OLEG DERNOVICH.
Candidate of Historical Sciences
1. Exotic beginning
Modern historiography connects the early history of Belarus in the 1st Millennium of our era-on the eve of the emergence of statehood — with the interaction of the Balts and Slavs. How and when the latter appeared in the Baltic expanses of the future Belarus, how peaceful were their contacts, what was the reason for the victory of the Slavic language in the end?
But these issues should not obscure from us the geocultural background of the then events, which were no less colorful, and from the point of view of today — and exotic. It should be remembered that our lands were then part of the barbaric periphery of the Roman Empire. It's not only about the finds of Roman coins and products — the processes of the barbarians ' attack on Rome and the post-antique world, as well as the resettlement of peoples, one way or another affected the territory of the future Belarus.
Goths
At the beginning of our era, the East German tribe Goths moved from Scandinavia (including the island of Gotland) to the southern coast of the Baltic sea. Moving along the Vistula and the bug, the Goths assimilated the local population — as a result, in the terminology of archaeologists was formed Walborsky culture. Monuments of this culture, first of all burial grounds left by Goths and related Gepids, are available in the territory of the Brest, Kamenetsky and Stolin areas. Thus the Goths did live in the Brest region.
For us, this story is important here's why. In the modern Lithuanian language to refer to the Belarusians again began to actively use the archaic word Guda. And many linguists believe that the word gudy most likely derived from the name of the Goths. In the era of the Great migration, the Goths turned in its orbit, and also the population that lived in the South-West of modern Belarus, in Polesie, and were neighbours of the Balts. As a result, the name of the Goths has spread throughout the Union of the tribes, subject to the Goths.
But in 375 the Gothic quasi-public education Germanarich was literally wiped off the face of the earth by a Horde of Huns. The Goths retreated, but their traces-archaeological monuments in the Brest region, as well as the name of the people, remained on our land. I should add that goth is the Latin name (Gothi), they call themselves Gutans, Gytos. That's where the "Gudy" in Lithuanian.
This version reveals archaic layers of national consciousness. At the time, Zeno Poznyak very negatively opposed the naming of the Belarusian letuvis in the language of gudy, because this term can be chosen as a synonym for the word "backward". Indeed, the term gudy has letoviska language somewhat grotesque sense — consonant gudus translated as terrible.
There are a lot of borrowings left in the Belarusian language not just from Germanic languages, but from Gothic. The early group of gothic borrowings includes a number of household-related terms: hlevu - shed, hlebu - bread, bljudo - dish, kotilu - copper pot. There are economic terms: dulgu - debt, lihva - profit, lihvarstva. We also mention the military terms: meci - sword, helm - helmet.
Gothic-German borrowings show that the northern newcomers became in a certain sense cultural "donors" of the Slavs and contributed to their civilizational development. The number of Slavic borrowings in Germanic languages is insignificant compared to the number of Germanic words in Slavic languages. Goths, politically and culturally, surpassed the Slavs and had a positive impact on the material and spiritual culture of their subjects.
But the Huns, the winners of the Goths, also experienced a certain influence of the Slavs. Thus, the 6th century Gothic historian Jordan gives an important detail in the story of the burial of the “scourge of God” - the great leader of the Huns of the mid-5th century, Attila:
"After he was mourned by such moans, they celebrate" Strava "(as they call it themselves) on his mound, accompanying her with a huge feast."
The dish in the original and recorded - strava.
Avar push
Another nomad from the East is directly related to the Belarusian history. Avars appeared in Eastern Europe in the middle of the 6th century. Among historians and linguists, discussions continue about the origin of this tribe, or rather, the union of nomadic peoples - they were Turks or Iranian-speaking. However, in their appearance Mongoloid features are clearly visible.
Anyway, Avar Kagan Bayan in 562 managed to create in Pannonia, in the territory of the future Hungary, a rather powerful Avar Khaganate, under the sign of the hegemony of which flowed the history of Central and Eastern Europe in the second half of VI and in the VII century. It was under the rule of the Avars that the Slavs of the Danube Basin and adjacent territories found themselves. And from there, in an effort to evade enslavement by their new rulers (distinguished, by the way, by exceptional cruelty even by the standards of that harsh era), they began to settle. Slavic masses set in motion, one wave of their migration went to the South, to the Balkans, into the possession of Byzantium, another - to the North and the Northeast, to the territory of future Russia.
The period of Avar hegemony was very much reflected in the Slavs, adding to their social structure the features of wandering militarism. From Avar times, joint burials of horsemen and their horses begin to occur. Stirrups also became known from the Avar period.
Slavic problem
Slavs, in fact - the biggest problem. The origin of all nations remains a complex scientific topic for historians, archeologists, ethnologists, and linguists. But with respect to the Slavs, unlike other Indo-Europeans - Indo-Aryans, Germans, Balts - there is no certainty. Nowadays, there is no generally accepted version of the formation of the Slavic ethnos.
The Slavs were first recorded in written (Byzantine) sources only in the middle of the 6th century — 600 years after the Balts, 700 years after the Germans. These earliest testimonies are already dealing with a people divided into two parts - the Slavins and the Antes.
Linguists also do not have a common opinion regarding the emergence of a language that can be considered Slavic or Proto-Slavic. Various scientific versions offer a very extensive period as a time range for the selection of such a language from Proto-Indo-European or Pra-Balta: from the 2nd millennium BC. e. until the first centuries of our era.
The study of the ethnogenesis of the Slavs by means of archeology is faced with the following problem: modern science cannot trace the change or succession of archaeological cultures, the carriers of which could be confidently attributed to the Slavs or their ancestors, in the period before our era.
Still based on a comparison of archaic linguistic formations in recent times made a conclusion that the proto-Slavic language separated from the peripheral Pribaltika languages. Belarusian linguist Viktor Martynov said — zapadnobaltskom dialects.
