Anti-normannism
Anti-Normanism is a national romantic view of the origin of Russia in Russian historiography.
In the 18th century, historical science began to explore the origins of the early Russian Empire. Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer presented writings in 1729 and 1736 in which he described the early Russian Empire as a Viking foundation. In 1749 Gerhard Friedrich Müller gave a lecture on the origins of the tribe and the name of the Rusen at the Petersburg Academy of Sciences, which led to protests among the audience. After the military conflicts with Sweden under Charles XII. contradicted the idea that the founding father of the Old Russian Empire Rurik was a Swede of all people, possibly even an ancestor of Charles XII. should have been the patriotic feelings of Russian scholars. The Russian Empress Elisabeth set up a commission to examine whether Müller's theses harm the Reich. The polymath Michail Wassiljewitsch Lomonossow tipped the scales with his report, so that Müller's speech was banned.
The Norman view was therefore essentially continued in Germany. The important works of the Swede Thunmann from 1776, who worked in Germany, emerged, 1802-1809 the edition of the translation of the Nestor Chronicle by August Ludwig von Schlözer and in 1808 a treatise by Philipp Ewers . Only in 1816 did the political climate in Russia allow the Norman view to be adopted. It was easily incorporated into the first volume of Russian history by Nikolai Mikhailovich Karamsin . He was followed by the historian Vasily Ossipowitsch Klyuchevsky , who said that the Nestor Chronicle paints a true picture if it traces the founding of the Russian Empire back to Scandinavians. This view was supported above all by the philologists, above all by Alexei Alexandrowitsch Schachmatow , the then most thorough connoisseur of Old Russian chronology.
In addition, the anti-Norman tendency persisted. Its most widely read representatives were Stepan A. Gedeonov (1863) and Dimitrij I. Ilovajskij (1882). Some tried to break out of the mainstream polemic and to counter the prevailing Normannism with arguments. Today they are only of interest for the genesis of Ukrainian and Russian nationalism.
The October Revolution did not change the view of Russian historians in this area. Historiography, oriented towards internationalism and class struggle, saw no reason to rewrite early Russian history. Normannism was incorporated into Soviet historiography. The anti-Norman voices even disappeared because they had lost their bourgeois nationalist support. As late as 1936, the authoritative textbook for secondary schools was written about the conquest of Slavic principalities and tribes by Varangian Normans in the 9th century.
Josef Stalin then ordered the turning point, because Russia must have been Russian from the start. The problem arose that both Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were Normanists. Marx considered the old Russian Empire to be the foundation of archaic, predatory Vikings.
The old Rus arose from the feudalist approaches to agriculture in the 6th and 7th centuries. In 1939 the excavations in Novgorod began with a clear anti-Norman mission. The patriotic mobilization of 1941 gave the anti-normans further support. The Normans were allowed to participate in the formation of the state, but they played only a minor role in this. For a realm of cities, as the old Icelandic word Garðaríki suggests, they would not have been in a position, given the cultural level in their home country Sweden. It was expressly denied that the territorial expansion of the Rus had anything to do with long-distance trade. Rather, the decisive factor was the internal market. The wealth of the upper class does not come from long-distance trade, but from the boyar manor . Normannism is an attempt, emanating from Germany and the capitalist West, to lower the level of culture of the early medieval Slavs.
On the other hand, Norman ideas were more likely to persist in Poland . The local medievalist Henryk Łowmiański ascribed a greater role to the Normans again. He even considered the vocation history of the Normans in the Nestor Chronicle to be credible, while it is otherwise regarded as a legend in Medieval studies. But he, too, denied the importance of long-distance trade and the decisive contribution to the development of the Russian state. Because long-distance trade only played a subordinate role in the overall structure of the economy.
The anti-Norman view, however, was mainly undermined by archeology. The archaeological maps of the archaeological sites with Norman relics left no doubt that the Norman influence was greater than the anti-Normanists wanted to admit, so that after the death of Stalin, the Norman perspective could regain ground.
But even after the collapse of the Soviet state, anti-Norman tendencies persisted. The historian Igor Jokovlevi Frojanov wrote in 1995 in his book Drevnjaja Rus , in keeping with the anti-Norman tradition, that the state developed out of domestic structures. The cities developed from their function as places of worship and handicraft centers. The Varangians have no significant significance for him.
literature
- Igor Jokovlevi Frojanov: Drevnjaja Rus': novye issledovanija . St. Petersburg 1995. ISSN 0235-2397 .
- Harald Hjaræ: anti-normannisms i der ryska historieforskning. In: Historisk Bibliotek 6. Stockholm 1976. pp. 27-51.
- Karl Marx: Secret diplomatic history of the eighteenth century . (The history of secret diplomacy in the 18th century. Berlin 1977)
- Jens Peter Nielsen: Normannismen i russisk historieforskning 1749-1949. Hovedlinier-hovedoppgave i historie. Oslo 1976.
- Jens Peter Nielsen: Var de førrevolusjonære russiske historieforskning normannistisk? Om normannisker and a "future" antianti normannister in russisk historiography in the 18th and 19th centuries. Svantevit 4 (1978) No. 2 pp. 5-25.
- Hartmut Rüß: The Varangian question. New Trends in Soviet Research. In: Eastern Europe. Mirror of history. Festschrift for Manfred Hellmann . Wiesbaden 1977.
- Gottfried Schramm : The beginning of old Russia. Historical conclusions from names, words and texts from the 9th and 10th centuries. Freiburg. i.Br. 2002. ISBN 3-7930-9268-2 .