Name: Russia, the Kievan Rus, and the Mongols: Crash Course World History #20
Uploaded: 2013-05-02T09:34:09.000Z
Duration: 10 min 47 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

and today we’re going to talk about Russia,

which means we get to talk about this guy again!

We haven’t talked about Russia much so far because

2. Ya actually gavarou pa russki a little bit,

because I had some Russian in college and that makes it difficult to mispronounce things,

Well, because I had this big crush on a Russian major.

I’m sure I’ll still mispronounce everything.

today we’re going to talk about persistent stereotypes about Russia,

and how Russia came to take its current shape,

[Savage, brassy swarm of Mongol-tage doom calls…]

But before we discuss the Mongol conquest of Russia,

let’s discuss exactly what got conquered.

We know Kiev was a powerful city-state, but who exactly founded it is a subject of debate.

Most historians now believe that the settlers of Kiev were Slavic people who migrated from

around the Black Sea. But there’s an older theory that the settlers of Kiev were actually,

That theory goes that Vikings came down to Kiev from rivers like the Dnieper and founded

a trading outpost similar to ones they’d founded in Iceland and Greenland.

the language that developed from what the Rus spoke, sounds a lot more Slavic than it

[Russian: Kiev was founded by the slavic ancestors of the Rus.]

[Swede: No. Clearly Kiev was founded by Swedes.]

Almost all of their wars ended with trade concession treaties, and their law codes were

unusually devoted to the subject of commerce.

The Rus traded raw materials like fur, wax, and also slaves—

We’re not gonna venture into the astonishingly intense etymological debate over whether the

word slav derives from the Latin word for slave

because there's nothing more terrifying and verbose

and your relationships to the land determined both your social status and your tax burden.

And if you fell into tax debt, which a lot of peasants did,

then you became bonded to the land you farmed for the rest of your life,

I guess that slave-like dynamic is okay as a model for social organization,

but if you step on the proletariat for too long,

you might end up with a Communist revolution.

First, the ruler of Kiev was called the Grand Prince, and he became the model for future

Russian Kings. Also, the early grand princes made a fateful decision:

prince Vladimir chose to convert the Rus to Byzantine Christianity in the 11th century.

He purportedly chose Christianity over Islam because of Islam’s prohibition on alcohol

Anyway, the Kievan Rus eventually fell in 1240

By that time the Rus had been at war with pastoral nomads for centuries; from the Khazars

Which made them easy targets. The period of Mongol “rule” over Russia is also known

and this period basically featured a bunch of Russian princes vying for control over

territory, which is not a recipe for political stability or economic growth,

another theme that will re-emerge in Russian history.

I’m describing all of this as Russia even though if you did that in the 13th century,

So, to discuss how important the Mongols were to Russia,

The Mongols did set up the Khanate o f the Golden Horde in Russia,

but it didn’t leave much lasting impact on

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Russia, the Kievan Rus, and the Mongols: Crash Course World History #20

found

help

week

name