The process of settling the Slavs from a small area to the vast expanses of the European continent is one of the brightest pages of the ancient history of the peoples. Lithuanian-American researcher Maria Gimbutas so appreciated these tectonic processes:
"Appearing as a small Indo-European group that lived North of the Carpathian mountains ... Slavic farmers were able to survive only because of their perseverance. In the end, they managed to settle in large areas in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Balkan Peninsula. Their invasion did not become a separate episode of the type of irregular raids of Huns and Avars, but was a systematic successive colonization."
2. Slavs, Wends, Balts ...
Conjugation of terms
We find the first indisputable references to the Slavs in written sources only in the 6th century by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, who writes about the "Slavs" in his work The War on Goths (536–537).
The contemporary of Procopius, the Gothic historian Jordan, in his book On the Origin and Deeds of the Geths (551) also writes about the "Slavs" and indicates that they inhabit the expanses between the Carpathians and the Vistula, and in the East bring their borders to the Dnieper. But the majority of the territory of Belarus in the era of the Great Migration of Peoples remained outside the region of this Slavic settlement - with the exception of the southernmost part of modern Brest region.
One of the possible theories of the origin of the name of the Slavs connects it with the root of the “Slov” that meant “language”. Thus, the ethnonym (the self-name of the people) could have emerged as an opposition to the name “Nemets” (from the word “mute”), which was used to refer to the northern neighbors, Germanic tribes, who spoke a language incomprehensible to the Slavs. But this version is not accepted by all linguists. Some argue that the ethnonyms on "-ene", "-yane" are almost always associated with some toponymic objects, most often with rivers, and not with abstract concepts. There is a wide scope for finding these rivers ...
From the tribal name of the Slavs in Greek, the name of slaves appeared - Middle Greek σκλαβοζ, hence the Late Lat sclavus (slave, Slav), German Sklave, French esclave, etc. Slavic captives in the early Middle Ages often became objects of Byzantine, German and Arab slave trade. Even in the 9th century, a significant part of the slaves entering the European markets was of Slavic origin. Western European languages well illustrate this phenomenon.
Veneds
Regarding the Slavins and the Antes of Jordan, there is at least some mutual understanding between historians - the former are regarded as the western part of the Slavs, the latter - as the eastern part. But Jordan also wrote about Venedah. And there is no agreement. According to the Jordan, the Wends (a large tribe that is “worthy of contempt because of their weapons”) actually consisted of Slavs and Antes. At the end of the 1st century AD e. Tacitus wrote about Wends as vagrants, similar to robbers. In contrast to the nomadic Sarmatians, the Wends of Tacitus fought on foot, hiding behind shields.
In Soviet times it became canonical attribution of the Wends to the Slavs. A number of Slavic historians directly derive the genealogy of their peoples from the Wends. Belarusian historian Sergei Rassadin insists that “Jordanian Wends” should not be identified with earlier ones, especially with Tacitus ones. Roman authors did not give the ethnic characteristics of the Veneto. Perhaps, the ancient Venets / Venets should be viewed as a mixed ethnic community with the obvious presence of the Celts or as a stage of the Baltic-Slavic delimitation.
Nevertheless, on the basis of a comparison of archaic language strata, it has recently been increasingly concluded that the pre-Slavic language was distinguished from the peripheral Prabalt languages. Belarusian linguist Viktor Martynov clarifies - from the West-Baltic dialects.
The process of resettlement of the Slavs from a small territory to the vast expanses of the European continent is one of the brightest pages of the ancient history of peoples. Lithuanian-American researcher Maria Gimbutas assessed these tectonic processes:
“Appearing as an insignificant Indo-European group that lived north of the Carpathian mountains ..., Slavic farmers managed to survive only due to their persistence. In the end, they were able to inhabit vast areas in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as the Balkan Peninsula. Their invasion did not become a separate episode of the type of irregular raids of the Huns and Avars, but was planned systematic colonization. ”
2. Slavs, Wends, Balts ...
Conjugation of terms
We find the first indisputable references to the Slavs in written sources only in the 6th century by the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, who writes about the "Slavs" in his work The War on Goths (536–537).
The contemporary of Procopius, the Gothic historian Jordan, in his book On the Origin and Deeds of the Geths (551) also writes about the "Slavs" and indicates that they inhabit the expanses between the Carpathians and the Vistula, and in the East bring their borders to the Dnieper. But the majority of the territory of Belarus in the era of the Great Migration of Peoples remained outside the region of this Slavic settlement - with the exception of the southernmost part of modern Brest region.
One of the possible theories of the origin of the name of the Slavs connects it with the root of the “words” that meant “language”. Thus, the ethnonym (the self-name of the people) could have emerged as an opposition to the name “Germans” (from the word “mute”), which was used to refer to the northern neighbors, Germanic tribes, who spoke a language incomprehensible to the Slavs. But this version is not accepted by all linguists. Some argue that the ethnonyms on "-ene", "-yane" are almost always associated with some toponymic objects, most often with rivers, and not with abstract concepts. There is a wide scope for finding these rivers ...
From the tribal name of the Slavs in Greek, the name of slaves appeared - Middle Greek σκλαβοζ, hence the Late Lat sclavus (slave, Slav), German Sklave, French esclave, etc. Slavic captives in the early Middle Ages often became objects of Byzantine, German and Arab slave trade. Even in the 9th century, a significant part of the slaves entering the European markets was of Slavic origin. Western European languages well illustrate this phenomenon.
Veneds
Regarding the Slavins and the Antes of Jordan, there is at least some mutual understanding between historians - the former are regarded as the western part of the Slavs, the latter - as the eastern part. But Jordan also wrote about Venedah. And there is no agreement. According to the Jordan, the Wends (a large tribe that is “worthy of contempt because of their weapons”) actually consisted of Slavs and Antes. At the end of the 1st century AD e. Tacitus wrote about Wends as vagrants, similar to robbers. In contrast to the nomadic Sarmatians, the Wends of Tacitus fought on foot, hiding behind shields.
