Much is written about the historiosophic significance of the nomads of the Eurasian steppe. About nomadic empires — the predecessors of Russia. What role did the representatives of nomadic civilization really play?
The creators of nomadic civilization were Indo-Europeans — Iranians. Culture and identity of which have almost not survived to our time. The only exception is the Ossetian people.
Nomadic Iranians created the foundations. Nomadic cattle breeding itself. Suitable breeds of cattle, system and methods of their grazing on plains and in foothills. At the initial stage of settling any territory, nomads continuously move in large groups to where there is fodder for cattle and war booty. After the completion of the territory development, pastoralists migrated in separate clans along clearly defined routes, staying in one place for a long time. Sometimes there were permanent settlements. In the foothills, cattlemen climbed up into the mountains with the onset of warm weather. With the onset of cold weather they descended into the valleys. There were developed pastoralist religious cults.
Nomadic warrior culture. Including ways of fighting (skillful use of both light and heavy cavalry). As well as the training system, worldview and psychology of the nomadic warrior. A man who lives and feeds on war. Proud, arrogant, despising work, comfort and achievements of civilization. But valuing brilliance and wealth as signs of superiority and dominance. Specific warrior cults emerged. The earliest known is the cult of the Scythian god Sword.
A nomadic ethic was formed, the basis of which was charity and helping a fellow nomad in trouble at all costs. And also truthfulness and fidelity to one’s word. The foundations of ethics were directly dictated by the instability of life and constant movement. Where a formerly rich man was on the verge of starvation, and a constantly moving nomad was always faced with something new, about which accurate information was needed.
A nomadic socio-political tradition was also formed. Adapted to life in extremely unstable and difficult natural, economic and political conditions. The basis of which was the preservation of the survival collective — the nomadic clan. Survival of the clan implied a set of very flexible and diverse behavioral stereotypes. Brutal aggression, suppression of neighbors, accompanied by unification into a large community, could be relatively easily and quickly replaced by alliance and even subordination. Also the community disintegrated, and clans survived on their own or united into a new community. With a fairly rapid change in identity and even language. Depending on the situation. The clan was everything. All sorts of hordes were something temporary and serviceable.
The point is that the nomads’ subsistence system was not self-sufficient. They constantly needed products of agriculture and crafts, which they did not produce themselves.
Iranians created many other things. Traditional nomadic clothing, means of transportation, materials and so on.
And the nomadic Iranians succeeded in creating nomadic empires much less than their followers. Yes, they created vast and powerful associations. But they were relatively loose and not centralized. The attempt to create the Great Scythia by King Atheus failed.
Iranians were peculiar Greeks of steppes. In their place at the turn of our era came the Romans. The so-called Altaic peoples. Mostly Turkic-Mongols. Partly Tungus-Manchurians and the Ugrians, close to them in their way of life.
At their core, the Altaic peoples are a variant of the Far Eastern civilization. No matter how much they feuded with the settled Chinese. The basis of tradition was and remained common. It implied a very developed ability to borrow. Altai hunters, who lived in the forest-steppes of southern Siberia, borrowed the tradition of nomadic and semi-nomadic cattle breeding from the Iranians. And from their opponents — the Chinese — the idea of a mighty and sacred central authority.
That’s when real nomadic empires, centralized and huge, appeared. Such as Turkic and Khazar Khaganates, empires of Genghisids, Manchurian states in China, Hungary. Iranian nomadic clans for the most part have merged into the specified empires, having transferred to them the culture and a gene pool. And by borrowing their language and identity. Although some Turkic-Mongolian communities continued to live in the old-fashioned way — decentralized unions of clans. For example, Pechenegs, Polovtsians.
Then the ability to borrow turned Hungary into a European country. Ugro-Altaic people also created Japan. The ability to borrow together with Far Eastern principles of rational organization of life made Japan the most European country in Asia. At the other end of Asia, the Turks showed a great ability to borrow from both Muslims and Europeans. However, their ability to dissolve into borrowing was limited by Islam.
Nomads came into contact with other peoples primarily as aggressors. Therefore, they influenced the sphere, in one way or another touching military affairs. At one time, the Scythians and Sarmatians were in very close contact with the peoples of the North Caucasus. For example, Caucasians were buried together with Scythian aristocrats. And, in fact, the Caucasian warrior-robber fixed later is a socio-psychological tracing of a representative of the Scythian warrior caste. It is unlikely that nomads brought the Caucasians the very institution of male warrior alliance. But contact with them developed and brought the corresponding social institution to a high level.
