Ryazanian culture no more

[fr-rein]

The issue is simple - it is a fantasy culture in the current form.

With all due regard to Ryazan, it is a common sense that it wasn't a center of a separate Slavic tribe. As influential as it was, it was burned down by Mongols... and not restored to it's former glory.

But this aside, I want to put your attention on the real group of people which existed there Severians.
Or rather, a link between Severians-Sevryuks-Sayan groups.

In times of Rus' there existed Severians, one of the old East Slavic tribes. Their legacy pretty much left with its people once they politically lost independence and remained with a cultural group known as Sevryuki (russian wiki article here) which spread across most of lands of so-called "Ryazanian" culture... but well, not reaching Ryazan itself. Later it transformed to another part, more modern Russian ethnos "Саяны" (wiki article here in Russian), as a leftover.

This whole group, which can be effectively called Severian, was one of the East Slavic ethnoses that did not arise. It played a big role in the wars of Russia and Lithuania, with Severian principalities switching loyalty to Russia and starting a war there. And later those lands served a good role as a frontier against Hordes, with people (sevryuki) serving in Kursk and Belgorod.

The culture of Sevryuki essentially was assimilated later. After Commonwealth swallowed Severian lands, some time later Khmelnytsky Uprising broke out. As one of the results, Hetmanate came into control of those lands. Following roughly the border between Russia and Hetmanate, two different colonization waves came, with Ruthenians coming from Right Bank and Muscovites from Russia. This served as an ethnical line for the cultural and national divisions later and since about XVII-XVIII century Severians remained only as small sub-ethnic groups in the appropriate territories.

This is a story of a real culture that existed in 90% of Ryazanian culture area. I don't know what is meant under Ryazanian culture or what kind of a name is it. It is a mystery.

Hopefully it helps.

 

[AirikrStrife]

I have suggested this many time before, though not in as convincing argument!

One question, are you of the opinion that Smolensk should be Severian, or Belarusian?

 

[fr-rein]

I have suggested this many time before, though not in as convincing argument!

One question, are you of the opinion that Smolensk should be Severian, or Belarusian?

Smolensk should be Belarusian (Polotskian to be precise).
I dunno about Ryazanian, but Severian is not there in that province. Or even in Ryazan.

Severian should be in following provinces as they go now:
Briansk, Trubchevsk, Chernigov, Severia, Kursk, Rylsk.

Odoyev is under question, although sources do say that Novosil had sevryuks, so it probably should also include those. My confidence here is not as strong, although it would make sense historically.

I can understand that devs tried probably to split off Ryazanian as an Southern dialect Russian, but it is really awkward and not right...

 

[AirikrStrife]

So that Ryazan started as a splinter duchy from Chernigov is irrelevant? that's just politics?

 

[fr-rein]

So that Ryazan started as a splinter duchy from Chernigov is irrelevant? that's just politics?

It is not a pure Severian land, more of a population of Finno-Ugric tribes (Meschera in particular), Viatich and some others.
Nonetheless, Old Ryazan was burnt down by Mongols and a new town was built instead.

Ryazan isn't Severia and its history was different, as for the people... they are closer to the Muscovite culture I assume, unless some other changes are enacted. So yes, it was more of a political connection.

On the other hand, South Russian dialect is present there. But I am not sure if it came there later, perhaps others could tell about it more precisely.

 

[fr-rein]

I would like to introduce a few maps which show the language (and dialect) distribution in the region:

This is a map of Ukrainian dialects. Despite being contemporary, it can be clearly seen that in most of territories for the Severian (I remind, not "Ryazanian") culture there is the leftover - a local Northern dialect. It is also a territory that historically belonged to Chernigov and Severian tribes since the Rus times - making a direct correlation between suggested fix and history of that land for the Chernigov territory.

Now, we can look at the Russian dialects map:

Here is a map of primary formation of the main dialects of Russia.

This is an old map of 1914, dividing the dialects. In our case, А and В are in the region representatives of the Severian-originated dialects.
The territory around Smolensk is marked as Belarus-influenced dialect as it was heavily influenced by it.

And the map of 1965 for the dialect groups of Russian.
In our case, related groups of languages are 9-15 which are in the same group and influenced by the Severian dialect leftovers.
7-9 are also more closely tied to Belarusian, however in case of 9 Starodub was more belonging to the Severian culture group.

And now, the map of the old duchies and principalities in Kievan Rus to make a good comparison and show the inheritance of cultural specifics of Severia:

Sure, while the borders aren't 100% correct, we can see that they quite coincide with the suggested fix for the Severian culture.

Lastly, it is worthwhile to note that Northern Ukrainian dialect and the dialects in the border regions (primarily Kursk and Belgorod) are quite similar while being distant from both mainstream languages, carrying on the leftovers for the old identity.
But in this case, Smolensk area arguably should be removed from Severian (now Ryazanian) culture and moved to Polotskian culture group.

Summary
As a summary, I just wanted to give some visual example for the suggested argument and why some suggestions are like this, including the exclusion of Smolensk. If the region gets fixed, the culture should be fixed more and receive some unique historical flavour.