PreRussia

Apparently, three centuries ago the Prussians still remembered their Slavic origin and long neighborhood with other Slavs – the Rujans and the Obodrites. The city of Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) during the Seven Years' War with Russia three centuries ago willingly accepted Russian rule. When Russian troops approached Konigsberg in 1758 the city unexpectedly surrendered without a fight and the residents of the city swore allegiance to the Russian Empress Elizabeth. The whole of Eastern Prussia followed it and swore an oath to the Russian Empress. Until 1762 the city and Eastern Prussia were the part of Russia. However, after the death of Empress Elizabeth, Peter III came to power. He did not hide his admiration for the Prussian King Frederick II, immediately stopped the military operations and made a peace with the Prussian king on extremely unfavorable terms for Russia. Peter III returned East Prussia to Prussia (which had been the part of the Russian Empire for four years) and refused all acquisitions during the Seven-Year War practically won by Russia. All the sacrifices and heroism of the Russian soldiers and the intuitive desire of Prussia for Russia – everything was crossed out in one fell swoop. Thus Catherine II (The Great) who dethroned him was a thousand times right.

In his speech on December 1, 1943 at the Tehran Conference Stalin bluntly stated: "The Russians do not have ice-free ports on the Baltic Sea. Therefore, the Russians need the ice-free ports of Konigsberg and Memel and the corresponding part of East Prussia. Especially considering that historically these are native Slavic lands." He seemed to know the history of the region well. No one objected to him. During the conversation of the heads of government at breakfast on November 30, Churchill said that "… the British have no objections to this."

As we can see, the statement of some radical Slavophiles that the Germans are the germanized Slavs has a basis. Moreover, one of the Slavic linguistic usages of the prefix "pra" (“pru” sounds “pra” in the word “Prussia) means predecessor. That also suggests that Prussia is the ancestral homeland of Russia.

However, foreign sources mention some other Varangian (Vikings’) Russia, which could serve as a catalyst for the development of Russia and give it its name. That another Russia united the Eastern Slavs and the Russians geographically and culturally. Before that these two peoples were perceived separately. All ancient Arab historians for a very long time divided the Slavs and the Russians, often pointing out the superiority of the latter over the former in military terms. For example, the scholar Ibn-Ruste wrote in his "Book of Precious Values" (903-925) [14 - В. Смирнов "Валгала на Тивре, или Тиверский городок как первая русская таможня", Litres, 2019, ISBN: 5-04189-772-7] that "As for the Rus of ar-Rusiya, they live on an island surrounded by a lake. This three days long island is covered with forests and swamps and is unhealthy and damp to the point that as soon as a person sets foot on the ground it shakes because of the abundance of moisture in it. They have a king called Khagan-rus. They attack the Slavs, approach them on ships, land and take them prisoners, take them to Khazaran (Khazaria) and Bulkar (the capital of Volga Bulgaria, later the Kazan Khaganate (Khanate) and sell them there. … They have no real estate, no villages, no arable land. Their only occupation is the trade in sables, squirrels and other furs… They have many cities… Their swords are Suleiman's" (Frankish work).

Scientists have been looking for a long time where this mysterious island could be, but have not come to a consensus. The islands of Rugen (Rujan), Gotland, Karelian Isthmus, Old Rusa, land in the Danube delta in the form of a triangle covered by rivers with sides of 65 and 70 km, the island of Khortytsia (St. George) near modern Zaporozhye and the Taman Peninsula near the Sea of Azov which was then an island (the Russian principality of Tmutarakan). But all these options turned out to be unsuitable upon closer examination. The question of what the Arab chroniclers meant remains open.

Many historians find evidences that the Varangian (Vikings’) state "Rus" from where the Varangians (Vikings) could be invited to rule was located in the Northern Black Sea region or in Tavria (Taurida) in the Crimea) from the early centuries. This southern coastal people, like other Varangians, were skilled in shipbuilding and from time to time attacked the lands of Byzantium.[15 - Карташев А. В. «История Русской Церкви». В 2-х т. М., 2000., Т.1., с.74] The historian Kartashev A.V. wrote – "So, by now we can admit that there were some tribes in the pre-Caucasian Black Sea region, not pseudonymously, but originally called Rus… which joined the general flow of invasions of the Byzantine Empire and invested in the process of building the Russian state." It was these southern Rus, in his opinion, who "mastered the entire Central European trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks," from the lower reaches of the Elbe and Oder to the mouth of the Danube with access to the Black Sea." It was the merits of this people "at the turn of the VIII – IX centuries Russian military-commercial settlements appear on the Crimean coast”.

