Кочевники средневековья (поиски исторических закономерностей) - [58]

Social, political and ethnic processes characteristic of the emergence and consolidation of the steppe states are strikingly uniform despite chronological and regional differences. The same may be said of the decay and disintegration processes, the causes of which can be classified into four groups.

The first group — external political causes, i. е., defeat in a war with a more powerful neighbour with resultant economic devastation — ruined crops, stolen herds, burned settlements.

The second group — internal political causes, i. е., internal strife expanding with the growth of the state as the feudal lords seek independence of the central power, which inevitably leads first to disorganisation and then to utter collapse. The feudal and clan nobility, the bulk of the military forces, perished in the ceaseless feuds. Some of these grew into economically ruinous civil wars in which the feudal lords were joined by common people.

The third group — natural climate causes, i. е., unpredictable climatic changes which brought prolonged droughts or very cold winters both of which destroyed cros and cattle, with all the other misfortunes this entailed.

The fourth group had, at first glance, nothing in common with the first three. Economic affluence led to a population explosion)) forcing part of the people to migrate to other areas. This, too, was a cause of disintegration of the state.

The crisis precipitated by the interplay of these causes and imperceptibly prepared by the all previous development, would bring on the collapse and disappearance of. even the mightiest empires. The concrete variant of the process depended on the prevalence of one or another cause.

The first variant. Economic ruin following an invasion forces the most active part of the population led by bold and adventurous leaders, launch out on the conquest of new lands. Those who stayed behind often formed the ethnic core of the state of the conquerors. The ethnonym of the defeated thus belonged to those who had left and in due time a new state conglomeration would be formed bearing this name. Thus the ethnic community continued to figure in political life und in the annals of history.

The second variant. Most of the population had perished in the war and there could be no question of starting a crusade to seize new lands, the remaining population simply submitted to the occupants. Only an insignificant part, unwilling to live under enemy rule, sought asylum in neighbouring or even far-away states. The bulk of the population, deprived of best lands, political influence and its ethnonym, coexisted with the conquerors, undergoing a process of mutual assimilation.

The third variant. The vanquished state was incorporated into the victor state, the population being made*to pay more or less heavy indemnities. The defeated state or state conglomeration lost its independence, but the surviving population, completely demoralised by the loss of the army (the young and active generation) and by the igno-minous defeat, made the best of life under enemy rule. This was less painful when the defeated and the victors differed but little ethnically, and the population retained its culture and preserved its ethnic identity. This was, a factor in its subsequent development into peoples holding a definite place in history.

The fourth variant. Due to internal strife and internecine wars huge empires disintegrated into smaller states usually headed by members of the ruling clan of the parental empire. Such states were characterised by intensive cultural and ethnic-formation processes.

The purpose of this classification of the developmental processes typical of the Mediaeval steppe conglomerations is to reveal common regularities. All economic, social, ethnic and cultural phenomena in the nomad conglomerations may be presented as a solid chain — a socio-economic model of various phenomena or specific features. As it is practically impossible to form a complete picture of any steppe ethnic or state formation from historical sources, such socio-economic models help to produce a more or less true reconstruction of the life of dozens of steppe societies formerly unknown to historians.

It is quite possible that these regularities were typical not only of Mediaeval, but also of earlier and later nomad communities spanning the period from their appearance in the steppe up to the 20th century.

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