Russia (3 page)

The northward movement of people from what is now Ukraine to colonize territory which is now known as Russia had not been even. Extensive marshlands made access to some areas difficult or impossible. Dense forests had a similar effect. On the other hand, rivers often provided convenient routes for the explorers. Similar factors account for linguistic development. Old Slavonic diversified into a variety of languages just as the physical characteristics of Russians varied in response to geography and ecological conditions. Interestingly, geneticists suggest that linguistic variations are roughly in line with genetic variations. The Russian language and the genes that make Russians what they are physically are evidently inseparable.

Geographical barriers sometimes promoted differences in language. Areas of bog and marsh have tended to be as effective as mountains in keeping societies separate and distinct. The Carpathian Mountains separated the ancestors of the Czechs and Poles from those of the south-Slav Serbs and Croats; the Pripet Marshes constituted a no less effective a barrier between
the west Slavs and the east Slavs whose descendants were to become Ukrainians, Belarusans and Russians. Such physical barriers facilitated separate linguistic development. It could even be said that the traditional enmity between Poles and Russians has its origins in geography.

The ancestors of the Russians were not conscious of their genetic makeup, of course, and were still less able to control it. But, though genetic adaptation is unconscious and slow, human intelligence and ingenuity make for a faster track of adaptation. That these people could make tools, use them, and domesticate some animals suggests that they were conscious actors, capable — collectively — of shaping their own culture. The Russians of the future, then, were to be the creation both of their ancestors and of the developing environment of the Russian land. Some characteristics we associate with Russians nowadays originated in the rigours of those prehistoric times: tolerance of cold, endurance of privation, and a readiness to adopt new technology from other peoples they were to encounter. This last we know from the work of archaeologists.

By the year 4000
BCE
conditions for civilization were fast being created. Tools had become more varied and sophisticated. People had learned to make nets, hooks and needles as well as awls and scrapers — bows and arrows too. Indeed, the remains in several grave digs of the period suggest arrows to have been a relatively common cause of death. Society was being organized on a larger scale than hitherto; exploitation of the wild was becoming more specialized. A new kind of economy was in the making. It was based largely on farming, of both crops and domesticated animals, including the horse (though wild horses were to survive into the eighteenth century). And, as farming and artisanal skills developed, settlements grew in size — a few of them considerably.

One site, at Talyanky, east of the river Dnieper, is reckoned to have housed as many as 10,000 inhabitants. Yet, despite its size, it could hardly be called a town. Rather, it was an agglomeration of largely self-sufficient farmsteads. The buildings were oblong, timber-framed, clay-and-wattle structures with wooden floors reinforced with baked clay, and with low-pitched roofs. Most structures were divided into three or four rooms, each with a stove or hearth, which suggests what might be termed industrial use. Many of them were certainly used for baking clay objects. Settlements in Ukraine of the so-called Tripolye type, dating from approximately 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, belonged to people who grew wheat, barley, millet and fruit, and raised pigs, sheep, goats and cattle.
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The size of such settlements suggests that there had been something of a revolution in food production. This had led to a marked improvement in diet, and hence in female fecundity. If the consequent population increase made for larger settlements, it probably also created pressure on resources which, as we have noticed, encouraged migration northward. The hunting bands that had led the way, also pioneered settlement, at first by erecting seasonal encampments, for summer or winter depending on the prey sought: deer, fish or wildfowl or furry animals. Such temporary settlements had similar characteristics to those of Sredny Stog in northern Ukraine, a place associated with the domestication of wild horses, and permanent settlements of later date. They were usually sited on a raised shelf of land above a river, this being convenient for transportation and communication as well as for fresh water and for fishing, yet safe from flooding.
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One great advantage of the cold times had been the ease with which the meat of hunted creatures could be frozen. The popular Russian dish
pelmeni
is a reminder of this fact: at the onset of winter (a popular time for slaughtering animals), pasta shells filled with meat are thrown out of the kitchen window to freeze. Then, during the winter months, they are taken inside as needed, a shovelful at a time, to be boiled up for dinner. In warmer conditions, however, people learned to preserve meat, and fish, by air-drying or, more commonly, by salting.

The need for large quantities of salt to preserve both meat and fish was to promote both trade and industry. It encouraged searches for saline lakes and marshes, and the development of evaporation techniques. Excavations of sites in Ukraine have demonstrated that the trade in salt became extensive and far-ranging, and this helped to develop culture contacts with other budding societies.

While late Stone Age society had been developing in what is now southern Russia and Ukraine, hunter-gatherers with stone technology had been developing to the north, towards Finland and the Baltic. A cemetery excavated by Soviet archaeologists in Karelia and dating from about 7,500 years ago tells us quite a lot about these people. Most were Europeoid, though a few had Mongoloid features derived from the climate their ancestors had endured. That most of the buried bodies faced east and were sprinkled with red ochre has persuaded archaeologists that they may have venerated the sun. The knives, fish-hooks and harpoons found along with animal remains show that they lived by hunting elk, beaver and seals as well as red and roe deer and wild pigs.
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Climate as well as the availability of materials dictated the form of clothing they wore.

Human life, even in these early times, was more than a struggle for
subsistence and self-preservation, however. The settlers had a taste for pretty things like ivories or amber brought from the Baltic. Archaeologists have found a range of decorative jewellery, some of which rings or rattles beguilingly when the wearer moves, and a variety of primitive musical instruments — pipes, drums and bells — that suggest that these people did not lack amusement, nor noisy means of conjuring up spirits. Other finds suggest a yearning for immortality: the remains of animal sacrifice, for example, and the care taken of the dead. In many cases the bodies of the deceased were ritually positioned and buried together with votive statuettes as well as objects that might be useful in an afterlife, or of which the dead had been fond.