For Byzantine writers the habitation of the "Rosses" in Taurida is an established fact. Thus, Konstantin Porphyrogenitus (Byzantine emperor from 1913 to 1959) referred Prince Igor's Russia to "external Russia". It follows from his words that in addition to Russia in the Middle Dnieper there was also another, "inner Russia", which in this case should be located in the Northern Black Sea region.

A similar hypothesis was put forward by the historian Trubachev O.N. in 2005. [16 - Трубачев О.Н. Русь. Россия. Очерк этимологии названия /О.Н.Трубачев. Труды по этимологии: Слово. История. Культура. – Т. 2. – М., 2005г. – с.479] "We can consider the concept of transferring the name of a certain (North Pontic, Tauric, Indo-Aryan) Ross people to Slavic Russia, first the nearest, Azov-Don, then Dnieper, and so on up to the " Varangian Russia". The tone was set by the influential and more prestigious South and it was in the orbit of this ethno-cultural influence that Russia was constituted as an ethnos. The ethnonym (name of the people) Rus is really not natively Russian but imported from the south, somewhere from the Northern Black Sea region, possibly from Tavria (Crimea)." This word is definitely not from Scandinavia.

"The Indo-Iranian origin of the name suggests the existence of a certain Rus people in the northern Black Sea region (Hros (Zachariah Rhetor, 555)): "Forms related to the ancient Indian ruk- 'light, shine', ruksа- 'brilliant', are seen in Rocas, the name of the people near the Black Sea (Jordan), Rhocobae, the name of the city, in the same place (Pliny), Rosso Tar, a place on the western coast of the Crimea in the Middle Ages, 'p?????????, the name of the tribe (decree of Diophantus, II century BC), revealing a variety of phonetics and word formation and the readable meaning of 'light, white' "". There is an opinion that the ethnonym "ros" has a much older origin than "Rus". Proponents of this point of view note that the people of "ros" were first mentioned back in the VI century in the "Church History" by Zachary the Rhetorician, where he is placed next to the people of the Amazons, whose habitat many authors consider the Northern Black Sea region. From this point of view, it is ascribed to the Iranian-speaking (Sarmatian) tribes of Roxalans or Rosomons mentioned by ancient authors.

The Nikon Chronicle also confirms the fact of the primordial ancient presence of "Rus" in the Northern Black Sea region and Crimea: "the genera called Rus … live near the Euxine Pontus [in the Black Sea region]." [17 - ПСРЛ, том XIII. Издание 3-е. Летописный сборник, именуемый Патриаршей или Никоновской летописью. М., 2000. 544 с., разд. паг. (VIII c., 302 c., A-D c., 303-532 c.).] And the author of the "Words about Igor's Regiment" also connected the origin of the Russ with the Northern Black Sea coast and the Don basin." [18 - Слово о полку Игореве / Предисл. Д. С. Лихачева; Стихотв. перевод, комментир. прозаич. перевод и послесл. А. Ю. Чернова; Реконструкция древнерус. текста и примеч. А. В. Дыбо; Ил. С. К. Русакова. – СПб. : Вита Нова, 2006. – 360 с. : 55 ил. – ISBN 5-93898-106-9.]

The described above similar hypotheses and evidences merge into a common "Northern Black Sea theory" of the origin of Russia. It consists of separate sub-theories, including the "Tauride theory" (Crimean), "Azov-Don theory" and "Indo-Iranian theory". This Russia later supposedly extended its influence to the East Slavic Old Russian state on the mainland either through the development of the trade route “from the Varangians to the Greeks" or through the sending of his Rurik or other way.

