East Europe until 750
A. Introduction
Russia. 17 million square kilometer. 140 million people. Major power in global politics. Russia, no matter how controversial its actions might get discussed, is one of the powers that shaped the history of Europe and Asia.
But in the middle of the 8th century nothing of all that was even a silver lining on the horizon and none of the contemporaries of that time, in which the territory of today`s Russia was a culturally and politically highly fragmented territory, would have even imagined a huge country with a unified nation that speaks the same language and follows the same belief.
This first Volume of "The History of Russia" will cover the period of time from the early medieval to the early modern age, in which the territory of today`s Russia steps out of the dark and slowly turns into the birthplace of several modern nations. Since Russia was not even an idea in the early medieval, this book will cover the developments in today`s western Russia as well as some of its current neighbors, especially the Ukraine and Belarus. When the term "East Europe" is used, it refers to the whole of this area.
B. The geographical and cultural landscape
East Europe of the 8th century can be divided in two major regions. In the north a large territory, in which agriculture is possible, but the yields are considerably low due to cold weather, long winters and less fertile soil. Hence the dense woods in which the population basically lived, had to provide for the people and for the next centuries furs were one major export good of the region.
In the middle of the 8th century this region was inhabited by people of three major cultural blocs. Initially Baltic and Finno-Ugric people shared the territory, until the Slavic migration movement eastward began during the 6th century. Two hundred years later the Slavs had occupied respectively assimilated many former Finno-Ugric locations.
These different cultural blocs consisted of many different tribes, which shared religious beliefs (and there were clear similarities in the mythologies of all three cultures) and languages. The most important conformity between these three was, that they were all settled agricultural societies despite the fact, that villages roamed to different places, when the local soil was exhausted.
Fig. 1: The cultural blocs in East Europe around 750
The situation was different in the south. The climate became more friendly and agriculture had better prospects. But due to the (from west to east) decreasing amount of annual precipitation the farmland slowly changed into the western edge of the Eurasian Steppe.
For centuries the steppe has been home for several nomadic people and the area to the north of the Black Sea the doorstep for migration movements to Europe, with the Huns being the most popular representatives. In the middle of the 8th century there were numerous nomadic people living in the south, which clearly differed from their northern neighbors in language and religion.
C. The societal and political map
V.O. Klyuchevsky, the "Father" of Russian historiography, once said that while Germanic people "settled down amidst ruins", the Slavic people arrived in an "infinite plain", whose "woods and swamps severely hampered the economy" and lived "among neighbors from whom they had nothing to borrow".
This is basically correct. South of the Black Sea there was a large and, despite the Islamic expansion, still powerful Byzantine Empire, which was the representative of an old and developed civilization, which had brought forth an elaborated urban culture. And although the Western Roman Empire was destroyed as a result of the Migration Period, the people who settled down on former roman territories did benefit from the culture and institutions they found there.
In both parts of the former Empire there were now more or less developed Kingdoms (the new Germanic Kingdoms being less developed than the Byzantine Empire), which shared a feudal social structure and the religious belief in one God and his son Jesus Christ.
Fig. 2: Tribal societies in East Europe around 750
Nothing of this was true for East Europe. In the north, the people were still organized in small tribal structures and although some of them began to cooperate, anything comparable to a Germanic Kingdom did not exist. The situation in the south was slightly different insofar, as some nomadic people had succeeded to subdue several local tribes and form "Empires" like Old Great Bulgaria in the 7th century, which was conquered in turn by the Khazars, who are one of the most powerful nomadic people in the south besides the Magyars and Alani in the middle of the 8th century.
The struggle between settled and nomadic people and the ambition to establish developed and stable realms are the subjects of this book.