This article examines Soviet historiography and its attitude on the role of barbarians in the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the context of its originality and ideological overtones.
Keywords: barbarians, Rome, barbarization, decline and fall of the Western Roman Empire.
Speaking about Soviet historiography on a given topic, let's focus on the fact that historians considered the social sphere of relations between barbarians and Romans.
This trend originates from the theory of the «slave revolt» associated with the name of I. V. Stalin and his speech in 1933.
So, when reading the article by E. G. Rabinovich, we come across an analysis of the Stalinist text. Elena Georgievna states that the revolution of slaves and serfs means their uprisings; at the same time, the historian notes that the revolution that Stalin is talking about is not a rebellion (as it is often referred to in dictionaries), but a «revolution of civil life», which in Marxist philosophy is called a class struggle and a change of socio-historical formations [5, p. 1108].
Going ahead with the research of this phenomenon, E. G. Rabinovich begins analyzing Stalin's speech at the XVII Congress of the CPSU (All-Union Communist party), in which he mentions one of the reasons for the fall of Rome, namely the unification of all non-Romans, aka. «barbarians», against a common enemy, as a result of which the Empire fell.
To confirm this, Elena Georgievna turns to S. I. Kovalev, who in his works called the «slave revolution» a multi-stage process, as a result of which slaves and colonus together with barbarians managed to eliminate Rome and slavery [5, p. 1110].
Touching further on the causes of the fall of the Western Roman Empire, E. G. Rabinovich analyzes the works of her Western colleagues in the field of medieval studies. As a result, she notes two major positions based on the works of the Australian researcher Brian Croke, who believed that Rome fell during the near-political and military defeats of the Roman emperors against the barbarians, and the main factors in this were the events up to 476, contributing to the inability of Romulus Augustus to resist their might. The second provision made us doubt the objectivity of the assessments of Eastern Roman Empire historians about the processes in Rome before 476, namely, the neglect of «historical truth».
In the 60s of the XX century, the concept of «center-periphery» arose, developed by John Friedmann and reflected in the works of S. D. Skazkin and A. I. Neusykhin, in their multi-volume work on the history of Italy. According to them, Rome was characterized by a standard scheme of organization: a developed civilized center and a barbaric periphery, where the former attacks and plunders the latter. This continues until internal contradictions begin in the «center», namely, they occurred in Rome, because of which it weakens. Then the barbarians from the periphery, taking advantage of this, invade there, which leads us to the events of 476 described somewhat above [7, p. 70].
Of particular interest is the work of S. B. Krikh, who writes about the prerequisites and results of the slave revolution, and for this he refers to the events of the III century, which were pointed out by M. I. Rostovtsev, who singled out barbarians as one of the factors contributing to the fall of the system in the Empire. The problem that matured under Maximin and stabilized under Diocletian affected the most diverse segments of the population, and at the same time rallied them against a common enemy — the state. Such a huge «united» force, which also found supporters and support in the face of barbaric conquerors, was doomed to victory [6, p. 34].
The same view was held by another Soviet historian, A. I. Tyumenev, who came to the conclusion that the revolutionary slave movement, fueled by the conquests of German tribes, and, as a result, merged into one stream, «washed away» the precarious position of the empire, led to its collapse [8, p. 269].
It is worth paying attention to the remarks of N. I. Basovskaya about corruption in the highest echelons of power of the Empire, which provided material assistance to barbarians who migrated and lived on the periphery with the permission of the same Rome, and because of which the death of Western Rome occurred. Due to bribery, assistance to the provinces ceased to be provided (people simply now had nothing to feed their children with), which led in 378 to the uprising of the Visigoths, who defeated the Romans near Adrianople. By doing this, they greatly weakened the Western Empire and showed that it was possible for other barbarian tribes — Franks, Almans, Vandals — to cross the borders of the empire. The events of those days contributed to the decline of the Roman army, its transformation into an ineffective one compared to the Gothic one, which allowed them to cease the existence of the Western Roman Empire in the next century [1].
Further, in the context of the uprising of the masses and barbarians, we consider it necessary to mention the opinion of N. A. Vasiliev, who in his article «The question of the fall of the Western Roman Empire»... writes that this situation is the «capital» reason for the fall of the Western Empire, where young «reserve» came to replace the aging indigenous population»the peoples of the Germanic tribes. That is, in his opinion, this process was a peaceful «transition» from the dominance of representatives of one titular nation in the state to representatives of another; moreover, there were also many reasons for this, the leading of which was more effeminate than representatives of the aristocracy and their subjects [2, pp. 202–203].