The principality of Tmutarakan on the Taman Peninsula between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea, cut off by nomads from the main Russia, was also considered as the Northern Black Sea Rus. Some historians considered this cut-off piece of Russia unviable and its existence probably a fantasy. However, the excavations carried out in 1955 at the settlement found the remains of the Church of the Most Holy built in 1022 by Prince Mstislav in honor of his victory over the Kasozhsky Prince Rededey mentioned in the "Tale of Bygone Years".[19 - Рыбаков Б. А. «Отчет о работах Славянского отряда Таманской экспедиции 1955 г». – Арх. Ин-та археол. АН СССР, р’1’ N° 1417.] The legend of the unusual way this victory was won deserves to be mentioned here. Either unwilling to shed people's blood or being unconfident in the strength of his army, or believing in his outstanding physical strength, Prince Rezedei of Kasozha offered the Russian Prince Mstislav to face off not with the strength of armies but with their own fists in a duel. Mstislav accepted the challenge and prayed all day before the combat, promising the heavenly forces to build a temple to the Virgin in case of his victory. In a heavy fight he managed to defeat Resedey. Then he fulfilled his promise.

The Tmutarakan fortress is located on the site of the ancient Greek-Sind city of Hermonassa which arose no later than the VI century BC. Subsequently Hermonassa was a part of the Bosporus state[20 - Большая советская энциклопедия : [в 30 т.] / гл. ред. А. М. Прохоров. – 3-е изд. – М. : Советская энциклопедия, 1969—1978.] and other states until, as a result of the defeat of the Khazar khaganate in 965 (according to other sources in 968-969) by Svyatoslav the Prince of Kiev, it came under the rule of Russia. Below is a map of Russia of the 11th century with three enclaves – Tmutarakan, Oleshye and Belaya Vezha, cut off from the rest of the country by nomads (Polovts and Pechenegs).

The lower part of the map "Kievan Rus in 1015-1113" (with Russian exclaves including Tmutarakan) by Yuri (George) Koryakov from the website https://commons.wikimedia.org under the CC license.

Tmutarakan had an excellent harbor and traded with both Byzantium and other coastal states. The fortress of Belaya Vezha went to Russia from the Khazar Khaganate. And the fortress-port of Oleshye was founded in the tenth century at the mouth of the Dnieper by merchants and warriors of Kievan Rus, who traded along the Dnieper with Byzantium. The population of these exclaves was mixed, mainly Slavic, Turkic and Greek. Tmutarakan as well as the fortresses in other two exclaves due to too late entry into the Russian state are not suitable for the role of the mysterious ancient Varangian (Viking’s) Rus of the Northern Black Sea region which "civilized" the Slavic Russian state and gave it its name (albeit some authors still think otherwise[21 - Дмитрий Иванович Иловайский "Начало Руси", Издательство Вече, 2015 г., 288с.]). Anyway, Tmutarakan is interesting for us because it was located near the Genoese city of Tana, later renamed to Azov, which immediately after the collapse of the Golden Horde appeared to be inhabited by … Russian Cossacks.

So, it is unclear exactly where this earliest North Black Sea Russia could be located. Could it initially concentrate around Kiev and develop itself without any Rurik at all? Yet, the name of the city of Kiev in the chronicles is either not mentioned at all or too late to play the role of the capital of original Russia. For the first time the name of the city appears only in the Laurentian Chronicle in the entry for 862 (whereas the Joachim Chronicle says nothing about Kiev at all).

According to the "Tale of Bygone Years" the Apostle Andrew the First-Called predicted the appearance of the city. When the apostle went to preach in Scythia he ascended the Dnieper River to the place of present-day Kiev and said to his disciples: “Do you see these mountains? The grace of God will shine on these mountains, there will be a great city and God will erect many churches.”

