Finno-ugrian 'rus'?

Split from one.. well, a few even threads on the history of the region, like that one with a settled state on the Volga...

The hagiography said the eastern slavs had their first big states, i think, after a conquest and rule - 'yoke' of swedish norse warriors, the Rus. Or something.

What if there was no eastern slavs, or not much... what if the older inhabitant around, the 'volga finns' and all, where never conquered, assimilated or so into the future russia(s), before (I think) any norses come in mass....

Was those nations, those civilisations, close to settling down, if nomadic? could they have made a sedentary civilisation, towns?

Would the swedishes (or others) foreigners be attracted to them?

Could we have had a finno-ugrian 'Russia'(s) centuries later? What would have happened later to Finns-Karelians, letonians(?)? and ironicaly, could they have assimilated slavs (and turkish and such) groups?
 
Split from one.. well, a few even threads on the history of the region, like that one with a settled state on the Volga...

The hagiography said the eastern slavs had their first big states, i think, after a conquest and rule - 'yoke' of swedish norse warriors, the Rus. Or something.

What if there was no eastern slavs, or not much... what if the older inhabitant around, the 'volga finns' and all, where never conquered, assimilated or so into the future russia(s), before (I think) any norses come in mass....

Was those nations, those civilisations, close to settling down, if nomadic? could they have made a sedentary civilisation, towns?

Would the swedishes (or others) foreigners be attracted to them?

Could we have had a finno-ugrian 'Russia'(s) centuries later? What would have happened later to Finns-Karelians, letonians(?)? and ironicaly, could they have assimilated slavs (and turkish and such) groups?

Without the Finnish or the Slavs there wouldn't be a Russia. ;)
 
Could we have had a finno-ugrian 'Russia'(s) centuries later?
Situation with slavs on the territory of 'Russia' is somewhat similar to that with anglo-saxons on the territory of 'England'.
If there was no anglo-saxons we could have had a celtic 'England' conquered by Normans of William the Conquerer.
But that would have been a very different 'England'.

And without slavs that would have been a very different 'Russia'.

It might have been better or worse. Who knows?

But it is hard to assume that there was no slavs in Russia. Demography played a decisive part in it. Birth rate and the like. Malthusianism...:)

*by the way there is some evidence that slaves did not violently took 'Russia' away from finno-ugrian tribes. it was coexistance and slow pushing out and assimilating (as well as fighting).
And that differs slavs from angles and saxons
 
yes, but could one of the nations around build a state? did they had agriculture and such?

(I have read by example, to the northwest, the finns remained rather behind for a long while... historical age ONLY in middle age.)

Could the Balt peoples play a role there, conquering inland, and establishing small realms?
 
yes, but could one of the nations around build a state? did they had agriculture and such?

(I have read by example, to the northwest, the finns remained rather behind for a long while... historical age ONLY in middle age.)

Could the Balt peoples play a role there, conquering inland, and establishing small realms?

There were archaeological cultures identifiable as Baltic in the Oka region for example as late as the 7th c., though what exactly happened to them is hard to say.

The Slavs have been somewhere close to Russia's northwestern heartland for a long long time before the "Rus" state arose, though the archaeological remains are generally unimpressive until the 8th/9th c. The only area which gives itself away as a relatively recent colonization is the Ilmen region (Novgorod). Additionally, Severians could have been Slavicised semi-nomads (Iranian or even Turcic), and ditto for the southern tribes (White Croats, Tiverians, Ulchi) according to some people.

Krivichi, Radimichi, Vyatichi, Polyane have been in Ukraine, Belarus and Verhovye too long for your proposed POD.
 
Oh, it can go as far as needed for a good and possible thing...

You know, I would consider the Uralians first and muddle around with the Sabir and Magyar migrations. There's some evidence the ancestors of Mansi/Khanty occupied the Kama/Volga confluence before the Bulgars came. That area is actually pretty good for agriculture and far away from Slavic expansion.

I am not sure about how much farming the Ilmen Finns did, but the Ves' and the Chud' were constituent inhabitants of the proto-polity around Ilmen that supposedly invited the Rus in to rule them and thus likely farmers.

So the Ilmen region is another possibility for a Finnic state, though you have to somehow get rid of the Ilmen Slavs, possibly as early as the beginning of the 7th c.

Mucking around with the post-Hunnic space is really a good place to start but the trouble with that is there's few concrete facts about it.
 
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