Module 1 early history

In this module:

• Ancient Russia, Historic people of Ancient Russia, Mongol invasion, Russo-Tatar relations, Culture of Kievan Russia, The adoption of Christianity in Russia;

• Tenses of the Active Voice;

• Paragraph writing;

• Role play on ancient cultures.

Lead-in:

I. Prepare to answer these questions. Compare your ideas in small groups.

1. Do you know when the history of Russia began?

2. Who were the first people who lived on our land?

3. Why does there exist an expression “Kiev is the mother of Russian cities”?

4. How can you account for the fact that the Mongol yoke lasted for 240 years?

II. Comment on the following:

The famous Russian poet Alexander Blok wrote:

“Yes, we are Scythians. Yes, we are Asiatics.

With slanting and greedy eyes”.

Reading

Study the information about different types of reading and working with information (see App. 2 p. 96).

Text 1 ancient russia

I. Skim the text, match the following Russian words with the words in bold in the text:

1. вера

2. древний; старинный

3. жить, обитать; населять, заселять

4. кочевой

5. королевство, царство, государство

6. поселиться, обосноваться; организовать поселение

7. воин; боец; борец, воитель

8. следовать, быть преемником

9. господство

10. вторгаться; захватывать, оккупировать

11. править; господствовать, властвовать

12. процветать, преуспевать

13. племя; клан, род

14. вторжение, нашествие

Numerous remains show that Russia was inhabited in the Paleolithic period. By the 7^th cent. B.C. the northern shore of the Black Sea and the Crimea were controlled by the Scythians; in the 3^rd cent. B.C. the Scythians were displaced by the Sarmatians. Later the open steppes of Russia were invaded by numerous peoples, mostly the Germanic Goths (3^rd cent. A.D.), the Asian Huns (4^th cent.), and the Turkic Avars (6^th cent.). The Turkic Khazars built up (7^th cent.) a powerful state in Southern Russia, and the Eastern Bulgars established (8^th cent.) their empire in the Volga region. By the 9^th cent. the Eastern Slavs had settled in Northern Ukraine, in Belarus, and in the regions of Novgorod and Smolensk, and they had established colonies to the east on the Oka and upper Volga rivers. The chief Slavic tribes in Southern Russia were dominated by the Khazars.

Thus, the early history of Russia, like those of many countries, is one of migrating peoples and ancient kingdoms. In fact, early Russia was not exactly “Russia”, but a collection of cities that gradually grew into an empire. At the beginning of the 9^th century a Scandinavian people known as the Varangians crossed the Baltic Sea and landed in Eastern Europe.

T he leader of the Varangians was the semilegendary warrior Rurik, who led his people in 862 to the city of Novgorod on the Volkhov River. Whether Rurik took the city by force or was invited to rule there, he certainly invested the city. From Novgorod, Rurik’s successor Oleg extended the power of the city southward. In 882, he gained control of Kiev, a Slavic city that was built along the Dnepr River around the 5^th century. Oleg’s attainment of rule over Kiev marked the first establishment of a unified, dynastic state in the region. Kiev became the center of a trade route between Scandinavia and Constantinople, and Kievan Russia, as the empire came to be known, flourished for the next three hundred years.

By 989, Oleg’s great-grandson Vladimir I was ruler of a kingdom that extended to as far south as the Black Sea, the Caucasus Mountains, and the lower reaches of the Volga River. Having decided to establish a state religion, Vladimir carefully considered a number of available faiths and decided upon Greek Orthodoxy. It is said that Vladimir decided against Islam partly because of his belief that his people could not live under a religion that prohibits hard liquor. Some years later the first code of laws, Russkaya Pravda, was introduced. From the onset the Kievan princes followed the Byzantine example and kept the Church dependent on them, even for its revenues, so that the Russian Church and state were always closely linked.

Vladimir was succeeded by Yaroslav the Wise, whose reign marked the apogee of Kievan Russia. Yaroslav codified laws, made wise alliances with other states, encouraged the arts, and all the other sorts of things that wise kings do. Unfortunately, he decided in the end to act like Lear, dividing his kingdom among his children and bidding them to cooperate and flourish. Of course, they did nothing of the sort.

A nomadic Turkic people, the Kipchaks (also known as the Cumans), replaced the earlier Pechenegs as the dominant force in the south steppe regions neighbouring to Russia at the end of 11^th century and founded a nomadic state in the steppes along the Black Sea (Desht-e-Kipchak). Repelling their regular attacks, especially on Kiev, which was just one day’s ride from the steppe, was a heavy burden for the southern areas of Russia. The nomadic incursions caused a massive influx of Slavs to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north, particularly to the area known as Zalesye.

Within a few decades of Yaroslav’s death (in 1054), Kievan Russia had broken up into regional power centers. Kiev’s dominance waned, to the benefit of Vladimir-Suzdal in the north-east, Novgorod in the north, and Halych-Volhynia in the south-west. It was during this time (in 1147 to be exact) that Yuri Dolgorukiy, one of the regional princes, held a feast at his hunting lodge atop a hill overlooking the confluence of the Moskva and Neglina Rivers. A chronicler recorded the party, thus providing us with the earliest mention of Moscow, the small settlement that would soon become the pre-eminent city in Russia.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_history; http://www.geographia.com/russia/rushis02.htm]