By the legend retold in the "Tale of Bygone Years", Kiev was founded by three brothers: Kiy, Schek, Horiv and their sister Lybid. It was named after Kiy, the elder brother. There are several other versions of the origin of Kiev: Scandinavian, Khazar, Jewish, Armenian, Scythian, etc. One of the versions says that the name of the city came from its first inhabitants who worked on the crossing of the Dnieper. Such workers were called cueans or kiyans. The crossing was a wooden deck on cues (pillars) driven into the bottom. Similar toponyms in other Slavic languages also speak in favor of this version: Kijevo in Croatia and Kujavia in Poland. The settlement founded then by Kiy and his brothers and sister for a long time remained such an insignificant settlement that the chronicler writes about it "gradok" (town).[22 - Тихомиров М. Н. Древнерусские города // Изд. 2-е, дополн. и перераб. – М.: Государственное издательство политической литературы, 1956. – 475 с] The Tale of Bygone Years does not state the date of the foundation of Kiev. Polish historian M. Stryjkowski (1547-1593) in the third chapter of his 11th book claims that the city of Kiev was founded by Prince Kiy in 430. [23 - Stryjkowski M. Kronika Polska, Litewska, Zmоdzka i wszystkiеj Rusi (польск.) / G. L. Gl?cksberg. – Warszawa, 1846. – Т. I. – С. 368.] Yet, archaeological excavations stubbornly indicate that the first small settlements there appeared only in the VI-VII centuries. Some researchers interpret them as "already urban" [24 - Толочко П.П. Новые археологические исследования Киева (1963—1978) // Новое в археологии Киева. – Киев, 1981.] whereas archaeology shows that the formation of Kiev as a real city occurred at the turn of the IX-X centuries.[25 - Комар А. В. Русь в IX—X веках: Археологическая панорама // Киев и Правобережное Поднепровье. Закономерности развития Среднего Поднепровья в IX–X вв. по археологическим данным / Н. А. Макаров. – Москва, Вологда: Древности Севера, 2012. – С. 301—324.] Because of its late development Kiev is unlikely to play the role of the legendary "Northern Black Sea Rus" which presumably served as a catalyst for the development of Russia in earlier centuries.

The painting "Kiy, Schek, Horiv and Lybid is founding the city of Kiev. 482" by Arthur Orlonov from the website https://commons.wikimedia.org under CC license.

Polyan is the name of a large Slavic tribe (now Polish nation). In the era of spreading, part of the tribe settled along the middle course of the Dnieper on its eastern shore and was known as the Eastern Polyans. Part of the same tribe settled on the west bank, reached the Vistula and Odra and settled in the Gniezno area, thus becoming the Western Polyans and subsequently giving its name to the Poles and Poland. Since the Western Poles were in contact with many other peoples, some Polish historians believe that they originate not so much from the Slavs as from other peoples (there are different opinions from which one). However, scientific studies with the participation of Western experts clearly indicate that Poles are of purely Slavic origin from the point of view of linguistics and anthropology [26 - От кого произошли поляки? 20.08.2018 , https://zen.yandex.ru/media/leta/ot-kogo-proizoshli-poliaki-5b7b1a63fbf29400ac44a63f] as well as genetics.[27 - “The American Journal of Human Genetics”, January 2018, the results of joint research with the Russian Academy of Science]

According to another legend about the founding of the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia, three Slavic brothers hunted together, but one day each decided to go his own way. Rus went east, Czech went west to Mount Rzip near Bohemia and Lech went north where he met a huge white eagle guarding its nest. He founded the settlement of Gniezno and chose a white eagle as his coat of arms. The "Czech Chronicle" of Kozma of Prague (the beginning of the XII century) tells about the arrival in Bohemia of a Slavic tribe led by the "forefather Czech". Lech is present in the Czech version of the legend [28 - Екатерина Вельмезова. Чех, Лех и Рус: В поисках мифических первопредков // Родина. – 2001. – Вып. 1/2. – С. 26-28] while Rus is in both the Chech and Polish ones. [29 - Мыльников А. С. Картина славянского мира: взгляд из Восточной Европы. Этногенетические легенды, догадки, протогипотезы XVI – начала XVIII века. – СПб., 1996. – 320 с. – ISBN 5-85803-063-7.]

The "Greater Poland Chronicle" (written approximately in the XIV century) says that "in ancient books they write that Pannonia is the mother and progenitor of all Slavic peoples… Pan the Lord of the Pannonians had three sons of whom the firstborn had the name Lech, the second – Rus and the third – Czech. These three, multiplying in the genus, owned three kingdoms – the Lehites, the Russians and the Czechs also called the Bohemians."

This legend confirms the hypothesis that the Poles are “the people of the lakes”. The word lake in Western Aryan and Celtic sounds like "loch" (recall the famous freshwater lake Ness in Scotland – "Loch Ness"). There are an extraordinary number of lakes in Poland indeed. Perhaps that is why in the Middle Ages they were called lyakhs. The ethnic name "Lechites" is traditionally associated with the name of the mythical ancestor of the Poles – Prince Lech. Among the Tatars, Turks and Russian Cossacks in the XVI-XVII centuries Poland was called Lechistan. In Tajik it is still called “Lakhiston” and in Armenian a polish man is still called “lech”. The word Poles may have originated first as "po lyakhi" (which in Russian means either “to Lechites” or “by Lechites” depending on context) just as the name of the city of Poltava on the river Ltava stands for “po Ltava” meaning “by Ltava” (this is considered to be proven).

