Academic History
The Western account of the Norsemen was introduced to Russians by the German historian Gerhardt Friedrich Müller (1705–1783), who was invited to work in the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1748. At the beginning of an important speech in 1749, Müller declared that the "glorious Scandinavians conquered all the Russian lands with their victorious arms". This statement caused much anger in the hearts of his Russian audience, and earned him much animosity during his professional career in Russia. The remainder of the speech represented a lengthy list of Russian defeats by the Germans and Swedes, Müller was forced to curtail his lecture by shouts of anger from the audience. The scathing criticism from Lomonosov, Krasheninnikov, and other Russian historians led to Müller being forced to suspend his work on the issue until Lomonosov's death. Although the printed text of the original lecture was destroyed, Müller managed to rework it and had it reprinted as Origines Rossicae in 1768.
There were however some Russian historians that accepted this historical account — including Nikolai Karamzin (1766–1826) and his disciple Mikhail Pogodin (1800–75) — gave credit to the claims of the Primary Chronicle that the Varangians were invited by East Slavs to rule over them and bring order. The theory was not without political implications. In Karamzin's writing the Norse migration formed the basis and justification for Russian autocracy (as opposed to anarchy of the pre-Rurikid period), and Pogodin used the theory to advance his view that Russia was immune to social upheavals and revolutions, because the Russian state originated from a voluntary treaty between the people of Novgorod and Varangian rulers.
Genetic studies in the "Family Tree DNA Rurikid Dynasty Project" support the Norse theory, pinpointing the origin of the Monomakhovich (the descendants of Vladimir II Monomakh) branch of Rurikid descendants' DNA consistent with the North Germanic inhabitants of Uppland, North of Stockholm in Sweden.
Read more about this topic: Rus' People
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