Why did Russia come to be called Russia? How the name of the country has changed from antiquity to the present day
For several centuries, the term “Rus” meant an ethno-cultural and state-political association of the lands where the Eastern Slavs lived. Russia, on the other hand, is the Greek-Byzantine name for Russia. From ancient times to the present day, Russia has changed many names, eventually calling itself the Russian Federation.
Geographical Territory of Russia and Russia
In a broad sense, Rus is a union of all the Orthodox principalities ruled by the Ruriks, but only until the invasion of the Mongol-Tatars in the 13th century. In fact, the territories of the Middle Dnieper were called Rus’. In 1721, the Muscovite state was called Russia: it was then that the Russian Empire was formed.
Ancient Rus itself was originally created on the trade route “from the Varangians to the Greeks”. This route passed from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, ending at the coast of Byzantium. The route passed mainly along the rivers that flowed through the lands inhabited by the tribes of the Eastern Slavs: the Krivichi, the Ilmen Slovenes (namely the Slovenes, not the Slovenes), the Polyans, and later the Polotsks, Drevlyans, Radimichs and others.
How Russia appeared on the world map
In ancient chronicles, the names “Rus Land” and “Rus” have been preserved, referring to the Old Russian state, which was formed in the IX-X centuries. These designations were mentioned in the treaty of 911 between Prince Oleg of Kiev and Byzantium. In the same document, the word “land” literally meant “sovereign state.” In some ancient sources, there are such designations of the ethno-cultural region of settlement of the Eastern Slavs as “Ruthenia” and “Russia”.
The phrase “Kievan Rus” (as Russian historians of the 19th century called the region) meant the geographical region of the Dnieper region (the basin of the Dnieper River), a relatively small territory near Kiev. Historians have also singled out “Chernigov Rus” and “Rostov (sometimes Suzdal) Rus” as a designation of a “separate” state. The state-political term “Kievan Rus” began to be often used only after 1934 in textbooks of the USSR to designate the state where the Eastern Slavs lived in the 9th-12th centuries. The East Slavic tribes themselves were also often called “Rus”.
There are several versions of the etymology of the word “Rus”. In the Indo-Aryan languages, the word “russa” meant “light” or “light.” In Proto-Slavic language, “rus” means “red” and “red”. As you know, many fair-haired and red-haired people lived in the territories of Russia. According to one of the versions, “rus” could mean the bed of a river: all cities used to “stand” on large or medium-sized rivers. Also, “Rus” could be associated with the “Ros” River, which is one of the tributaries of the Dnieper.
How did the name “Russia” come about?
The term “Russia” is supposedly derived from the Greek word “Russia.” This is how the Byzantine Empire called the Russian Metropolitanate, which was founded in Kiev around the end of the 10th century. In the official title of Metropolitan Cyprian, this name was spelled out for the first time: “Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia” (there was no double letter “s” in the word yet). As early as the 15th-16th centuries, the names “Russia”, “Russian Empire” and “Russian Kingdom” were used by many writers, including Maxim the Greek, Joseph of Volotsk, etc., as synonyms for the name “Rus”. From 1547, shortly after the coronation of Ivan IV, the country was called the “Tsardom of Russia”.
The year was 1654. Alexei Mikhailovich received the title of Grand Duke and Tsar of “All Great and Small Russia”. After 1655, the words “and White” were added to this title. The very name “Russia” appeared in official documentation until 1721. In that year, Peter the Great already bore the title “Father of the Fatherland, Emperor of All Russia”, and the name of the country began to be written with two “s”. This is how the “Russian Empire” appeared, which existed until 1917.
From the Revolution to the USSR
In 1917-1918, Russia was called the “Russian Republic”. When the monarchy was overthrown, the Constituent Assembly of the Provisional Government proclaimed the creation of the Russian Democratic Federative Republic. Armed Bolsheviks dispersed the parliament on the day of the official proclamation of the republic.
During the Civil War, when both the Bolshevik Soviet government and the All-Russian government existed in parallel, each side called Russia in its own way. When the October Revolution began, the Congress of Soviets announced a new name for the country, the Russian Soviet Republic. In the documents of that time, one could find other equivalent names: “RSFSR”, “Russian State” (until 1922), “Russian Republic”, “Russian Federative Republic”, etc.
The term “Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic” was documented only in June 1918. Then, in 1937, in the abbreviation of the RSFSR, the words “Socialist” and “Soviet” simply swapped places.
Russian Federation
After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, a new “name” was assigned to Russia – “Russian Federation (Russia)”. During the voting of the people’s deputies, the majority initially proposed a single name “Russia”. Previously, the designation “Russian Federation” was sometimes used as an abbreviation, for example in the 1978 Constitution. The official document on the change of name came into force only in 1992. Later, the term, which is still in force today, was included in the 1993 constitution.
Today, the word “Rus” is used only as a historical or artistic concept. But the inhabitants of Siberia and the Far East, as before, designate only the European regions of the country with the term “Russia”.