Rurik's vigilantes Askold and Dir reigned in Kiev in the second half of the IX century. They freed the city of Poles from paying tribute to the Khazar khaganate and boosted its development. In 879, just before his death, Rurik transferred power to Oleg (the regent of Rurik's young son Igor). Presumably after the Rurik’s death Askold and Dir did not obey Oleg. According to the chronicle, in 882 Oleg undertook a military campaign against Kiev. Along the way he conquered Smolensk and Lyubech. Approaching Kiev, Oleg saw that it would be hard to take such a fortified city standing on a high mountain. Therefore Oleg allegedly did not storm the city but pretended to be a Varangian (Viking’s) merchant carrying a caravan with goods to Byzantium. He ordered the soldiers to lie down on the bottoms of the ships and throw bags on top of them, imitating the goods. Unaware Askold and Dir with a small squad and merchants went down to the Dnieper to choose goods, leaving the gates of the city open. Oleg's warriors jumped out of their ships and pushed Askold and Dir's men away from their leaders. Then Oleg showed them the son of Rurik and said that they were not of a princely family and therefore could not reign, but he could since he was of a princely family and also a regent. After that by the order of Oleg both Kievan co–rulers were killed and his warriors rushed through the gates. Oleg captured Kiev and declared it to be the capital of united Russia – "the mother of Russian cities." Not all scientists agree that the events unfolded this way.

It must be said that Askold and Dir are somewhat mysterious princes. Firstly, it is extremely rare in history for two adequate adults to co-rule any principality. Secondly, both of them were not princely, which was very unusual at that time. Thirdly, as the legend tells, Rurik did not appoint them as the rulers of Kiev direction. They themselves "stumbled upon" it. Fourthly, although they were both killed together at the same time, their graves are located in different places of the city. There is a hypothesis that Askold and Dir were actually a one person with the name Askold (for Askold is spelled Haskuldr in Old Scandinavian). Another assumption is that for the sake of briefness one of the chroniclers (either Nestor or Lavrentyev) simply combined the successive reigns of two different Scandinavian princes at different times into one as there were no important differences between them.

When the era of Kievan Rus began IX century, its capital Kiev developed rapidly and by the XI-XII centuries reached its heyday. Kievan Rus gradually expanded its possessions by military force until the outbreak of internecine wars in the XII century. Unfortunately, during the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Russia, Kiev was stormed (on December 5-6, 1240), ruined and fell into decline.

Note that both the Joachim Chronicle and the "Legend of Slovene and Rus" appeared before the reign of Peter the Great. Later, in the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Peter gave the order to the German and Danish historians to favor the "Norman" version of the origin of the Russian state. They pictured Russia as a state which was formed only by the efforts of Rurik (because the Russian people themselves were allegedly sloppy and incapable of self-organization into a state). And that is why Russia is a little more than a thousand years old and why the Germans have the right to rule Russia (since the Scandinavians – Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, where Rurik supposedly came from, belong to the German group of peoples). At that time almost all historical primary sources have disappeared somewhere without a trace. Only the censuses remained. This was done of course in order to legitimize the rule of the Romanov family of German origin (actually of Germanized Slavic Prussians as we discussed earlier). Now the portrait gallery of the rulers of Russia in the Kremlin opens with the image of Rurik.

A huge problem for the supporters of the "Norman" theory is the simple fact that the statehood and several large cities appeared in Russia earlier than in Scandinavia. In the IX century the Scandinavian Vikings did not have sufficiently formed states, they were just perfectly able to destroy them in reachable lands. There were only a few small towns in Scandinavia at that time, in fact. It is no accident that the Vikings called Russia "the land of cities." The typical occupation of Viking men then was the robbery of accessible countries, piracy and the sale of the loot. The common sense suggests that if Rurik was a Viking (Varangian) then most likely he came from some other place. For how could he establish the governance of the state in Russia and build cities if he had not had these in his homeland? In the USSR the role of the alien element in the formation of Ancient Russia was not reflected in mass history textbooks. Under Stalin, those suspected of "Normanism" were in trouble.