The prevalence of pregnant-woman sculptures - talismans of productivity and growing riches - may suggest a society in which women were valued more than men. Certainly, the women were productive in ways other than child-bearing. They gathered food, made yarns, and engaged in a variety of other handicrafts as well as providing care and comfort. However, any such superior valuation is unlikely to have lasted into times when the men’s brute strength and strategic sense were needed for defence — whether against the elements or against other men. It was this need that put men at a premium and precluded the development of matriarchy, and there is evidence that it coincided with the advent of metal technology. From this period on the idols are of men rather than women.

The technological revolution associated first with copper and then with bronze occurred about 3,500 years ago in the Russian land. Evidence of copper ore and copper-smelting, as well as a range of objects including copper knives, ornaments and sickles, has been found in the Volga basin of eastern Russia. Bronze axe heads and spear heads have been found both near the Baltic and in the south — and male figures are characteristic of the votive objects and ornaments found.
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Then, about 3,000 years ago, the Iron Age arrived in Russia, and the pace of change quickened.

Trading networks, usually running along rivers, connected Russia both with the Mediterranean and with western Europe, which shared in the Iron Age culture. Even so, iron metallurgy is thought to have developed more or less independently in Russia. In any case, traders did not necessarily travel long distances — although some of the objects they traded in did. Commerce tended to be incremental, one group trading with its neighbours, and they with others, until commercial chains were formed along which travelled the commodities from which traders profited. A chain lasted until a cheaper or better alternative source was found, or until the consumers in the market learned to produce the goods themselves.

Though old technology often persisted alongside the new, metal technology speeded the pace of agricultural development. In areas where the use of such iron implements as the sickle caught on, more land could be cultivated and the community became richer. At the same time the makers of sickles forged swords, spear heads and axe heads, and made armour, allowing war to be waged more effectively. Iron culture made a society more attractive to predators; it also permitted a more effective defence. Certainly, with the advent of iron both settlements and society changed. Forts, albeit rudimentary at first, began to appear on hills overlooking farming land, and society became more differentiated both in function and in status. A variety of specialists appeared - metalworkers, people skilled in handling heavy weapons (like large axes), and organizers. But the new and larger society became more dependent on farming.

At the same time iron helped speed the extension of settlement northward into the forest zone, thanks to the iron axe head, which allowed trees to be felled more efficiently. It also contributed to swidden agriculture. This method of taming the forested wilderness and extending the area of farming was suggested by nature itself. Late-summer storms accompanied by lightning occasionally set fire to tracts of dried-out scrub and trees. The ashes provided a nutritious seedbed for plants, and the proto-Russians learned to exploit the phenomenon.

The swidden (or, more dramatically, ‘slash-and-burn’) method of farming, though simple, required patience and, in the initial phase, some heavy work. This would normally begin in early summer, when axe-men would hack down trees in a selected area of forest — probably near a river where the ground was flat and firm - and leave the timber to dry out until late the following spring. Techniques changed according to conditions: in conifer forests the bark was often stripped off to dry out the trees before felling. Such wood as was needed to make tools, build huts and use as fuel would be taken out; the rest would be burned, together with the undergrowth. The women and the weaker men would then set to with the sowing. Sometimes they scattered the seed directly into the ashes once these had cooled, though more often they used wooden hoes and forked scratch-ploughs, fashioned on the spot, to prepare a tilth before sowing.

At first the crops would be good. The ground, after all, was rich in potash and humus. Meanwhile wild plants, which had colonized the uncultivated parts of the clearing, provided good fodder for the newcomers’ domesticated animals. The method was comparatively cheap in terms of energy invested. However, after two, three or at most four seasons the harvests became sparse and poor, so the little community which depended on it had
to move on and start the process again. Since the land had to be left fallow for at least fifteen years (and in some areas as long as thirty) before it regained strength, slash-and-burn agriculture demanded a large area of prospective as well as actual cultivation. It could not support a population of any density, though it certainly encouraged expansion of the land area farmed. Swidden farming was practised in Russia as early as 1000
BCE,
and it was to be used by colonizing venturers for centuries afterwards in the course of taming the Russian land.

And swidden agriculture also had implications for private land-ownership. What point could there be in owning land when one’s family moved on regularly (if not necessarily far) every few years and there was no shortage of land anyway?
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The angry protests in Russia against the denationalization of land at the beginning of the present century may not be directly attributable to the historical effects of swidden farming, but the technique may have left a mark on the Russian mentality. Indeed, there is reason to believe that the distinctive character of certain Russian institutions originated in the particular nature of Russian farming, developed in response to difficulties posed by soil and climate.

The swidden farmers who had moved northward and those who remained in the Ukraine area shared much the same culture as well as much the same blood. However, differences in conditions and the availability of materials dictated variations in the houses they built for themselves. To the north, where timber was plentiful, houses came to be built entirely of logs, rather than the use of timber being confined to frames and battens; and the pitch of the roofs was much steeper, to facilitate the shedding of snow. And if differences of environment promoted change in aspects of physical culture, they are associated with developments in language too.

What is now northern Russia was inhabited at that time by small groups of people speaking Finnic dialects. The Russians-to-be were only beginning to penetrate these areas, and their language came, as they themselves had done, from the south. Scholars are still divided over the issue of whether cereal-farming was introduced at the same time as the Indo-European group of languages (to which Russian belongs but Finnish does not) by people who had originated in the so-called ‘fertile crescent’ of the Near East (the area of modern Iraq); the views of Sir Colin Renfrew on the spread of Indo-European languages have been challenged by another brilliant anthropologist, J. Mallory.
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But it is certain that the proto-Russians, like the proto-Ukrainians and proto-Poles and others, spoke Slavonic.