' is intb those ancient trade relations —
t I peaceful intercourse enforced by warlike
means — that we are to look for the most important arms of the old Russian state. Who discovered this trade route? We see no compelling reason to deny the honour to the Slavs, although it is established beyond doubt that even before the middle of the ninth century the Northmen reached Byzantium along this route. On the other hand, the marauding and trading expeditions which were carried on by Russians in the tenth century and earlier to the sea of Azov, the Caspian, and further still to the Caucasus and the shores of Persia, emanated from Scandinavians, and not from Slavs.
RELIGION
Native of Yakutsk
The religious conceptions of the Russian Slavs were but little developed. All other Aryan peoples, including the western Slavs, excel them in this respect. There was neither a distinct priestly class, nor were there images of the gods, nor were there distinct types of gods. The Arabian travellers almost unanimously ascribe sun worship to the eastern Slavs, and Byzantine writers before the ninth century tell of a belief in a supreme being who rules the universe. It is now generally accepted that this supreme god was called Svarog and was a personification of heaven and light, while sun and fire were regarded as his children. Perun, the thunder god, and Veles, god of herds, both mentioned by the oldest chronicler, must be brought in relation to the sun. But it is highly probable that these two gods were taken over by the Slavs from their Varangian rulers. Water also was regarded as sacred, and, like the forest, it was filled with animate beings which must be propitiated with sacrifices, since they had relations to human beings. Water, fire, and earth were related to death. The russalki, shades of the dead, swam about in the water, and the bodies of the dead were given up to the flames in order to make easier their passage to the realm of the dead (rai). Theslaves, as well as the wife and the domestic animals were burned on the funeral pyre, and cremation was preceded by a feast and games in honour of the dead. But burial also was common.0
We find the Russian Slavs about the middle of the ninth century split up into numerous tribes, settled on the soil and engaged chiefly in hunting and agriculture. A continental people, everywhere confining itself to the inlahd country, leaving the sea-borders to non-Slavonic tribes. Politically they were in the midst of the transition from the clan organisation to the village community, without any central authority, without any military organisation, and but little able to resist the inroads from north, south, and east, of populations who lived by plunder.0 The primitive condition of their political organisation, their extreme subdivision into tribes and cantons, the endless warfare of canton with canton, delivered them up defenceless to every invader. While the Slavs of the south paid tribute to the Chazars, the Slavs of Ilmen, exhausted by internecine conflicts, decided to call in the Varangians. " Let us seek," they said, " a prince who will govern us and reason with us justly. Then," continues Nestor,^ "the Tchud, the Slavs (of Novgorod), the Krivitchi, and other confederate tribes said to the Varangian princes: 'Our land is great and has everything in abundance, but it lacks order and justice; come and take possession and rule over us/ "
THE VARANGIAN PERIOD (862-1054 A.D.)
To the elements that have obtained a permanent foothold on the soil of modern Russia and affected the Slavs in a greater or less degree, a new one must now be added in the Varango-Russians. The brave inhabitants of Sweden and Norway, who were known in western Europe under the name of Northman or Normans, directed their first warlike expeditions against their Slavonian and Finnish neighbours. The flotillas of the vikings were directed to the shores of the Baltic, and austrvegr — the eastern route — was the name they gave to the journey into the country of the Finns and Slavs on the gulf of Finland and further inland. Gardar was the name they gave to the Slavo-Finnish settlements, Holmgardar was their name for Novgorod, Kaenungardar for Kiev. Mikligardar, for Constantinople, shows that the Normans first learned to know that city through the eastern Slavs. The Slavs, on the other hand, called those Scandinavians by a name given to them by the Finns — Rus. The Scandinavians who sent their surplus of fighting men to Russia and were destined to found the Russian state, lived — as we learn from the form of the names that have come down to us — in Upland, Sodermanland, and Ostergotland, that is, on the east coast of Sweden north of Lake Malar. In these lands and throughout the Scandinavian north, men who were bound to military chiefs by a vow of fidelity were called vaeringr (pi. vaeringjar, 0. Sw. Waning), a name changed by the eastern Slavs into variag. It was these Russo-Varangians who founded the state of Old Russia.^
At the call of the Slavs of Novgorod and their allies, three Varangian brothers, Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor (Scand. Hrurekr, Sikniutr, Thorwardr), gathered together their kindred and armed followers, or drujina, and established themselves on the northern frontiers of the Slavs: Sineus to the northeast, on the White Lake; Rurik, the eldest, in the centre, on Lake Ladoga near the Volkhov River, where he founded the city of Ladoga; and Truvor to the northwest, at Izborsk, near Lake Pskov. The year 862 is usually assigned as the date in which the Varangians settled in Russia, and it is the official year for the founding of the Russian empire; but it is more probable that they had come before that date.
Shortly after their settlement the two younger brothers died and Rurik became sole chief of all the Varangian bands in northern Russia and assumed the title of grand-prince. He now became so powerful that he was able to subject Novgorod, which he made the capital of an empire stretching from the lakes in the north to the sources of the Dnieper in the south.® The country drained by that river was also occupied by Varangians, but independently of Rurik. Two chiefs by the name of Askold and Dir (Scand. Hos- kaldr and Dyri) wrested Kiev from the Chazars and ruled over the Polians, the most civilized tribe of the eastern Slavs. In 865 they led against Byzantium an expedition which consisted of at least two hundred ships, and according to Venetian accounts of three hundred and sixty ships, to which would correspond an army of about fourteen thousand warriors. A tempest arose and destroyed the fleet in the sea of Marmora. The barbarians attributed their disaster to the wonder-working virgin, and it is reported that Askold embraced Christianity. This expedition has a two-fold importance: (1) it gives us the first certain date in Russian history; and (2) it introduced the seeds of Christianity into Russia. In the following year, 866, the patriarch Photius established a bishopric at Kiev.
After the death of his brothers Rurik reigned till his death in 879, when he was succeeded, not by his son Igor (Scand. Ingvarr), but by the eldest member of his family Oleg (Scand. Helge). In 882 he set out from Novgorod with an army composed of Varangians and the subject Slavo-Finnish tribes — Tchuds, Merians, Vesians, Ilmen Slavs, and Krivitchi — sailed down the upper Dnieper, took Smolensk, freed the Radimichi and the Severians from the yoke of the Chazars and incorporated them in his empire, and finally reached Kiev. Askold and Dir were then got rid of by an act of treachery, and Kiev was made the capital of an empire embracing nearly all the eastern Slavs.
The Treaty with Constantinople
But Kiev was only one of the stages in the southward progress of the Varangians. The great city of the east, Constantinople, was the glittering prize that dazzled their eyes and was ever regarded as the goal of their ambition. Accordingly, in 907, Oleg sailed with a fleet of two thousand boats and eighty thousand men, and reached the gates of Constantinople. The frightened emperor was obliged to pay a large ransom for the city and to agree to a treaty of free commercial intercourse between the Russians and the Greeks. A particular district in the suburbs of the city was assigned as the place of residence for Russian traders, but the city itself could be visited by no more than fifty Russians simultaneously, who were to be unarmed and accompanied-by an imperial officer.9го