There is a road from the Variags to the Greek
бѣ путь из Варягъ въ Грѣкы
C'è una strada fra i Variaghi e i Greci
Il y a une route des Variagues jusqu'au Grecs
Es gibt eine Strasse von den Variagen bis zu den Griechen
Whilst the Eastern peoples invaded Central Europe, Northern Germans, the Norse, or Viking peoples, had not stopped to settle in the Baltic area. For instance, the most ancient Norse village was discovered recently in Latvia. These developments of the Nordic peoples is as much stupefying as the one of East-Europeans peoples. Having developed as a Northern branch of the Germanic peoples originated in the Northern part of present-days Germany, they spread throughout Sweden, left empty by the Germanic peoples migrating southward (like the Goths, the Burgunds, the Gepids, the Swabes), and, leaving from there, they started again, populating the coasts of Denmark, Norway, Latvia and Finland. In a further step, they started conquering the Northern parts of Ireland, Scotland and England, Normandy, Flanders, the Northern part of Germany, and entered into Russia through Novgorod and the Great Russian rivers. Later, the areas of expansion of the Vikings covered a still larger area, such as Ireland, Greenland, North America, the Mediterranean coasts, Southern Italy, parts of the Levant, and especially, Russia.
According to ancient Russian historiography (the “Chronicle of Passed Times”), the Vikings, which were called “Ruotsi” in Finland and “Variagi” in Russia, known to the Slavs for their ability to travel and to trade throughout Russia along the greater lakes and rivers, were invited, by the Slavs, to become their kings, in their capital city, Novgorod, because of their superior political know-how. The tribe which was called by Slavs to become the ruling dynasty was the one of the Ross, a very well known surname in Scandinavia and in Anglo-Saxon countries. In Finnish, “Ruotsi” means Sweden. It has to be recalled that, according to most historiographers, a large part of the inhabitants of Rus’ were of Finnic origin. Still today, a large part of Northern Russia is populated by remnants of several Finnic tribes.
As anticipated above, it is not clear whether the founder of Kievskaja Rus’, Rjurik, was really Norse, or, better, a german Slav (Obodrite or Vendic), surrounded by Norse warriors and settling into the Finnish Stara Ladoga.
According to a widespread doctrine, Ross derives from “ródr”, because the well-known Viking ships, the “Drakkar”, were propelled both by a large square sail and by two ranges of “ródr”. It is for this reason that the country governed by the “Ródr” was called “Rus’”, and, since its capital city was Kiev, the first step in its history is called “Kievskaja Rus’” (the “Rus’ of Kiev”). Of course, there are also other alternative, but less recognized etymologies of the name. It is easily to understand that the name “Russia” derives from “Rus’” more than its equivalent in Russian, which is “Rossija” (deriving directly from the ancient clan of the “Ross”, probably thanks to a latinisation adopted during the Enlightenment period).
Since Kiev is in present-days Ukraine, the Ukrainian official historiography is presently contending that “Kievskaja Rus’” has not to be considered as the origin of present-days Russia. In reality, Middle-Ages Rus’ covered an area which is not identifiable with any of the modern Nation-States. In fact, it stretched from present-days Bessarabia, Bucovina and Galicia, up to Belarus’ and Novgorod, whilst its Eastern borders reached up to present-days Tatarstan, Donbass and Crimea. As a consequence, for the purpose of this work, we will consider Russia as including all these territories. Surely, it included a largest part of present-days Ukraine, but the “Zemlja Russkaja” was always described by the Chronicles and poets as a single compound, albeit governed by different princes, which, from another side, were all Rjurikovi ci(descendants of the first “Variags, King, Rjurik). In fact, “Kievskaja Rus’” was a sort of “Federation” of city-states, ruled by their princes “Kniazy”, which descended all from the family of that Rjurik of the house of Ross, which the Kievans had called to rule their town. The role of the Rurikovići in the life of Russia has been huge, and even some ministers of the Communist Soviet Union (including Cičerin, the Minister of War under Lenin) claimed to be a descendant of Rjurik.
So, Kievskaja Rus’ was a multinational state, with a Scandinavian and Slavonic “core”, speaking Church Slavonic and old Russian, but with a larte part of population composed by Finns and Turks, besides Greek monks and other allies and satellites.
