From Perun to the Red Sun of Prince Vladimir

Slavic God of Fire and Thunder Perun
Created Fire, Light, and Darkness First

The world was created, as in the great cosmogonic myths, the moment when light conquered darkness. The light is totally identical to the world. The moment when God created light was the moment when the world started to function. In another Slavic and Russian legend collected by Dahl, it is said that before anything else was created on the earth, Christ created the sun from a lump of mud which he threw into the sky and which God blessed with light (Dahl,M., 1872,VII,9). From that moment on the world came to exist. The light and the world are two different and yet similar expressions of the phenomenon of existence.

A Certain Affiliate Program

BRIEF HISTORY OF ANCIENT RUSSIA

The early beginning

A certain good viking named Rurik came to Russia in C.E. 862 and founded the first Russian dynasty in Novgorod. In the course of the 9th century, Viking tribes from Scandinavia moved southward into European Russia, along the main waterway connecting the Baltic and Black Seas capturing innocent Slavic girls, women, and men, and then selling them into slavery to money-greedy merchants from Greek and Arab empires. The various Eastern Slavic tribes were eventually united first under descendants of Vikings, then by the spread of Christianity in the 10th and 11th centuries.

Vladimir the Saint was converted in 988 (See the next page of this site). During the 11th century, the grand dukes of Kiev held all centralizing power they needed. Later on, in 1240, Kiev was destroyed by the Mongol invaders, and the Russian territory was split into numerous smaller dukedoms. The Mongol Empire stretched across the Asian continent and Russia was put under the suzerainty of the Khanate of the Golden Horde. The next two centuries saw the rise of Moscow as a provincial capital and centre of the Christian Orthodox Church.