In Soviet times it became canonical attribution of the Wends to the Slavs. A number of Slavic historians directly derive the genealogy of their peoples from the Wends. Belarusian historian Sergei Rassadin insists that “Jordanian Wends” should not be identified with earlier ones, especially with Tacitus ones. Roman authors did not give the ethnic characteristics of the Veneto. Perhaps, the ancient Venets / Venets should be viewed as a mixed ethnic community with the obvious presence of the Celts or as a stage of the Baltic-Slavic delimitation.
Balts
Speaking of the Balts, one must also touch on the question of terms. The first written mention of this community belongs to the Roman historian Tacitus. But in his work “On the Origin of the Germans” (98), he called the peoples who lived south of the Venetian (Baltic) Sea as aestias (Latin aestii).
Only after more than a thousand years, the name “Esti” began to gain a foothold for the Finno-Ugric people on the southeast coast of the Baltic. The names Balts and Baltic languages so familiar to us today are neologisms. They were proposed, precisely as scientific terms, by the German linguist Georg Naselman in 1845.
At present, the lands occupied by peoples speaking the Baltic languages make up only 1/6 of the territory occupied by the Balts before the Slavic and German invasions. The former Baltic space was stretched from Prussia in the West to the upper reaches of the Oka in the East, where the militant tribe of the Ghindians lived in the neighborhood of the Volga Finno-Ugrians (a number of Russian chronicles). The territory of present-day Belarus was located in the heart of the Balt cultural area. On the bronze doors of the cathedral in Polish Gniezno, a Romanian-style memorial of the 12th century, images of Prussians are preserved - they are beardless, but with a mustache, their hair is cut.
At the end of the 19th century, the Danish linguist Wilhelm Thomsen, who studied the Baltic-Finnish mutual influences, showed that there are borrowings from the Baltic languages in Finnish and they refer to the names of animals, plants, body parts, colors, categories of time. These borrowings show how many new Baltic Indo-Europeans brought to the Northern lands.
Slavic expansion
In the historical epoch (the time about which there are written sources) the Balts were set aside from the main migration routes. They preserved their archaic forms of life and led an isolated life in the forests. When, under pressure from the Pechenegs, Bulgars and especially the Avars (Obrov), the Slavs began to penetrate the lands of the Western Balts and Finno-Ugrians, they did not meet here with a proper rebuff.
This is where the problems begin for researchers. The first signs of the Slavic expansion are not sufficiently confirmed by archaeological data. The number of burials and settlements was too insignificant. And today, experts argue the extent to which the Slavic influence corresponds to the finds of these artifacts in the Baltic cultures of Belarus at the end of the first millennium - Banzerovsky (central and northern Belarus) and Kolochina (eastern Belarus).
Undoubtedly, the monuments of Prague culture, again found in the very south of Belarus - in the Pripyat and Yaseldy basins, are considered Slavic. The then Slavic civilization looks quite modest - the Slavs lived in semi-dugouts, buried 0.5–1.2 m in the ground. Their inventory was poor. At that time, a different type of housing was distributed among the Balts - ground structures of the columnar structure. Like true forest children, the Balts could afford more comfort. But, unlike the Balts, the Slavs began to move.
It is obvious that the Slavic penetration to the North did not occur without conflicts with the local population - evidence of the cruel clashes are the destroyed Balt settlements. But sometimes for new residents there was enough free space. As G.V. Shtykhov writes, “the farther the Slavs moved north and northeast, the greater was the undeveloped land, non-cut forests, unoccupied floodplains of the rivers”.
Genetics data
The scale of the Slavic advancement causes serious discussions. Traditional historiography establishes linguistic and partly cultural assimilation of local Balts by Slavs. Opponents of this view say that Slavic penetration was very small, but the Slavs managed to create a state, and through its administrative and religious pressure, changes occurred in the region's linguistic and cultural landscape.
It must be admitted that only archaeological data do not allow solving the “Baltic-Slavic problem” of Belarus. The very path of the ethnic interpretation of archaeological artifacts is very risky, even with the stability of one or other traditions of production, for example, ceramics.
But recently, a new kind of historical sources has appeared - genetic materials. The greatest information content is achieved through a parallel analysis of the main types of genetic markers - Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA.
The Y chromosome provides the paternal line of transmission of hereditary information (to the son from his father only, to him from his father, etc.). In recent years, a joint Belarusian-Russian study on the gene pool of Belarus has been conducted. The authors of this work placed Belarusians on the Y chromosome precisely among the circle of Slavic peoples - the western and eastern. Belarusians mainly belong to the Rla genetic group, whose ancestors survived after the Poozersky glaciation (18–17 thousand years ago) and Indo-European expansion from the Northern Black Sea region 6–8 thousand years ago.
This gave grounds to some historians, for example, VL Nosevich, to state that the concept of the Baltic substrate of the ethnogenesis of Belarusians is buried.
But not so simple. The authors of the aforementioned study specifically for Y-chromosome markers revealed a genetic community that covers the territory from Poland to the west of Central Russia and includes Belarus. And this is largely a region of Baltic hydronymy!
Another major genetic marker, mitochondrial DNA, provides for the transmission of genetic information through the mother’s line (daughters receive these genes only from their mother, she’s from her mother, and so continuously for thousands of years). So, modern Belarusians are similar in mitochondrial DNA to both the Balts and the Slavs. In this regard, a hypothesis was formulated that female genes were transferred from a more ancient substrate, whereas male chromosomes reflect Slavic expansion and migration, mainly of the male part of the Slavic population.
If these calculations are correct, then the origin of Belarus should really be linked with the participation of both the Balts and the Slavs. However, one should not forget that cultures have a different mechanism of formation than the biological origin of human populations. And here surprises and transformations can be no less, if not more ...
