*Laughs in Mamluk*
Well not everyone has Mamluks... or the Sea that prevents marching on to you :/
*Laughs in Mamluk*
Not necessarily, but "not giving up" is not the same as "wins in the end".
To be honest I just think it's the fact that this board likely has so many Christian members, or members who come from Christian backgrounds, that they simply cannot conceive of a world where their faith actually fails. If you're raised to believe that the spread of Christianity or Islam or whatever else into every corner of the world was "God's Will" then perhaps you would think it was pre-determined by some greater spiritual power, but in reality the spread of the Abrahamic religions was as much politics and power as anything else.
Pagan Rus has the potential to be huge. Yes, there are other factors to contend with (horselords from the east, for one), but I don't think it's fair to discount the topic of continued Pagan rule based on the flimsy assumption that all of the western world was destined to be Christian.
Forgive me if I seem especially butthurt by this, but recently I've started noticing patterns in the way things are discussed on the board and it's becoming rather frustrating.
This is honestly the worst way to attack your opponents opinions or making a fuss out of nothing.Not necessarily, but "not giving up" is not the same as "wins in the end".
To be honest I just think it's the fact that this board likely has so many Christian members, or members who come from Christian backgrounds, that they simply cannot conceive of a world where their faith actually fails. If you're raised to believe that the spread of Christianity or Islam or whatever else into every corner of the world was "God's Will" then perhaps you would think it was pre-determined by some greater spiritual power, but in reality the spread of the Abrahamic religions was as much politics and power as anything else.
Pagan Rus has the potential to be huge. Yes, there are other factors to contend with (horselords from the east, for one), but I don't think it's fair to discount the topic of continued Pagan rule based on the flimsy assumption that all of the western world was destined to be Christian.
Forgive me if I seem especially butthurt by this, but recently I've started noticing patterns in the way things are discussed on the board and it's becoming rather frustrating.
This is honestly the worst way to attack your opponents opinions or making a fuss out of nothing.
We are not talking about Christian determinism in the 4th or 5th century, we are talking about Christianity in the 9th century, a time when it already controlled Europe West and South of a line running from the Elbe to Thrace and controlled the vast majority of the population and wealth, political and economic.
It's not about destiny, it's about a clear global pattern that shows countries converting to institutionalized faiths even without outright imposition, I'm not myself a believe that this trend is deterministic but the argument is far too strong to be derided this way.
But even if you stipulate that the conversion of the entirety of Europe was almost inevitable (which I am not sure that I agree with, but again, I am just stipulating the point), even a world where Russia avoids Christianization for merely another century or two would lead to some massive butterflies, in the same way that a world where Russia accepted Christianity a century or so earlier would have also been a massive change.
Even if the broad trends are almost inevitable, people often seem to cite them as a way to dismiss the question, rather than reasoning through how even slightly different circumstances could have led to a very different world. I think that is why people sometimes get frustrated.
Sure but we need to explain why that wouldn't happen and the development of the trend should be analyzed, not dismissed for the sake of the the question.But even if you stipulate that the conversion of the entirety of Europe was almost inevitable (which I am not sure that I agree with, but again, I am just stipulating the point), even a world where Russia avoids Christianization for merely another century or two would lead to some massive butterflies, in the same way that a world where Russia accepted Christianity a century or so earlier would have also been a massive change.
Even if the broad trends are almost inevitable, people often seem to cite them as a way to dismiss the question, rather than reasoning through how even slightly different circumstances could have led to a very different world. I think that is why people sometimes get frustrated.
But even if you stipulate that the conversion of the entirety of Europe was almost inevitable (which I am not sure that I agree with, but again, I am just stipulating the point), even a world where Russia avoids Christianization for merely another century or two would lead to some massive butterflies, in the same way that a world where Russia accepted Christianity a century or so earlier would have also been a massive change.
Even if the broad trends are almost inevitable, people often seem to cite them as a way to dismiss the question, rather than reasoning through how even slightly different circumstances could have led to a very different world. I think that is why people sometimes get frustrated.
