On the relationship of Kiev Rus with the nomadic world

Abstract

This article analyzes the research on the relationship of Kiev Rus with the nomadic world. Obviously, the medieval nomadic Turkic peoples were not isolated from the major civilizations of their time. The nature of these relations has been mixed. There were times of war and peace.
The authors who first considered this issue in the second half of the XVIII century wrote about the grave consequences of the invasions of the nomads to Rus. In this context, focusing their attention on the age-old struggle of Rus against nomads these researchers mainly wrote about the role of Russia as the protector of Europe. Representatives of the Soviet historiography of 20-30s gradually began to develop critical attitude to the above idea. These researchers stick to the opinion on the nomads not only as destroyers, but as representatives of a relatively high culture and the role of the nomadic civilization as a whole. However, these studies were evaluated as works «exaggerating the level of culture of nomads and hypotrophying their cultural influence on the Slavs.» This trend is observed in many modern works devoted to different aspects of the relations of Russia with the nomadic world. The author comes to the conclusion about the need to transition to a new level of research on the nomadic civilization.