Central Russia, who supposedly are the ancestors of the current Russians. that such a meaningless and primitive demagogic device is used exclusively for propaganda purposes in order to amuse a wounded and not yet fully formed national identity. "Lenta.ru" tells how Such claims are untenable, but at the same time give us the opportunity to recall the little-known pages of our early history… We all know that the interfluve of the Volga and Oka has become not only the core of the Russian state, but also the place where the Russian people formed and entered the historical arena. But if you carefully look at the map of Central Russia, you can notice an amazing regularity – very many toponyms (names of geographical objects) are clearly of non-Slavic origin. For example – Moscow, Oka, Yakhroma, Veksa, Lehta, Nero, Tolgobol, Nerekhta, Pechegda, Kineshma, Kostroma, Chukhloma, Palekh, Ukhtoma, Shuya, Valdai, Seliger, Kirzhach, Klyazma, Koloksha, Khokhloma, Vireya, Pakhra, Taldom a lot others. And if you look at the historical map of a thousand years ago, you will find that this region at that time was almost exclusively inhabited by the Finnish tribes of Murom, Meshchera and Meria. Therefore, many of the above toponyms are of Finnish-speaking origin. And if the names of the Meshchera and Murom have survived to the present day in the names of the Moscow Region natural territory and the famous city of the Vladimir Region, then almost nothing has remained of the city. In ancient times, the Meri tribe occupied the vast territory of Zalesye from the banks of the Moscow River in the area of modern Zvenigorod to the Volga and Lake Galich. By the way, the current Galich in the Kostroma region, founded by immigrants from modern Galich in the Ivano-Frankivsk region of Ukraine (it was from him that the names Galichina and Galicia appeared), was originally called Galich Mersky. Merya lived in small settlements along the banks of numerous rivers and lakes, trying not to go far into dense forests. They were mainly engaged in gathering, hunting, fishing and cattle breeding. Archaeologists believe that before the Slavs appeared, agriculture in present-day Central Russia was almost absent. This is not surprising: the region was considered for a long time as a zone of risky agriculture. Due to adverse climatic conditions, the local soils often yielded very poor yields. Merya remained pagans, the cult of sacred stones was widespread among them. One of them – the Blue Stone – has been preserved on the shores of Lake Pleshcheyev near Pereslavl-Zalessky and still remains a place of worship for pilgrims. The dead people were burnt at large ritual bonfires along the banks of rivers and lakes. Scientists consider the Sarskoye ancient settlement, the tribal center of Meria, which existed on the southern shore of Lake Nero in the Yaroslavl Region from the 7th century, where archaeologists discovered a large number of silver coins from Europe. What then happened to the Sarskoye fortification, whether it had anything to do with the nearby Rostov the Great, which appeared in the 9th century, is still debated by historians. The Slavic colonization of Zalesye began at the end of the first millennium AD. It passed in waves from three directions. First, from the north-west and west (from the current Veliky Novgorod and Smolensk came here the Ilmen Slovens and Krivichi). Then from the south came Vyatichi, northerners and Radimichi. And finally, already at the time of the Old Russian State, the mass migration of residents of southern and southwestern Russia began on the territory of the Volga-Oka interfluve. It is curious that they often gave the names of their native places to the new cities built here: in addition to the already mentioned Galich, these are Vladimir, Pereyaslavl, Peremyshl, Vyshgorod and many others. Colonization of the region by the Slavs was so extensive that even in the pre-Mongol era, their numerical predominance became undoubted here… What then happened to the indigenous Finnish population? Where did it go: was it destroyed by the aliens, was it assimilated by them or went further into the forests? Apparently, basically the Slavic development of this territory was peaceful, which did not exclude individual clashes and conflicts. Archaeological evidence shows that for a long time, Slavs and Finns lived together or side by side. For example, in the Timerevsky settlement near Yaroslavl (the city itself was founded by Rostov Prince Yaroslav the Wise on the site of a small Finnish settlement), scientists found both Slavic and Merian, as well as Scandinavian burials. As for the latter, this should not be surprising – it was the Vikings who for a long time dominated this region. Apparently, due to the very weak population of Zalesia by Finnish tribes, by the beginning of the colonization by the Slavs, they subsequently completely disappeared among the newcomers.
