Rogvolod’s polity and formation of an ethnopolitical organization on the territory of the Middle Dvina in the Хth century

Abstract

The article discusses the first stages in the formation of an ethnopolitical community on the territory of the Belarusian Dvina, known from the annals as «Polochane». Using basic principles developed by the Vienna School of Historical Ethnography, the author identifies significant socio-political changes in the early medieval (9th–10th centuries) history of Eastern Europe due to the emergence of new elites. The formation of stable ethnopolitical communities is associated with the emergence of these elite groups . The absence of particular artifacts of northern European origin in Polotsk and the Polotsk okrug in the 9th – the first half of the 10th century suggests the independent formation of this center on the basis of local social structures. Significant socio-political changes in Eastern Europe arose during the Viking era (9th–10th centuries), and penetration of the North European military-trade groups into the territory of the Middle Dvina was associated with the beginnings of the active functioning of the West-Dvina branch of the Baltic-Black Sea route (the trade route «from the Varangians to the Greeks»). The development of this route became the main reason why Scandinavian leader Rogvolod came to the Polotsk region and formed a territorial and political organization, conditionally referred to as the «Rogvolod Polity». After the middle to the second half of the 10th century, a social transformation took place on the territory of the Middle Dvina, associated with the formation of elite military-trade groups and the formation of a brigade culture. The Rogvolod Polity, as the first stable territorial and political organization in the Dvina basin, created the institutional foundations for the subsequent consolidating ideology (the «core of tradition» according to R. Wenskus), embodied in the 11th century Polotsk princes Rogvolodovichi in the formation of the ethno-political community «Polochane».