lived in the future "Russian lands" long before they established their power there, and became a prince in these lands not only Rurik, but presumably the Swede Rogvolod - which means there could be other Scandinavian princes. To rule in foreign lands, by capturing them, was then for the Scandinavians just a way to start a good economy.

The chronicler Nestor also writes that it was from the Varangians that the Russian land took the name, omitting an interesting detail, in what way it happened. He claims that he was called to rule by the Ilmen Slovenes, Krivichi, Chud and all. The last two names refer to the Finno-Ugric tribes. Veps and Karelians originated from Ves, the Novgorod Chud was most likely called Vod. That is, when Rurik came to rule in the lands that would later become the Novgorod principality, both Slavs and Finno-Ugrians lived there.

The Finno-Ugrians also lived in the Rostov principality, subordinate at first to the prince of Novgorod - until the grand dukes began to live in Kiev and in Murom. They were Merya and Muroma. Merya also lived on the Oka, next to the Meshchers, and, right up to the great Slavic colonization of the tenth-eleventh centuries, on many other rivers - on the territory of the present-day Tver, Vladimir, Moscow, Kostroma, Yaroslavl, Vologda and Ivanovo regions. They were the main indigenous population of all those places that are now considered to be real Russians. And the Rostov principality was divided between the Meri and the Cheremis, that is, the Mari.

The most eastern area of distribution of the northern Slavs and the most northern - eastern, thus, was the Novgorod principality. Although Nestor reports that in his time in Novgorod only Varangians live instead of Slovenes, this is rather doubtful. The birch bark letters of Novgorod are written in obviously Slavic, not Scandinavian. Rather, it meant that the power in modern Nestor Novgorod is mainly in the wealthy merchant families of the Scandinavian diaspora.

Was there a lot of that chud?

The word "Russians" began to denote themselves over time the Slavs of the "Russian lands", that is, the lands of the princes from the Rus. It is logical to assume that in the eastern principalities of the Rurikovich family, the same process took place and the Finno-Ugric tribes in the citizenship of Russian princes began to be called Russians. This is the most peaceful and ideal scenario.

However, there are inconsistencies in it. Just as in Novgorod, birch bark letters are not found in Swedish or Norwegian, so in the places of the former widespread distribution of Meryans, later it is impossible to find references to the fact that peasants massively spoke a language incomprehensible to Slavic-speaking Russians - this is noted separately for a particular village, but in In cities and in the area around cities in general, the language of the Slavic root clearly dominates in different dialects with a clearly common grammatical basis, no matter what bizarre regional words you will find in them.

Already in our time, a genetic study has been carried out of a large number of families positioning themselves as Russians in no less than three generations, and the highest figure for the presence of Finno-Ugric genes - in the northernmost regions of the European part of Russia - barely reaches a third.

Considering how many Finno-Ugrians changed their identity to Russian during the great assimilation of the twentieth century, the situation is depicted as sad. Not so many subjects of the Russian princes from the Merians and Meschera took part in the formation of the Russian ethnos. Even if we take into account that the Finno-Ugric lands could hardly be called densely populated, a picture is still drawn of either massacres or mass exile.

Turning to the annals, we see that the early princes from Rurikovich calmly collaborated with the Finno-Ugric peoples. Meryan warriors participated in Oleg's predatory raids on Byzantium and conquering ones - on Smolensk and Kiev, Ilya Muromets, whose nickname may mean Murom origin, calmly arrives at the service of Vladimir Krasniy Solnyshku in epics (and he is associated with Vladimir the Holy), in Rostov For a long time there was the Chud end, in which some "pagans" lived - most likely, it was the Merians.

At the same time, there is a hypothesis that already at that time, in fact, the Finno-Ugrians on their lands were either in a minority or in a subordinate position, since many cities of these lands already bore clearly Slavic names. Most likely, they were founded by the Slavs, and purely by geography, it is easy to assume that the Slovenes from Ilmen are the edge of the Slavic lands. In this case, already at the time of directed Slavic colonization, the Finno-Ugrians of the eastern principalities were already strongly diluted.

