Tag: History

Rurik was the founder of the officially recognized by historians Russian state and the founder of the first known Russian royal dynasty. According to the chronicles, in 862 AD he has been offered a position of the ruler of a conglomerate of several Slavic tribes located at the North-Eastern edge of the modern Russia, most likely due to some kind of succession crisis, and he accepted the offer.

He appeared to be quite fit for the task, and within short years extended the nation’s borders, incorporating nearby Slavic tribes. His blood successors ruled Russia till 1598, when yet another succession crisis triggered the Time of Troubles, which eventually resolved in the establishment of the new dynasty, Romanovs.

Rurik’s origins are not known (and the Norman Theory has been disproved), but there are many people living now who claim their descendance from Rurik, and the DNA analysis of most of them confirms the same common ancestor who lived in the 9th century AD. That more or less proves that Rurik was a historical figure, indeed.

Raskol happened in the mid 17th century when Russian Orthodox Church reform led to the split between the new official church and the majority of the population, producing so called Old Believers movement and resulting in the centuries of oppression against it.

Unlike somewhat similar religious divide of 16th century between Catholics and Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire which after their civil war resulted in a kind of equilibrium and subsequent Cuius regio, eius religio agreement, Russian Raskol resulted in the full victory of the new version of religion. After historically short time it was almost fully adopted by the majority of Russian elites, while common folk en masse just pretended to comply, and a sizeable chunk of population (up to 20% or even more) actively opposed the new church.

All three biggest Russian peasant uprisings of Stepan Razin (17th century), Kondratiy Bulavin and Emelyan Pugachev (both 18th century) had a pronounced Raskol component. Some historians argue Raskol was the major reason for all those uprisings. Over the centuries Russian Empire moved from the fierce repressions against Old Believers to tolerating them, mostly for fiscal and economical reasons, but the divide never went away completely.

The influence of Raskol on the Russian history is enormous, and it lasted till Soviet times. When bolsheviks started to destroy churches, most people supported this and took part in it – not because of overwhelming support for bolshevicks, but because those churches were hated official churches of the forcibly imposed “new” religion. It was a retaliation for almost three hundred years of repressions. And this probably was the last bit of Raskol influence, this comeback followed by the dozens of years of state atheism finally stopped the fight, at least in its vicious forms.