The same fact caused the Romans to leave the ranks of their army, which led to its barbarization. However, it is impossible to talk about the complete degeneration of the aristocracy in the ranks of the army, but about individual groups and individuals who set morals and habits, which later fell into society.
V. D. Neronov was also interested in the topic of the relationship between the Roman population and the barbarians, which reduced the essence of the relations of the groups we are interested in to specific circumstances that occurred «here and now». In some cases, barbarians came to Roman lands with the aim of conquering lands, then the emperor and his subjects resisted the barbarians fiercely; in others, barbarians fell into Roman territories as allies, who were assigned land for settlements. Barbarian conquerors became enemies for Roman society, because, in fact, they contributed to the decline in the economy, and this was also supplemented by the fact that the Emperor and other elite of the state (magnates, for example) used barbarian allies to fight the incessant attacks on the borders of the country; on the borders of the country; the payment for that was the land, on which a free peasant community was already beginning to take shape (which became even stronger after the fall of the Western Roman Empire) [3, pp. 367–368].
To characterize the socio-economic impact of the barbarians on the fall of Rome, we turned to a joint monograph by A. R. Korsunov and R. Gunther, which characterize different groups of barbarians and their ties with Rome. The main thesis in their work was the opinion that the economic decline of the country was due to the incessant raids of Germanic tribes, for the successful repulsions of which it was necessary to maintain a large number of fortresses remote from the center, besides monitoring local moods. So, in their opinion, for the Western Empire, the ideal option for relations with the barbarians was their maintenance as mercenaries in the army, however, with other connections, this would inevitably lead to the depletion of the empire's resources and, as we have already found out, the reduction of the indigenous population [4, p. 125].
Thus, the central topic of discussion in the pre-war scientific community, the speech of I. V. Stalin served, which, according to E. G. Rabinovich, defined the social sphere of relations between Romans and non-Romans as fundamental in the context of the decline of the Empire.
In this vein, the opinion of N. A. Vasiliev, who wrote about the actual degeneration of the bulk of the Romans, who are able to resist the «young barbarian blood» in economic, political, and military terms, is also built.
On the economic sphere, we have the ideas of N. I. Basovskaya, who spoke about bribery as a factor contributing to the fall of the Empire, and led to a shortage of financing for the periphery, where unrest began against this background.
In this regard, economic relations are highlighted as the main factor in the decline of Rome and in the joint work of A. R. Korsunov and R. Gunther, who concluded that the incessant raids of the Germans obliged the Western Empire to spend enormous funds on maintaining the borders in constant combat readiness, which deprived the government of the opportunity to improve living conditions for civilians.
The military sphere of relations was closely examined by S. B. Krikh and M. I. Rostovtsev, who came to the virtually identical conclusion that the leading role of the barbarians in the fall of the Western Roman Empire is based precisely in the sphere of military conflicts that began to mature in the II–III centuries AD, and through the centuries found their solution in the coup of Odoacer.
Political relations, on the other hand, became the subject of the work of S. D. Skazkin and A. I. Neusykhin, presenting in the form of the «center-periphery» theory, where Rome, as the «center», weakened due to internal contradictions, and the barbarians, as the «periphery», taking advantage of this, invaded it and contributed to its decline, by already the above-mentioned coup.
References:
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- Vasiliev, N. A. The question of the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ancient culture in historiographical literature and in the history of philosophy in connection with the theory of the depletion of peoples and humanity / N. A. Vasiliev // Izvestia of the Society of Archeology, History and Ethnography at the Kazan University. — 1921. — No.2–3. — pp. 129–222.
- Dyakov, I. M. The decline of ancient societies / I. M. Dyakov. — Moscow: The main editorial office of Oriental literature of the publishing house «Nauka», 1989. — 476 p.
- Korsunov, A. R. Decline and death of the Western Roman Empire. The emergence of the German kingdoms (until the middle of the VI century.). [Electronic resource] // Access mode: http://annales.info/evrope/korsunsk (accessed: 12/19/20).
- Rabinovich, E.G. «The Slave Revolution» — a brief history of the myth / E. G. Rabinovich // Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology. — 2018. — No. 22–2. — pp. 1098–1131.
- Rostovtsev, M. I. Society and economy in the Roman Empire / M. I. Rostovtsev. — St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2000. — Vol. 2. — 416 p.
- Skazkin, S. D. The History of Italy in three volumes / S. D. Skazkin, A. I. Neusykhin, L. A. Kotelnikova, M. L. Abramson. — Moscow: Nauka, 1970. — Vol. 1. — 579 p.
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