3. Kaleidoscope of cultures
Archeology data
In the period before the spread in the territory of Belarus of writing, we have to use the concept of “archaeological culture”. This term was introduced in the late 1920s by Australian philologist and archaeologist Viram Gordon Child to designate a collection of archaeological monuments located in the same area and having a number of similarities that unite them. Usually, an archeological culture is given a name by some characteristic feature that distinguishes it from other cultures.
In fact, behind the neutral names of archaeological cultures, at least in the period after Christ’s birth (that is, in our era), historians ’caution is often hidden. Indeed, it is extremely difficult to give ethnic characteristics to those or other communities that have left the descendants of the so-called "archaeological cultures." Therefore, we are looking for messages from ancient authors about our lands in order to somehow compare this information (very general and confused) with the archaeological cultures known in Belarus. We also use the retrospective method, when we trace the connection of one or another “archaeological culture” with the population of a later time, known from written sources.
It is clear that the use of such methods leaves room for endless discussions. But we cannot completely abstractly talk about the people who inhabited Belarus in antiquity, without trying to somehow delineate their origin, as well as the impact on the development of people of a later time.
For all the compactness of Belarus, the ethnocultural processes on its territory did not take place in the same way. In Northern and Central Belarus during the whole “iron age” no radical changes were observed. These were territories stably occupied by the eternal inhabitants of the region - the Balts, whose energy was directed to internal colonization. On the contrary, more diverse and dynamic processes took place in the south of Belarus. The Goths descended here from the North of Europe, the Southern open spaces affected the Great Migration of Peoples, it was in Polesie that Slavicization processes began before all other regions of Belarus.
A very significant change in the life of the local population occurred in the middle of the 1st mil. N. e. Monuments of Eastern-Balt cultures (Dnepro-Dvinsk and shaded ceramics), controversial Kiev culture (possibly mixed Balto-Slavic), and also East German / Gothic / Velbarian culture ceased to exist. At the level of archaeological material, we can trace the formation of communities already closer to us.
Let us try to summarize what we know about the “archaeological cultures” that took place on the territory of Belarus in the middle - the second half of the 1st millennium AD e. - on the eve of the emergence of statehood (see table).
These cultures are interesting in that they defined the ethnic and political history of Belarus almost until the XIII century.
Prototype of Lithuania
From the turn of the 4th – 5th centuries, the population of northern and central Belarus began to feel migratory waves. As a result of migrations from the west (from the territory of north-eastern Poland), the Baltic Balts (Prussians and Yatvägi) fell into the space of the Eastern Balts (the ancestors of Letuvis, Latvians and Belarusians). Probably under the influence of the more advanced at the time of the Western Balts, the conservative communities of the Eastern Balts received an impulse in their development. The Eastern Balts were too late in their forests, they needed a new dynamic, which was brought by their Western relatives.
Extrovert impulses from this part of our region led in the middle of the 13th century to the formation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Mysterious Kryvichi
A far from simple historical problem is the question of the origin and ethnicity of Krivichy. Normatively they are credited to the Slavs (for example, the Moscow archeologist Valentin Sedov, the creator of the concept of the Baltic substrate of Belarus, did so). But both archaeological and written data testify in favor of a more complex history of the owners of the North of our region in a new era.
Krivichy left their funerary monuments - the notorious "long burial mounds." In fact, with a small height, their length sometimes reaches 100–110 meters. The popular name for such kurgans is “volatovki” (from “volat” is a giant).
Today, archaeologists write about the traces of the migration of the population that left long burial mounds. This path is determined, among other things, on the basis of finds of V-shaped corrugated buckles that spread from Germanic cultures in Central Europe through the western Balts to the Krivichsk Pskov Region.
The migration routes of the Krivichi people always passed through the Baltic territories, and this alerted the researchers - there are no Slavic signs here. Anthropologically, the Krivichi turned out to be not just similar, but common with the Latgals (inhabitants of Eastern Latvia). And the hydronymy (names of water bodies) of the Krivitch territory is undoubtedly Balt.
Belarusian archaeologist Alexander Medvedev now directly writes that Krivichi are Balts. Another major expert on Krivichi antiquities, Georgi Shtykhov, relates Krivichi to Eastern Slavs, but having a Baltic component in their pedigree. Shtykhov notes that the relations between the Slavs and the Balts were not unambiguous.
There were peaceful coexistence, and military clashes, and assimilation processes. And not only the Slavs assimilated the Balts, but the Slavs in some cases were assimilated by the Balts.
It should be recalled that the author of The Tale of Bygone Years does not name Krivichy among the "Slovene languages of Russia." At the same time, for the Kiev chroniclers, the Polochans - part of the Krivichy - are certainly Slavs. And in the middle of the XII century, the Krivichi disappeared altogether from the pages of the chronicles.
Krivich settlement Tushemlya
Nevertheless, we can attribute the early Krivichi to objective Balts to objective signs. With the emergence in the 9th century of permanent fortified settlements of the Slavs (such as Polotsk, Vitebsk, Lukoml), the initiative finally passed to these recent migrants. The language of urban Krivichi (Polochans) became Slavic.
Paradoxically, Scandinavian settlers and the new Varangian-Russian elite were involved in such language transformations and the transformation of the Krivichy of our land into Polochans.
4. Fires dregovichey
Problem "trinity"
On the example of the Krivichy and the belonging of this ethnic community to the Balts - at least at the early stage of its development - we see that the textbook scheme of the Eastern Slavic trinity of the ancestors of the Belarusians (Krivichi + Dregovichi + Radimichi) does not work. From the careful admission that the basins of the Western Bug and Neman inhabited the Balts (Yatvägi), historians, following archaeologists, reluctantly and with great distance, almost completely ignoring linguistics, are forced to turn to the ethnic interpretation of other tribal communities in ancient Belarus, known from chronicles.
The inevitable question is how is the situation with the modern understanding of the origin of dregovichi and radimichi? It seems that here we can not avoid surprises.