To be fair, most of these are somewhat reasonable objections (except "because religion" which I assume is hyperbole).Honestly, this topic comes up often enough (either the Slavs or more commonly the Norse) and discussion is usually stifled by a severe case of Christian Determinism.
"Pagan faiths will always fall to Abrahamic ones because religion!"
"But what if the Pagan faith tried to organise?"
"It can't because it was tribal and not written down!"
"Let's suppose it did."
"Enemies on all sides! It will convert eventually!"
We are not talking about Christian determinism in the 4th or 5th century, we are talking about Christianity in the 9th century, a time when it already controlled Europe West and South of a line running from the Elbe to Thrace and controlled the vast majority of the population and wealth, political and economic.
It's not about destiny, it's about a clear global pattern that shows countries converting to institutionalized faiths even without outright imposition, I'm not myself a believer that this trend is deterministic but the argument is far too strong to be derided and discarded this way.
Little ever happens for just "one" reason, Lithuania by the time it converted was likely already demographically a majority Christian nation. Regardless of the Rus and Lithuanians staying pagan you still have all of the important economical and political players around them entrenched in Christian institutions if nothing else is changed.Lithuania stayed Pagan for centuries and only converted because Władysław II Jagiełło was offered the Polish crown. In Kievan Rus Orthodox Christianity was also chosen for political reasons. If the Rus decided to stay Pagan, the odds for Lithuania also staying Pagan would be even better than in OTL. DanMcCollum argued above that in OTL the crusades were a spent force by the time of the Mongol collapse. If we assume that the same would be the case in this time line, both the Rus and the Lithuanians would have good odds for staying Pagan regardless of whether they were conquered by invading Mongol tribes or not (IICC, it has been argued that the Mongol invasion was linked to climatic changes and population pressure, so they would likely happen also in this time line).
Little ever happens for just "one" reason, Lithuania by the time it converted was likely already demographically a majority Christian nation. Regardless of the Rus and Lithuanians staying pagan you still have all of the important economical and political players around them entrenched in Christian institutions if nothing else is changed.
Well in some cases yes though you can't say that having popular revolts means the lower classes as a whole are against Christiniaty while elites are for it, that's jumping to conclusions.Didn’t the Christianization process in Northern Europe and Eastern Europe actually work in the opposite direction? That is, the country’s leadership would convert to Christianity, which would then slowly trickle down into the peasantry, sort of like how much of the Middle East was still firmly Christian for centuries after the Muslim conquests. This explains how you could still see widespread revolts in Poland in favor of the old gods decades after the country’s nominal Christianization, and how the Finnish government felt the need to stamp out rural pagan festivals well into modernity.
Well in some cases yes though you can't say that having popular revolts means the lower classes as a whole are against Christiniaty while elites are for it, that's jumping to conclusions.
But the case of Lithuania, they controlled vast amounts of East Slavic Christianized territories by the late 14th century.
Well in some cases yes though you can't say that having popular revolts means the lower classes as a whole are against Christiniaty while elites are for it, that's jumping to conclusions.
But the case of Lithuania, they controlled vast amounts of East Slavic Christianized territories by the late 14th century.
We still didn't resolve the question of why Rus wouldn't convert to Christianity when half a dozen sizeable states, them included, did in the timespan of 2 centuries.Hence, if the Rus stays Pagan, these areas could very well remain Pagan, so even if Lithanuia should conquer much of those areas after the collapse of an ATL Mongol empire, they would not necessarily become majority Christian in this time line.
Honestly that's irrelevant, you could find a plethora of examples of small communities being "behind" various types of trends that the vast majority of the populations and communities follow, this doesn't really change anything.there were reports of a sizeable number of Hellenic polytheists in today’s Greece as late as the ninth century.
A Vajrayana Buddhist Russia. This is somethingWhile I know this thread is about a pagan Rus state, I'd find it fascinating if the Rus would hold on to paganism, only to convert to Buddhism under the Mongols, in part to delineate their own culture in contrast to the surrounding ones. A constant Buddhist influence on Eastern Europe could lead to all sorts of mayhem.