But in 1763 Lomonosov on the contrary was dismissed from the Academy of Sciences for disagreement with the "Norman" theory. The decree on dismissal was canceled only by the direct intervention of Catherine the Great (Catherine II) for the merits of Lomonosov in other fields of science and his popularity. Catherine the Great (a German by birth who continued the policy of Peter the Great) also supported the "Norman" theory. During Lomonosov’s life span his works on history were not published at all. After the death of the scientist almost all of his works disappeared without a trace with the exception of only a few "edited" by German professors from the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences (mainly by Professor of history Gerhard Friedrich Miller, russified name Fyodor Ivanovich Miller). And even they were printed only years after Lomonosov's death.

One of the acts of the "Normans" was the dubious interpretation by the Russian historian N.M. Karamzin of the key word from the Lavrentyev census "The Tale of Bygone Years" (until the age of 30 the historian lived and worked during the reign of Catherine II). The phrase “Our land is great and plentiful, but there is no ‘naryad’ in it, come to reign and ‘volodet’ us” was interpreted by him as “Our land is great and plentiful, but there is no order in it, come to reign and own us.” Linguists of the Old Slavic language relying on a large number of examples from historical sources defines "naryad" as "order, arrangement, law and order, organization", "activities for the arrangement, organization of something, management, supervision", "order to send to work, to service, assignment, order", etc . There are the expressions "naryad for firewood", "naryad for an apartment", etc. in Russian language. This means an order for the issuance of firewood, the provision of an apartment, etc.[30 - Словарь русского языка XI—XVII веков. Вып. 10 (Н—наятися) / АН СССР, Институт русского языка ; Сост. Г. А. Богатова и др. М. : Наука, 1983, с.227—230, 232.] "To go to ‘naryad’" means to go on guard duty by order. Thus this phrase should be understood as the fact that we do not have a ruler. It is no accident that in several other chronicles (for instance in the Novgorod Fourth Chronicle[31 - Новгородская четвёртая летопись. (ПСРЛ. Т. IV. Ч. 1). М., Языки русской культуры. 2000. 728 стр. (ISBN 5-88766-063-5) (новое издание снабжено предисловиями А. Г. Боброва и Б. М. Клосса)]) this phrase reads like "our land is good and great, it is abundant in everything, but there is no ‘naryadnik’ in it." The word "naryadnik" directly means "manager, boss, leader" according to the "Dictionary of the Russian language of the XI—XVII centuries".

What do the archaeological excavations say? They testify that in fact the Varangians (Vikings) appeared on Russian soil long before the advent of Rurik starting from the VI century and in some places even before the Slavs (in the north of Ladoga, for instance).[32 - Андрей Буровский "Запрещенный Рюрик. Правда о «призвании» варягов", 2019 г., ISBN: 9785457569737, Litres, 547 c.] Some of them were in the service of Russian princes. Others mastered the way "from the Varangians to the Greeks" in order to profitably trade furs with rich Byzantium from the Scandinavian and Russian northern lands.[33 - Путь из варяг в греки. /Славяне и скандинавы: сборник./ Е. А. Мельникова. – М.: Прогресс, 1986. – 416 с] To do this they built their support towns along this route from north to south. The so-called Staraya Ladoga (Old Ladoga), the first capital of Russia, lies just along this path on the banks of the full-flowing Volkhov River near its confluence into the Ladoga Lake. The river flows from the great lake Ilmen near which a fortified Novgorod city appeared in 859 on the site of the former Novgorod settlements. Staraya Ladoga as a settlement was founded by Slavs around 700 and was agricaltural.[34 - Кирпичников А.Н., Сарабьянов В.Д. "Старая Ладога первая столица Руси". СПб.; Изд. «Славия» (Санкт-Петербуррг), 2012, 200 С.] As a city it was erected in 753 originally by the Varangians but a few years later Slavs it was recaptured by the Slavs.[35 - Кузьмин С.Л. «Ладога в эпоху раннего средневековья (середина VIII – начало XII в.)», опубликована в сборнике «Исследование археологических памятников эпохи средневековья» под ред. А.В. Виноградова по результатам Северо-Западной археологической экспедиции НИИКСИ Факультета социологии СПбГУ.: Нестор-История, 2008. – С. 69—94.]