The Vikings (called, in Russia, Variags), had created a tight network of commercial routes, going throughout the Russian lakes and seas. Via this network, they were able to trade the most different types of goods from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. From these seas, the goods were further transported and traded worldwide. For this reason, the Kievskaja Rus’ was also called “From the Variags to the Greeks”.
Whereas the Variags had brought, into Russia, their superior organizational capabilities, the Greeks and the other Greek-orthodox people (inside and outside of the Byzantine Empire: the Bulgarians, the Syrians, the Egyptians) were importing, into the country, their cultural and religious know-how. In the same way as the Moravians and the Pannonians were baptized by Cyrill and Methodius, and the Magyars were baptized by Catholic clergymen, the peoples of Rus’ were baptized by Byzantine clergymen, and became a bullwark of the Eastern Christian culture. The first literary works in Ancient Russian are either translations of Eastern Mediterranean works in Greek, or works of East Mediterranean clergymen in Russia, like John Damascene,, Kosnas Indicoplestes, George Armatolos, the Palestinian Antiochos, the Antiochian Nikin, Černogorski, Efrem the Syrian, John of Suraj, Cyrill of Jerusalem, a.s.o..
The influence of Byzance on Russia has been unbelievably durable. The “Grecization” of Russian religious culture developed in subsequent waves, the first one commencing with the baptism of Kievskaja Rus’ and with the influence of East Mediterranean clergymen on Russian Emperors.
The second one was when, after that the Turkish invasions had conquered Byzance, the Kniaz of Moscow accepted the project to re-define the latter as “Tretij Rim”. The third one was at the moment of the Reform of the Russian Church according to Greek standards, which led to the great Russian Schism, the “Raskol’”, from which the denomination of the “Old Believers” (“Raskol’niki”) arose.
All this shows that Middle Ages Russia, far from being an insulated and barbaric territory, was an area of vivid cultural life, of strong political organization, of an intensive and continuous commercial exchanges.
The Variags connected Rus’, via the Baltic Sea, with all the known “Western” world: all of Europe, the Mediterranean, America, via the Black see, with the Middle East, and, via the Caspian Sea, with the far East . Then Tatars and Mongols brought customs and technology of Mongolia, China and Persia; Byzantines, Turks and Jews connected ancient Rus’ with the Middle East.
Also the political structures, far from being crystallized in an archaic form of “Asiatic despotism”, as hinted by many “Western” commentators, varied without interruption: from the “classic” freedoms of the originary peoples of the steppes and the Novgorod Republic (viece), to the republican forms of Greek colonies on the Black Sea (boulé), of the Variags (thing), of the Kossacks (Rada), up to a Federation of Feudal Monarchies like the Kievskaja Rus’ (Duma), and to the Absolutist government of the following “Zarstvo” and “Imperija”, which, on the other side, were absolutely in line with the contemporary political structures, for instance, of England under Henry VIII and Elisabeth 1st, or of Milan under the Visconti and the Sforza, or of France under Louis XIV. In any case, political exchanges with Europe were very tight.
The Rjurik Dynasty, as well as the Greek Clergy, was invited into Russia precisely for what, at their time, was considered to be importing “European” lifestyles: monarchy, commerce, Christendom, in the same way as the East Bulgarians of Bolgar (Kazan) called the Muslims, and the Khazars called the Jews. Words like “kniaz” (prince) and “Vieče” (council) come from the Germanic word “Kuning” (king) and “Witan” (assembly).
In particular, the Rjurikovići had a very active intermarriage policy with European kings, which was continued by the Russian rules up to the end of their empire. In particular, Vladimir the Great married Ann of Byzance; Jaroslav married the Norvegian Ingigerda (Irina); Elizaveta Jaroslavna married king Harold of Norway; Anna Jaroslavna married Henry 1st of France, and later on became Queen of France; Anastasija Jaroslavna married Andrew 1st of Hungary.
Centralization and supremacy of the King on the Church came from Greece, and, later on, from the Protestant Revolutions.
Eneas Piccolomini, an Italian humanist and geographer, who later on became Pope Pius II, and to whom we owe the concept of the “European Common House”, inserted Russia into the geography of Europe in the XV Century. According to him, the borderline ran alongside the river Don and the Azov Sea.
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