Ancestors
At the beginning of the twelfth century, the author of the Tale of Temporary Years defined the territory of the Dregovichi settlement in a very large region between Pripyat and Western Dvina. However, scarce chronicle information does not allow a detailed description of the space of this ethnic community. Sluchesk (Slutsk) and Klechesk (Kletsk) are called fully Dregovic, respectively, under 1116 and 1149 years. In the XII century, the Kiev chronicler noted that the Dregovichi belong to the “Slavic language”, that they inhabit the central part of the Belarusian region and have their reign. It's all.
Therefore, to reconstruct the origin of the ancient inhabitants of almost half of our region, one has to use mainly data from archeology and linguistics.
It is believed that in the 6th – 8th centuries the Slavic ancestors of the Dregovichi occupied a relatively small (middle) part of the Pripyat basin. The main part of their settlements was concentrated in the area of Pripyatsky Polesie, where the Dregovichy tribal center, Turov, was later founded.
North of Pripyat at that time the Baltic population still lived. The previous (“pre-Dregovich”) Balts are known to us under the conditional name of the culture of hatched ceramics. Life on the sites of the "streak" ceased by the middle of I millennium N. e. In place of fortified settlements came open settlements. They were distributed in the northern part of the land Dregovichi. And typical Eastern Lithuanian things of the 5th – 7th centuries are regularly found in the burial grounds of the central Belarusian region.
The Balts origin in the culture of the dregovic have spiral rings, star-shaped buckles, snake-headed bracelets (snakes and snakes are totems and sacred animals of the Balts). Slavic in origin were such elements of the material culture of the dregoviches as large metal beads, covered with grains, ring-like temporal rings. In addition to decorations, Slavic were sickles, knives, ceramics.
5. Fireplaces
The beginning of the Dregovichi colonization of the left-bank part of the Pripyat basin can be traced along the barrows with the cremation of the period of the 9th – 10th centuries. The mapping of the details of the funeral rite of the Dregovichi kurgans of the 11th – 12th centuries shows the division of the Dregovichi territory into two parts — the northern and the southern. For the northern part mounds are characteristic with the remains of fires at the foot of the embankments. This feature of the northern Dregovich barrows brings them closer to the synchronous barrows of Polotsk, Smolensk Krivichy and Radimichi. In the southern regions there are no traces of fires under the remains of the dead.
In general, in those regions where the Slavs did not encounter the Balts, there is no such detail of the funeral ceremony as the cleansing of the surface for burial by fire. In the mounds of Drevlyane, Polyan, northerners and Vyatichi, the remains of fires at the foot of the mounds are unknown. The remains of similar fires in the Eastern Litovsk barrows are well known, including in graves much earlier than the Dregovic ones. Thus, the fires under the burial grounds of the Dregovichi are the cleansing lights of the Balts.
A similar picture is revealed when studying the anthropological structure of the modern population of the Pripyat basin. Corresponding studies show that nowadays, as in antiquity, the southern boundary of the Baltic anthropological zone is Pripyat.
The population of the Upper Dnieper (north of Pripyat) belongs to the Valdai anthropological type of the Central European race, spread throughout the eastern part of the ancient Baltic territory, including in the eastern regions of modern Lietuva and Latvia. And the modern population of the right-bank part of the Pripyatsky basin belongs to the Polissya anthropological type of Caucasians, close to the modern Ukrainian.
The words
There is another interesting terminological feature. In some regions, the term “kurgans” is unknown to the local population. Kurgan mounds here are called "Kapts". The Russian archaeologist V.V. Sedov showed that the range of the term “kaptsy” in the Upper Dnieper region corresponds to the group of ancient tribes who left settlements with hatched ceramics. “Kapets” is a word of Balt origin. More ancient than the Belarusian "kapets", the Lithuanian word "kapas" means precisely the grave.
And the very name of the Dregoviches refers us to the Baltic roots. The explanation of the origin of the name of this ethnic community from the word “drygva” (“swamp”) has become customary, which allegedly indicates the place of their initial settlement. But it should be recalled that the Belarusian "drygva" comes from the Baltic root. There are many similar words in Lithuanian: dregnas - wet, damp; dregme - dampness, humidity, etc.
Of course, these words reflect the characteristics of the area where the ancient Dregovichi lived - wet wetlands in the Pripyat basin. But the very scheme of the origin of the name is very interesting. According to the Moscow linguist Georgiy Khaburgayev, the name of the Baltic community of the Pripyat region was dreguva, which corresponded to the construction of the name of the neighboring, north-west, Baltic community lietuva. After mixing the Slavs with the Balts, the former basis was preserved in the name of the new community, to which the Slavic “-ichi” was added. Thus, the name “Dregovichi” (drygavichy), which is the Slavicized form of the former Balt name, arose.
Experience
Dregoviches are especially interesting because their example can be used to very clearly trace the Slavic ethnic infusion into the Baltic expanse of the future Belarus.
Krivichi until the moment when they had a state and the Slavs established themselves in the cities founded by them, they retained their Baltic character. And the state ethnos of Polotsk, which emerged on the basis of Krivichy, had Slavic as a literary and sacral language thanks to the Varangian princes and their retinues.
Dregovichi, apparently, approached the border of the 1st and 2nd millennia as a Slavic-speaking community, which, however, firmly preserved the Baltic heritage in its physical appearance, in material and spiritual culture. Dregovichi testify to our Baltic roots, but at the same time they refute the radical concepts of the absence of any Slavic migration to the territory of Belarus in the period up to the 9th century.
6. Radimichi
“Lyashskaya legend”
Today, as well as 900 years ago, any story about radichichi in textbooks begins with references to the wandering of this tribe, who settled in the south-east of Belarus in the Sozh basin. And today, most historians follow the path indicated by the Kiev monk Nestor at the beginning of the 12th century.