Where all have disappeared, merya and meshyora

And yet the chronicles directly indicate that some princes oppressed and expelled the Finno-Ugrians from their possessions, bringing in Slavic colonists in return. The first persecutor was Yaroslav the Wise, he also made the usual practice of literally resettling peoples at the behest of the prince. So, having visited Poland with a raid, he drove from there a lot of peasants and settled them on one of the tributaries of the Dnieper - like a gardener transplanting raspberries from a forest to a vegetable garden. Since it is difficult to imagine that few people lived in the Kiev principality, it is possible that the Poles were resettled to the places of those who were previously forced or persuaded to leave for the Finno-Ugric lands.

Here are Yaroslav's wars with the Finno-Ugric peoples, which were included in the annals. In 1030, he went on a campaign against the Chud, drove them from their lands and founded on the conquered land a city named after his patron saint - Yuryev. Now this city bears the name of Tartu, so it can be assumed that Jaroslav took the land from the ancestors of the Estonians. I must say that Yaroslav went on campaigns to other Baltic tribes, for example, the Yatvingians (ancestors of modern Lithuanians and Belarusians), actually Lithuania as a tribe, and the Mazovians - the Baltic Poles.

In 1042, the eldest son Vladimir sent by Yaroslav goes on a campaign to the Yam - a Finno-Ugric tribe, which, presumably, is among the ancestors of both southern Finns and Karelians. However, the Novgorodians fought with the pit for the lands along which the path from the Varangians to the Greeks passed, both to Yaroslav and after him.

At the level of theories, it is assumed that the active colonization of the Finno-Ugric lands by the Slavs, which archaeologists attribute to the tenth-eleventh centuries, is connected precisely with the policy of Yaroslav, who looked at the Ugro-Finns, who were mostly unbaptized, as savages, superfluous in his possessions. As a result, the Meryans had to move from the Oka to Rostov and further, to Yaroslav (geneticists also say this), and the Mari, under the pressure of the Meryans and the Rostov princes, left Rostov to the south. The Murom also went to the south, probably becoming one of the ancestors of the Erzyans. It turns out that “primordially Russian lands” are not Russian at all … That is, not primordially.

Among the massive influx of Slavs, the remaining Finno-Ugrians assimilated and dissolved in a couple of centuries. However, one should not think that if the colonization took place with the active participation of the princes of Kiev, then the Slavs came directly from Kiev. An analysis of the language of Novgorod letters and Kiev records shows that the Novgorod dialect of the descendants of the Ilmen Slovenes is clearly closer to the Moscow dialect of the Russian language, as we know it from the records and in which, one might say, we speak now, when we want to speak literary, rather than the Kiev dialect.

It is worth remembering that Novgorod has always remained the city of the princes of Kiev. And, perhaps, the mass migration to the east is related to how Novgorod became, according to the chronicler, Varangian from Slavic: a lot of Slavs simply left.

Not only Rurikovich

The Finno-Ugrians of the future Russia were pressed not only by the Ruriks. During the great Western invasion of the Mongols, Erzya and Moksha became the first European peoples on the way of the Mongols. At the same time, women and children were sent from some villages and cities to the west, to Russian cities - obviously, the Russians were perceived as allies. This is evidenced by the fact that, in exchange for refugees, the Russians sent military detachments to help the Erzyans and Mokshans. The remains of the united army have been discovered already in our time. For the Russian principalities, his defeat meant that they met the Mongols with a much smaller number of soldiers that they could put up on the city walls.

As a result, part of the Volga Finno-Ugrians recognized the power of the Mongols, and part of them hid in the most remote forests, where there were no cities or cultivated fields, and had to survive. The broken Volga Bulgars, the ancestors of the Volga Tatars, partly mixed with these Finno-Ugrians, only to neither be related to the conquerors, nor to marry close relatives.

The disdainful attitude of modern Russians towards the Finno-Ugric peoples, coupled with the struggle against their "nationalism" in certain periods of the Soviet regime, led to the fact that in the twentieth century more Finno-Ugric families moved to the "Russians" than, probably, during the entire period of government Romanovs. This meant the preservation of their genes, but a serious blow to culture, to the existence of peoples precisely as peoples. Nevertheless, there are still enough Finno-Ugric peoples in Russia.

Novgorod birch bark letters - letters that came after 600 years - helped to reveal a lot of interesting things, and not just the details of the settlement of the Finno-Ugric lands by the Slavs.