Form: Quote Commentary

SLAVIC HISTORICISM

by Igor Rogov

Slavic history was heavily falsified in the early 19th century as the building of the Russian nation state had to include the legend of uninterrupted history between the foundation of Kiev and Moscow, and attempts were made to integrate Poles, Balkan Slavs and Czechs under the single historic legend. Soviet era brought another layer of wishful thinking, the breakdown of USSR caused a runaway local nationalist thinking to influence the academia in the most peculiar way, so Ukrainian sources are most unreliable sometimes.

So the modern historian must take even the most academic Russian/Ukrainian sources and with a pinch of salt. Say, there were several attempts made (in the 19th century and in the 1970s and then most recently) to stretch the history of Kiev back to the Roman imperial times, say 4th century AD. There were several extremely odd findings of Roman coins being recorded without proper background archaeological data, – they were brought as hoards were reported as found by people digging basements, but most simple explanation is that some unscrupulous dealers importing cheap Roman bronzes from Italy and selling it at premium price locally.

The first more or less reliable records of Slavs were linked to the Variags expansion down southward along the river streams.

Kiev (~Kijav/ Kuyava /Kuyaba) is rather common Slavic name for the settlements (Poland, Slovenia) around the river shallows, which were used both for crossings and the trade/taxation outposts. It seems possible that Slavs of Kievan Rus’ were specializing in maintaining these sort of settlements.

SLAVIC EXPANSION, IRANIAN EXPANSION

—“A more eastern extension of the Corded Ware culture produces the would-be Proto-Indo-Iranians. Their proximity to the would-be Slavs explain their close genetic relationship. The Slavs expand southward during the Middle Ages when the Huns create a power vacuum in the Balkans, allowing them to impose their language and culture on the indigenous Balkanites. The Balkanites in turn migrate southward and induce an increase in Slavic ancestry in Greeks.

As for the Proto-Indo-Iranians, you probably already know what happened to them. They re-migrated back to the Steppe, crossed the Iranian plateau and created groups such as Medes and Persians. Their legacy perseveres in the sense that your average Iranian has 5-15% Steppe ancestry today, with the rest being indigenous Elamite ancestry (Iran_Neolithic).

Fractions of the Western Scythians, who unlike their Eastern counterpart did not mix with East Asian groups, probably assimilated into the Slavic peoples living near the Black Sea. The rest of the Scythians either got mixed away in India or contributed to the ethnogenesis of the Proto-Turks, who pack a good amount of Steppe ancestry.”—Alexander Zavialov