The chronicle tradition indicates that the Radimichi were new settlers in Sogd: “The Radimichi and Viatichi were from the Pole family. There were two brothers from the Poles - Rodin, and the second - Vyatka; and they came and sat down: Rodin was in Sogl, and radiichi were called from him. ” In The Tale of Bygone Years, the tradition of the arrival of the Radiches is repeated, and again under the year 984.
Interestingly, the legendary reports of the arrival of the RadiMichs correlate well with archaeological materials. Slavic archaeological sites, older than the IX century, in the territory of resettlement of the Radimichi were not revealed.
On the basis of the chronicler's report on the arrival of the RadiMichs, the ideas of historians that had prevailed for several centuries arose. According to them, the Radimichi were one of the Lyash tribes, who settled in the Upper Dnieper. This legend impressed both Polish authors of the 15th – 16th centuries. - Jan Dlugosh and Matthew Stryikovsky, as well as historians and Slavists of the XVIII – XIX centuries. - Czech Pavel Safarik, Lithuanian Theodor Narbut, Russian Vasily Tatishchev, Nikolai Karamzin, Sergey Solovyov.
The ancestral home of the Radimichi was placed in different corners of Polish territory, including in the Vistula basin near the city of Radom. But there are a lot of toponyms with the base "rad-" in the West Slavic territory.
Already at the end of the 19th century, when the ethnographic and linguistic specifics of Belarusians were actively recorded by Russian authors, the “Lyashsky” origin of the Radimichi made it possible to explain the Belarusian jelly and the tart. At least, the linguist Alexey Shakhmatov and his contemporaries saw Polish features here.
But at the beginning of the 20th century, Efim Karsky proved that joking developed in Belarusian language, regardless of Polish, on a local ethnocultural basis. Karsky wrote that the messages of the chronicler should be understood in a figurative sense. In the sense that the radio came to the Dnieper region from the western regions, where they lived next door to the Poles.
There are no West Slavic features in the material culture of the Radiches. West Slavic influences throughout the VIII – XIII centuries. really covered almost all the Belarusian lands. However, the range of Radimichi is inferior in this sense between the rivers of the Dnieper and the Neman, the basin of the Bug and the Neman.
Radimichsky decorations
In any school or university textbook, when describing Radimichs, jewelery that are considered an integral feature of this tribe - seven-pointed temporal rings are always mentioned. In places where these rings were found by archaeologists, it is possible to delineate the distribution area of the Radimichi in the XI – XII centuries. Special concentration of such finds on the Posozhie.
Seven-rayed temporal rings appeared and spread among Radimichi in the 10th – 11th centuries. But, in their origin, they are associated with earlier specimens of the 8th – 9th centuries, which occur independently of the tribal boundaries over a rather large territory. And these products go back to the ornaments of Arab-Iranian origin.
At the end of the 19th century, the Russian archaeologist Sizov proved that the seven-ray temporal rings belong to the Arab jewelry industry. Once on our lands, they retained the Arabic form, but the Arabic technique of their manufacture was forgotten. In the XI century, the rings began to be made not from silver, but from alloys. The surface of the rings has traces of grain, but not soldered, as in the case of the Arabs, but cast immediately. These products are more rough on the technique of execution. Once having got to the tribal elite, temporal rings were transformed by the material and technology.
Thus, the origin of the temporal rings of Radim women is not at all connected with the problem of the origin of the Radiches themselves. Foreign ornaments served as examples for local craftsmen.
Fashion existed at all times, and not only on jewelry (now its influence even on funeral rites is proved), but it acted selectively on certain ethnic communities. These rings, imported by their nature, were so liked by the radio girls that they later became perceived as their ethnicity.
Huts and Barrows
It is surprising archaeologists that the Radimichi lived in ground huts, and not in semi-Earths, like other Slavs. On this occasion, Valentin Sedov wrote that this custom could have been developed already in the Sozh, not without the influence of the local Balts. True, the Russian archaeologist argues further; in this case, among the earliest posozhsky settlements of the Radimichi, half-inhabitants of the Earth should have been encountered. But semi-earthen settlements in the Sozh basin were not identified.
Common Slavic funeral custom - placing the dead head to the west. In the lands of Radimich often men laid their heads to the east. This is clearly seen in the paired burials, where the dead are put their heads in different directions. However, such kurgans are found on a territory wider than the settlement area of the Radimichi.
Among the things found in Radimasky barrows, there are neck hryvnas - hoops, the ends of which come one by one and decorated with rosettes. The closest analogues of such hryvnas are known in the Baltic antiquities of Latvia and Lietuva. Also of Baltic origin are snakehead bracelets. The metal spirals, characteristic of the Latgalian costume, are also found in the Radimich barrows.
These findings look natural. The beginning of the second millennium of our era was a period of confusion of the Baltic-Slavic population. However, in the Radimich barrows of the 11th – 12th centuries. Baltic elements are found more often than in other areas of the Upper Dnieper and Dvina. Most likely, this fact reflects the later Slavicization of the Balts in the Sozh basin. If in Smolensk-Polotsk Kryvichy the Baltic elements are numerous in the 8th – 10th centuries, and later their number decreases, then in Radimichsky Sozh, items of the Baltic type remain common in the barrows of the 11th – 12th centuries.
Ethnic background
From the middle of the 1st millennium of our era, Posozhie, like most of the territory of Belarus, became an arena of resettlements. This was preceded by the deterioration of the climate in Central Europe. Due to the increase in humidity and cooling, the water level has increased, many territories have become unsuitable for agriculture.
The inhabitants of the banks of the Vistula, among whom were the Western Balts, moved east. The immigrants did not disappear among the local East-Balta population of Belarus, but they brought him many European features of that time, which is particularly well illustrated by the decoration that is reconstructed from archaeological finds.
Some of these western Balts (meaning Yatvyagi and Golad) reached Sozh. The same details of the funeral rite, like on White Mountain in the Chechersk district, are found in Gomel archeologist Oleg Makushnikov between the Elbe and the Vistula rivers. Part of the Western Balts went further east - on the Oka. This community is known in Russian annals as a swagger, giving rise also to the Vyatichi chronicles.