Such rapid assimilation should not surprise: in addition to the fact that there were much more Slavs, they were at a higher level of socio-political development than the natives. For example, the historian Vasily Klyuchevsky wrote that the wild Finnish tribes “did not have veche meetings”, so characteristic of the inhabitants of Kiev, Chernigov or Rostov and Suzdal. During the development of Zalesye, the Slavic colonists primarily settled not on free territories, but on lands already developed by the local Finnish population. Perhaps it is precisely because of this that some part of the Merya, long lived in the interfluve of the Volga and Oka, then went further into the impenetrable forests of the Volga region. Some scholars identify these people with the modern Mari or even with the Mordovians (Erzya and Moksha). Some researchers believe that Meria still left an impressive legacy in our language. For example, only the Eastern Slavs have the possessive lexical “I have” characteristic of Finno-Ugric languages. And indeed, a Pole, Czech or Croat in such a case will say “I have.” The influence of the Merian language also explains the peculiarity of the declension of masculine nouns, where in the genitive case, along with the common Slavic form -u, -th (many people, bring tea), there is a variant typical of Finnish languages -a, -i (many people, bring tea). Proponents of this theory also derive many Russian dialect words from Finnish languages.
It is difficult to judge how true this is – the Meryan language has not survived to the present day and has not left reliable written sources. It was not possible to find his echoes in the local dialects of the Russian language, and the attempts of some enthusiasts to restore or construct the Meryan lexical system in the scientific sense look dubious. The question of the participation of Meria and other Finnish-speaking peoples in the ethnogenesis of the Russian people is still debatable. In Russian folklore, there are no obvious and distinct echoes of contacts with Finnish tribes who lived in this territory before the arrival of the Slavs. Most likely, this once again confirms the rapid and natural nature of their possible assimilation… However, in recent years, the movement of Meryan ethnofuturism has been rapidly developing in Russia, and interest in the history of the Finno-Ugric peoples has been noticeably growing. This is also manifested in the desire of individual enthusiasts to prove that the contribution of the Meryans to the formation of the Russian people was more significant than is still commonly believed. Some even try to artificially construct new sub-ethnic identities (for example, katskars in the Yaroslavl region) and prove that they, along with the Sitskars and Mologzhanians, remained the only direct descendants of the Meryan people. In any case, at the dawn of Russian history, the impact of the measure on the further development of our country was very noticeable. The modern archaeologist Andrei Leontyev believes that the history of this small Finnish people has essentially become the prehistory of North-Eastern Russia: “The geography of settlement prevailing in the era of mary, the external and internal relations of certain regions, largely determined the features of the formation of the original territory and centers of the Rostov principality.” Subsequently, the Rostov principality was transformed into the Rostov-Suzdal land (Suzdal-Vladimir Russia), which became the forerunner of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and the Russian state. As for the ignorant deniers of the Slavic origin of the Russian people, they should remember the following. Ethnic identity is primarily determined not by geneticists and anthropologists with their haplogroups and skullcuts, but by the national culture and language with which people relate to themselves. History knows many examples when completely different ethnic groups participated in the formation of many great peoples. The remarkable Russian writer Konstantin Ushinsky (buried, by the way, in Kiev) as early as the 19th century wisely remarked that “the Finnish tribe… it’s some kind of cement on which all the new northern, European states were laid, which even more applies to Russia. The Swedes, Danes, inhabitants of the entire Baltic coastal zone, Russians – all begin their history with some silent disappearance of Finnish tribes. It seems that they themselves constitute a prehistoric element and are dispersed along