The image of the fortress "Staraya Ladoga" by Dionisius1976 (pseudonym) from https://pl.wikipedia.org under CC License.

Thus, the Russian Slavs had owned the city of Staraya Ladoga for more than a century and Novgorod had been built 3 years before the arrival of Rurik.

It should be noted that with the exception of the reconquest of Staraya Ladoga no serious conflicts were recorded between the local Slavs and the Scandinavian Varangians which further confirms the fact that the Vikings were present in Russia for a very long time and were already perceived as "their foreigners". Of course the Varangians (Vikings) themselves were primarily interested in peace so that they would not have to defend their transshipment towns and transports with blood all along the trade route "from the Varangians to the Greeks" (that would make this commercial project impossible). The idea of such a way was to sail on ships on rivers and drag ships between rivers. This route is drawn on the map below.

Map of the Varangian Routs (Varangianroutes.png) from the free repository commons.wikimedia.org under CC License.

Between the rivers the ships rolled on logs laid under them. Many later wondered where the equestrian Cossacks acquired such skills in dragging ships by land, especially during Yermak's campaign in Siberia. As we can see the Varangians (Vikings) where their teachers.

The excavations also indicate the massive presence of Prussians, Finno-Ugric, Tatars and many other peoples in Russia. In the author's opinion, proceeding from all the remaining secondary sources and indirect evidences, it is most likely a certain Varangian Rurik was invited indeed by the Russian principalities to rule. He was rather a Western Slav (Rujan, Obodrit, etc.) or a Slavic Prussian than a Scandinavian. It has been confirmed by the Bertin Annals recognized in the West that the statehood in Russia arose before the arrival of Rurik. So, the age of Russia is really determined incorrectly even by Western evidences. Below is the list of foreign documents about the Russians and Slavs in general from Anton Belyakov's study "Keys to Russian History…" [36 - Антон Беляков. "Ключи к русской истории. Доказательства по рассуждению". 2018г., Litres, 370 с.] (2018).

I century. The famous Roman writer and politician Tacitus (lived from 50 to 120) mentions rugs (Rujans) on the southern shore of the Baltic.

II—III centuries. The Gothic historian Jordan (lived in the VI century) reports on the struggle of the Goths in the Baltic States with the Rugs.

Between 307 and 314 years. In the Verona Document (the list of Rome's allied countries obliged to supply troops for Rome's needs but retaining some political independence) the Rugsare named among the Roman federates.

Before 337. The Byzantine writer of the first half of the XIV century Nikephoros Gregorr mentions a Russian prince who held a court position under Emperor Constantine.

The second half of the IV century. The historian Jordan (lived in the VI century.) mentions the Rogs as part of the Germanic power and then speaks of the Rosomon tribe which broke out of obedience.

Between 379-395 years. Russian chronicle from the reign of Vladimir Svyatoslavich to Ivan IV inclusive) speaks about the "battle with Russian soldiers" of Emperor Theodosius troops. It also mentions the Russian attack on the Selunsky Grad.

434-435 years. The Rugs appear on the Sava River near the town of Novieduna (present-day Yugoslavia) where they come into collision with the Goths.

454 year. A part of the Rugs joins the Huns and together with them are defeated by the Gepids and the tribes acting on their side including most of the Rugs. The defeated retreat from the Danube to the Dnieper and the Black Sea and some of them retreat to the Adriatic coast.

469. The Rugs are defeated by the Goths in the struggle for Pannonia.

476 year. Odoacer (who is Rug according to the Gothic historian Jordan) the commander of a detachment of barbarian mercenaries in the Roman army (and later the king of Italy) as the head of an army consisting of Rugs, Skirrs and Turks overthrows the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire. He is called the Russian prince from the island of Rugen.

489 year. The Gothic King Theodoric opposes the Italian King Odoacer. There are rugs in both armies.

493 year. Theodoric treacherously kills Odoacer. The Rugs participate in the proclamation of Theodoric as King of Italy.

The middle of the VI century. The Rugi seize power in Italy for a while and raise their leader Erarich to the royal throne.