An anthropological study of burials shows that yatvyagi, Radimichi, Vyatichi and near Moscow heads have a similar physical type, the origin of which is associated with the Western Balts. Moscow linguist Georgy Khaburgaev, based on the hydronimy of Posozhya, attributed the language of the pre-Slavic population of this region to the Yatvyazh (Western Balt) dialects.
Another part of the migrants moved through the Dnieper and Dvina to the north and reached eastern Latvia, forming the Latgalian ethnic group.
It may seem unexpected, but the ancestors of the Radmiches are ethnically and culturally closest among the remaining ethnic groups to the Latgals, from the tribal names of which the Germans later formed the name of the country - Latvia.
Archaeologists have long noticed the similarity of ornaments Radicich and Latgalov (radiant brooches and pendants). Differences only in details - Latgalian products have sharp ends, while Radimic products are more rounded. The details also differ from the pendants with the image of the head of the tour (bull).
After another 400–500 years, in the 9th century, Slavic expansion begins in the Sozh basin, known among archaeologists as the distribution of onion-raykovetskoy culture. For example, the wide settlement of the Slavs in the vicinity of the chronicle Homiy (Gomel) dates back to the 9th – 10th centuries. - to the second wave of Slavic expansion in our region. In this way, the descendants of the West-Balt immigrants from the Vistula (“from the Poles”), who remained in the Posozhie, were slandered and went down in history as Radimichi.
The Kievan chronicler Nestor did not know what to do with the Radimachs, which “tongues” they belong to. At the beginning of the chronicle, Nestor listed all the Slavonic, Finno-Ugric and East-Balt communities, but he avoided the linguistic characteristics of the Western Balts (Prussians, Jatvies and Minuses). Also, the chronicler did not attach to any group of languages and Radimichi.
The last time chronicles are mentioned by Radiches under 1169 already as an ethnographic unit of the Eastern Slavs - Russia.
This Slavicization occurred not only due to the influx of Slavic settlers, rather limited, but also due to the active tax and religious policy of Kiev and its Varangian-Russian elite in this region.
7. Expansion of Rus
In the 9th century, Russia entered the historical arena of Eastern Europe. Its appearance a millennium in advance has led to the development of our region. Note that the community of Russia and the later Russia as a territory and a state are two different things.
Viking Age
Nestor in the XII century claimed that the state formation of Russia was started by the “vocation of the Vikings” in Novgorod in 862. Even earlier Slovenia, Krivichi, as well as Finnish-speaking Chud and Merya paid tribute to the Varangians. “Those Varyagi were called Rus, as others are called svay, and others - Normans and Angles ... From those Varyags the Russian land was called,” the chronicler noted.
There is nothing extraordinary in the fact that the tribes paid tribute to the Scandinavians. At that time, the Normans terrorized Europe. The Scandinavian military trading expeditions, starting in 793, reached the shores of Britain, Ireland, France, and the Mediterranean. The southern coast of the Baltic, the basins of the Dvina, the Dnieper and the Volga were the zone of the constant presence of the Vikings.
In Western Europe, the Scandinavian aggressors, Danes and Norwegians, were called Normans (literally “northern people”). They called themselves the Vikings, from the Old Norse "vikingr" - "man of the fjords." At first they were mobile detachments of pirates who operated in coastal waters and hid in bays and inlets. Interestingly, in the Slavic languages, the suffix "ing" has moved to "ez / ide", turning the pirate Viking into "knight".
The Slavs called the Vikings Varangians. This word comes from the old Germanic "wara" ("oath", "oath"). Allegedly, this refers to the oath of allegiance, which the Scandinavians gave to the Byzantine emperor, engaging in the service. And already from Byzantium the word "Varyag" passed to the Slavs.
What pushed the Vikings into distant hikes? First, the overpopulation of Scandinavia and the lack of arable land there. Secondly, social processes. Strengthened to know, the leaders thirst for enrichment. Western Europe was crushing at this time. The situation for the attacks was favorable.
First, the expansion of the Normans had the appearance of raids and devastation of the coast. But in the 10th century, the Normans began to create states in the occupied territories. So, in Northern France, the Duchy of Normandy arose. England in the XI century fully subordinate to the Danish kings, and later underwent conquest from Normandy. Around 1130, the Normans founded their state even in southern Italy - the Sicilian kingdom.
Attracted the Vikings and the expanses of Eastern Europe. It was a transit space connecting the north of Europe with rich Byzantium, where the Vikings could be hired to the Imperial Guard or simply robbed indecently wealthy Romans.
And that's what's important. Eastern Europe, this huge region, ripened for the state of creation. Scandinavian leaders could become princes, subjugating the Balts, Finns and Slavs. But did the Vikings initiate the creation of the first Russian principalities? Disputes about this have not stopped until now.
Around Norman theory
In the first half of the 18th century, the court scholars of the Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna, the Germans in the Russian service Gotlieb-Siegfried Bayer, Gerard-Friedrich Miller and August-Ludwig Schlozer formulated the "Norman Theory". It was based on the assertion that the Scandinavians created the Russian state.
However, the Russian Empire arose in the confrontation with Sweden. The whole state ideology after Peter I was permeated with the pathos of the Poltava victory. Therefore, the Russian patriots, and the first among them the universal Mikhail Lomonosov, saw in the Norman theory the thesis about the backwardness of the ancient Slavs and their inability to independently create a state.
Antinormanists subtracted from Nestor "between the lines", as if Rurik came from the Polab Slavs ... However, they built their versions on intuition and logic, without relying on historical sources. The Normanists were the largest Russian historians, such as Nikolai Karamzin and Mikhail Pogodin.
