The Empire of Russia | Page 8

the
essential steps of nations emerging from darkness into light. With all
nations advancing from barbarism, the process has ever been slow by

which the civil authority has been separated from the military. It is
impossible to educe from the chaos of those times any established
principles. Often the duke or leader was chosen with imposing
ceremonies. Some men of commanding abilities would gather into their
hands the reins of almost unlimited power, and would transmit that
power to their sons. Others were chiefs but in name.
We have but dim glimpses of the early religion of this people. In the
sixth century they are represented as regarding with awe the deity
whom they designated as the creator of thunder. The spectacle of the
majestic storms which swept their plains and the lightning bolts hurled
from an invisible hand, deeply impressed these untutored people. They
endeavored to appease the anger of the supreme being by the sacrifice
of bulls and other animals. They also peopled the groves, the fountains,
the rivers with deities; statues were rudely chiseled, into which they
supposed the spirits of their gods entered, and which they worshiped.
They deemed the supreme being himself too elevated for direct human
adoration, and only ventured to approach him through gods of a
secondary order. They believed in a fallen spirit, a god of evil, who was
the author of all the calamities which afflict the human race.
The polished Greeks chiseled their idols, from snow-white marble, into
the most exquisite proportions of the human form. Many they invested
with all the charms of loveliness, and endowed them with the most
amiable attributes. The voluptuous Venus and the laurel-crowned
Bacchus were their gods. But the Sclavonians, regarding their deities
only as possessors of power and objects of terror, carved their idols
gigantic in stature, and hideous in aspect.
From these rude, scattered and discordant populations, the empire of
Russia quite suddenly sprang into being. Its birth was one of the most
extraordinary events history has transmitted to us. We have seen that
the Normans, dwelling along the southern and eastern shores of the
Baltic, and visiting the most distant coasts with their commercial and
predatory fleets, had attained a degree of power, intelligence and
culture, which gave them a decided preëminence over the tribes who
were scattered over the wilds of central Russia.

A Sclavonian, whose name tradition says was Gostomysle, a man far
superior to his countrymen in intelligence and sagacity, deploring the
anarchy which reigned everywhere around him, and admiring the
superior civilization of the Normans, persuaded several tribes unitedly
to send an embassy to the Normans to solicit of them a king. The
embassy was accompanied by a strong force of these fierce warriors,
who knew well how to fight, but who had become conscious that they
did not know how to govern themselves. Their message was laconic but
explicit:
"Our country," said they, "is grand and fertile, but under the reign of
disorder. Come and govern us and reign over us."
Three brothers, named Rurik, Sineous and Truvor, illustrious both by
birth and achievements, consented to assume the sovereignty, each over
a third part of the united applicants; each engaging to coöperate with
and uphold the others. Escorted by the armed retinue which had come
to receive them, they left their native shores, and entered the wilds of
Scandinavia. Rurik established himself at Novgorod, on lake Ilmen.
Sineous, advancing some three hundred miles further, north-east, took
his station at Bielo Ozero, on the shores of lake Bielo. Truvor went
some hundred miles further south to Truvor, in the vicinity of
Smolensk.
Thus there were three sovereigns established in Russia, united by the
ties of interest and consanguinity. It was then that this region acquired
the name of Russia, from the Norman tribe who furnished these three
sovereigns. The Russia which thus emerged into being was indeed an
infant, compared with the gigantic empire in this day of its growing and
vigorous manhood. It embraced then but a few thousand square miles,
being all included in the present provinces of St. Petersburg, Novgorod
and Pskov. But two years passed away ere Sineous and Truvor died,
and Rurik united their territories with his own, and thus established the
Russian monarchy. The realms of Rurik grew, rapidly by annexation,
and soon extended east some two hundred miles beyond where
Moscow now stands, to the head waters of the Volga. They were
bounded on the south-west by the Dwina. On the north they reached to

the wild wastes of arctic snows. Over these distant provinces, Rurik
established governors selected from his own nation, the Normans.
These provincial governors became feudal lords; and thus, with the
monarchy, the feudal system was implanted.
Feudality was the natural first step of a people emerging from
barbarism.