The People Rus' in the Ninth – Middle Eleventh Centuries: New Approaches to the Study of Ethnogenesis and Politogenesis

The main aim of this article is to try to give an outline of modern understanding of processes and mechanisms of formation of the people called Rus' and the polity of the Rurikid lineage. New interpretations of written sources are placed in the basis of the proposed approach. The later Old Russian narratives, first of all, the ‘Primary Chronicle’, are recognized as unreliable and secondary sources, and the basic factual basis is formed on the basis of documents (treaties, statutes and legal codes, etc.) and synchronous for the tenth century narrative texts, first of all, the Byzantine descriptions of the Rus' in special manuals on diplomacy and ambassadorial protocols. It is no less important now to understand the epistemological and practical limitations of the use of archaeological and linguistic data, and to eliminate schemes based on false interpretations of them. Following these guidelines, the article substantiates the following provisions. First, the autocatalytic process of development of a network of long-distance trade routes and the emergence of urban centres in their hubs became the basic factor for the formation of medium-scale polities on the East European Plain. Second, in the new settlements of the Upper and Middle Dnieper area in the tenth century, new mixed urban communities were formed, including groups of people who called themselves Rus'. Here, both politogenesis and ethnogenesis were triggered and stimulated by long-distance trade and urbanization. Third, no medium-size polity of the ninth and tenth centuries had the characteristics of an early state, because it was an ecumene without developed writing abilities. Only the complex chiefdom under the leadership of the Rurikids, after joining the Byzantine Christian Church, gained access to the technology of writing. This made it possible, in the first half of the eleventh century, to create a government machine of specialized functionaries, proto-bureaucrats, who produced the first state regulatory documents. By the mid-eleventh century, the early state in Rus' was established. In the same period, the elite and the population of the ‘Rurikid empire’ finally adopted the ethno-political label Rus', as a result of which a new Christian people with such a name appeared on the map of the Western Eurasia. These processes of ethnogenesis and politogenesis on the East European Plain in the ninth and eleventh centuries fit into the most standard models of socio-cultural and political anthropology.