Ghost Ros River
The balance of power changed dramatically in favor of anti-Normanists only in Soviet times. Academician Boris Rybakov in his writings identified Russia and the Slavs. Moreover, he placed the first Eastern Slavic state in the forest-steppe of the Ukrainian Dnieper region. And the historian derived the name of the state and the people from the tributary of the Dnieper, the Ros River, flowing south of Kiev.
This version has got into textbooks. However, it is not supported by data from various sciences. Linguists say that "Rus" can not come from "Ros". Rather the opposite. Even the word "Russia" is a tracing paper from the Greek name of Russia, used in the office of the Byzantine Empire.
In the 1960s, the Normanists partially regained their positions. True, they were forced to admit that the Slavic proto-state, headed by Russia, existed even before Rurik. The short-term free-thinking of the sixties was reflected in the departure from scientific formalism and inclination to the Norman theory.
Russia is the rowers
According to modern theories, the name Rus can also come from the West-Finnish word “routsi-rootsi” (Swedes). In the Slavic language, the same mechanism worked as in the transition of the Finnish self-name “suomi” to the old Russian “sum”.
But the word “routsi” is borrowed from the Old Germanic language. The basis for it could be the word "rops" ("rowers") - the self-name of those Scandinavians who sailed to the West Finnish lands. At first, only warrior-combatants were called that, regardless of their origin and language. But over time, it was transferred to the entire population of Russia.
For the first time the people of "Rus" is mentioned in Frankish sources. The Spaniard Galinda (saint Prudentius), the alleged author of the Vertina Annals, on May 18, 839, recorded the arrival of the embassy from the Byzantine emperor to the king of the Franks, Louis I the Pious. Along with the embassy, other travelers arrived, asking for help in returning to their homeland:
"He / the Byzantine emperor / sent with them those who themselves, this means his people, called Ros, whose king, called kagan, sent them earlier so that they would notify of friendship with him, asking through this letter ... / return".
The Byzantine emperor did not want the Ruses to return by the same road that they came to him. Because she was "through the barbarians are very cruel and terrible." Therefore, he sent ambassadors through the land of the Franks.
However, the ruler of the Franks decided to figure out what kind of people Ros. And "I learned that they are from the people of Sveons / Sveevs, Swedes /, rather, they are scouts, than petitioners of friendship." Therefore, Louis ordered to detain them, as they would say today, "until clarification."
Russian Kaganat
It is striking that the ruler of Russia was called "Kagan".
And the “Vertinsky Annals” is not the only case. Kagan (Khakan) ruler of Russia calls a number of sources of the IX century. Even in the XI – XII centuries, this title was used in relation to the Grand Duke of Kiev. For example, on the wall in Kiev Sofia there is an inscription: “Save, O Lord, our kagan” (apparently, Svyatoslav Yaroslavich, who reigned in 1073–1076) was meant.
Reference: Kagan is the title of the head of state for many Turkic peoples of the early medieval period. The term "Kagan" was first mentioned in Chinese annals under the year 312. / ... / From the middle of the 6th century, he was accepted by the rulers of the Turkic Kaganate, then he moved on to other Turkic-speaking peoples and states that were genetically associated with him (Avars, Yenisei Kirghiz, Pechenegs, Khazars, etc.). After the liberation of the glade at the end of the 8th - the beginning of the 9th century, the Kievan princes took the title of khagan from the Khazar power, emphasizing the independence of Kievan Rus from the Khazar kaganate (in Russia it existed until the end of the XII century) ...
/ Soviet historical encyclopedia, vol. 6, p. 768-769.
The Byzantines systematically called the ruler of Russia Kagan. The Arab-Persian sources of the 870s mention the Russian Khaganate and emphasize the difference between Russia and the Slavs:
“As for ar-Rusiyi, it is located on an island surrounded by a lake. The island on which they / Russ / live, three days in length, is covered with forests and swamps. / ... / They have a king called the Khakan Rus. They attack the Slavs, drive up to them on ships, disembark, take them captive, take them to Hazaran and Bulkar and sell there. They do not have arable land, and feed only on the fact that they bring them from the land of the Slavs. / ... / And they have no real estate, neither villages nor plowed lands. Their only occupation is trading in sables, proteins and other furs. / ... / They have many cities and they live freely. / ... / They are tall, handsome and courageous in the attacks. But on horseback, they don’t show courage, and they make all their raids and trips on ships. / Rus / wear wide trousers. / ... / Putting on such trousers, assemble them at the knees, to which they are tied ... They all always carry swords "...
Researchers agree that such a kaganate could exist until the middle of the 9th century, later giving way to the state formations described in Russian (Kiev) chronicles. Historians place Kaganate differently - and in the Middle Dnieper region, and in the Slavic-Finnish North, and on the island of Rügen. The zone of influence of this proto-state probably included the Krivichi. It is known, for example, that in the year 859 "the Varangians from across the sea collected tribute from the Chud, and from the Slavs, and from Mary, and from the Krivichi."
But what does the title of kagan mean? Was he not a reflection of the claims of Russia to equality with the Khazars and to rivalry with them for control over the Slavs? Or, on the contrary, testified to vassal dependence on the Khazars? Indeed, in Khazaria there were several "younger" Kagans.
The Khazars, according to the Tale of Bygone Years, were paid by the ancestors of the eastern Belarusians - Radimichi. Like many other tribes of the middle and southern Dnieper, the Khazars took from them "on a silver coin and squirrel skin with smoke." Only in 885, the Varangian Prince Helgi, known in the Eastern Slavic tradition as the Prophetic Oleg, freed them from the Khazar tribute, that is, he subordinated to Kiev.
Thus, before Rurik became entrenched in Novgorod and Kiev, in the middle of the 9th century, the north of Belarus was in the zone of influence of the Vikings (the Russian Khaganate?), And the southeast was subject to the Khazars.
Briefly about the author
Oleg Ivanovich Dernovich (1966 r.) - Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Archeology and Special Historical Disciplines of the Mogilev State University named after Arkady Kuleshov.
