Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

RUSSIAN STATE ON THE DNIEPER 211
foreign military power and well-organized self-rule in the frame of
a single city state.
All these peculiarities of Russian origins and the extraordinary
differences between Russia and western Europe are still unexplained.
Why should Russia begin her evolution with commerce and city life
and western Europe with agriculture and the so-called feudal system ?
Why is it that Russia developed a feudal system much later, not earlier
than the thirteenth century, when western Europe had already begun
to abandon that system ? Why even then did Russian feudalism
assume peculiar and original forms which bear little resemblance to
the corresponding phenomena in western Europe ?
In spite of many attempts by both Russian and western European
scholars to solve this problem, it remains unsolved. The main reasons
for this failure are as follows. It is a mistake to begin the history of
Russia with the Russian annals in the ninth century, that is, to confound
the history of Russia with the history of the Slavonic race.
The history of Russia as an economic and political organism is much
more ancient than the earliest references to the Slavonic race. Russia
as a country existed long before the ninth century, and formed part
of the civilized world even in the classical period and in the period
of migrations. At this epoch the main lines of future evolution were
already laid down. We must therefore treat the history of Russia
not as the history of the Slavonic race but as the history of the
country of Russia. I am convinced that, if we treat the history of
Russia from this point of view, many of the alleged difficulties will
disappear at once, and the history of Russia in general will appear
before us in an entirely new light. Let me go more into detail and
try to explain from this point of view the political and social structure
of the Kievan princedom in the ninth and tenth centuries.
In the preceding chapters I have tried to show what were the conditions
of life in the steppes of South Russia before it was occupied
by the German tribes. Let me summarize once more the main
features of the social and economic life of this period. During this
whole period the leading part was played in the steppes of South
Russia by different nomadic tribes. One replaced another : the
Cimmerians were driven out and conquered by the Scythians ; the
Scythians gave up their sovereignty under the pressure of the Sarmatians
; but the main structure of the states successively formed by
these tribes was almost the same. A small minority of nomads with
a strong and effective military organization ruled over a large majority
of conquered peoples and tribes. Some of these tribes were themselves
nomads, but most of them were agriculturists established on the rich