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About the Ethnicity of "Smerds"
Authors: Lev R. Prozorov
Number of views: 477
The content of the term "smerd", the status of this population is one of the most difficult questions of social history of pre-mongol Russia.
Materials for the preparation of manuscripts are national studies on the history of Kievan Russ and the Russian principalities of XI–XIII centuries. During the XX – early XXI centuries this topic was researched by I.Ya. Froyanov, B. Ryskin, A.V. Karpov, N.M. Tupikov, M.B. Sverdlov, A.L. Shilov and others. The methodological basis of the study was the principles of objectivity and historicism, suggesting an unbiased approach to the analysis of the studied problems, a critical attitude to the sources, making judgments in the analysis of the totality of the facts and the screening phenomena in the development and the context of the historical situation.
The author comes to the conclusion that all these circumstances constitute a serious obstruction to output of I.Y. Froyanov about by far the different ethnicity, originally non-Slavic origin of ancient smerds.