Dispute about the Varangians

Dispute about the Varangians
The history of the confrontation and the arguments of the parties

Book Description
In the book of the famous archaeologist L.S. Klein describes a three-century history of the dispute about the ethnicity of the Varangians and their role in the history of Ancient Rus': were they Normans or not. The positions of the two main currents in Russian historiography - Normanists and anti-Normanists - are formulated, and the arguments of both are systematized. Three public discussions that became milestones in this history (at intervals of about a hundred years) are described in detail - Lomonosov with Miller, Kostomarov with Pogodin, Shaskolsky with Klein. All these discussions took place in St. Petersburg-Leningrad. L.S. Klein, whose opponents call him the leading Russian Normanist, founded the Slavic-Varangian Seminar at Leningrad University almost half a century ago. Many major domestic researchers have grown up in this informal scientific community. The author's text, which includes both the book itself and the recording of L.S. Klein in the discussion of 1965 and several later articles stating and arguing his position in the dispute, supplemented by a joint article by the author and his students - a review of archaeological material on the issue of the discussion. The appendix contains the memories of the participants of the seminar about the pedagogical principles of L.S. Klein, as well as the memoirs of his former Moscow friends-rivals and the bibliography of the participants of the seminar on the Varangian theme.