Thus, nomads brought militarization of society to their neighbors. And closely related to it profound socio-cultural changes. Influencing not only the military sphere.
In the struggle with nomads, the most rigid, patriarchal and authoritarian forms of social organization were in demand among farmers. When nomads themselves became farmers and townspeople, they brought with them a much more traditional, simple and collectivist way of life.
The impact of the nomads gave rise to an eastern variant of historical evolution. When the period of rapid development is shorter and less intense. The selection of promising achievements and the horror of civilization occur within the same cultural paradigm. Without breaking the continuity. This is how the Chinese and Islamic civilizations developed. This shrinking of civilizations occurred after and under the influence of the Mongol-Tatar invasion. The superstructure of the civilized way of life was not based, unlike Europe, on a super strong superstructure-state machine. And it turned out to be relatively easily deformable at the upper level. And subject to reformatting, limitation of creative potential.
The nomadic invasions did not generate anything new. But they dramatically weakened the upper level of culture. The culture of individualists. At the same time, they actualized traditional, conservative tendencies. For example, in Central Asia, the transition of nomadic communities to agriculture contributed to the strengthening of the communal principle.
There was no full-fledged postmodernity in such civilizations. The stage of rapid growth and development quickly enough passed into a neotraditional way of life. Everything incapable of biological and social reproduction was immediately destroyed. And not artificially maintained, as it was within the European civilization.
Thus, the impact of nomads on sedentary peoples gave rise to neo-feudalism in feudalism. Well, or oriental mode of production, which became from such even more oriental.
Europe (with the exception of Russia) did not know such devastating conquests. Experienced brilliant isolation. Local candidates for shaking the universe received an equally brutal response. And first of all — from Russia.
One can agree with Lev Gumelev that there is Eurasia, the territory from Japan to Poland and Hungary, which was influenced by nomads. But the natural development, isolated and progressive, was disrupted. A largely forced unity was created, brought about by responses to a similar challenge. Without the nomadic influence, the Caucasians would have been much more like the Etruscans, the Slavs like the ancient Greeks, the inhabitants of Central Asia like the Provençals. If all of them were allowed to develop in accordance with their original mental attitudes and internal tendencies.
In the Slavs, contact with the Turko-Mongols led to the development of another military-oriented social institution — the supreme power. To the Bulgarians, the Turks brought it directly. In other Slavs the local monarchical beginning was sharply strengthened. The supreme sacred ruler in their time was often called Kagan. And not only in Russia, which was in active contact with the Turks. The sacred ruler of the island of Rügen, very distant from the Turks, was called Kagan. It is very likely that the Eastern Slavs borrowed from the Turks the principle of a quickly constructed paramilitary state, which did not affect the internal specificity of the constituent parts, their significant self-sufficiency and autonomy. Only at Slavs besides blood and quasi-kin clans and tribes there were territorial associations in the form of slavinia and city-states.
Defense from Turkic-Mongolian nomads has generated acceptance of East Asian administrative principles in Moscow Russia. Which appeared and existed for the sake of the defense of the siege lines. To a much greater extent than China — for the sake of the Great Wall.
But earlier, the nomadic world of Eurasia was brutally undermined from within by the wars and policies of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane. On the one hand, many nomads died in them — both opponents of the great conquerors and their supporters. The Great Steppe was exhausted in their large-scale and, in fact, meaningless accomplishments. At the same time, the etatism inherent in Genghis Khan and Tamerlane and many of their supporters, together with rationalism and cynical individualism, undermined the ethical basis of nomadic life. (The actual ideology of Genghis Khan and Tamerlane was Chinese Legism.) Solidarity, collectivism, and other moral foundations were sharply weakened. Thus, Genghis Khan, the Chinggisids and Tamerlane became to the nomads what Lenin and Stalin were to the Russians.
The Kalmyks’ resettlements, exploits and finding their homeland were not so daunting and large-scale. But much more effective and worthy of respect.
Russia, generated by the aggression of the nomadic world, absorbed and destroyed it. Not in the sense of destroying peoples, but in the sense of eliminating a way of life based on nomadic herding and permanent warfare.
And with the destruction of the way of life, unstable conglomerates of clans and tribes began to turn into full-fledged well-integrated nations. Stable, having a clear territory of residence.
For example, during the time of being a part of the Russian Empire and the USSR, during the post-Soviet period what happened to the Magyars during the period of finding their homeland and transition to sedentarization happened to the Kazakhs. A settled urbanized nation with a sufficiently developed state of its own appeared. Which, like the Magyars, uses the memory of the nomadic past to maintain and form an ethnic identity.