Boris Rybakov

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Boris Alexandrovich Rybakov (1908-2001) was an orthodox Soviet historian who personified the anti-Normanist vision of Russian history.

Rybakov held a chair in Russian history at the Moscow University since 1939, was a deputy dean of the university in 1952-54, and administered the Russian History Institute for 40 years. His first groundbreaking monograph was the Handicrafts of Ancient Rus (1948), which sought to demonstrate the economic superiority of Kievan Rus to contemporary Western Europe.

Rybakov led important excavations in Moscow, Novgorod, Zvenigorod, Chernigov, Pereyaslav, Tmutarakan and Putivl and published his findings in numerous monographs, including Antiquities of Chernigov (1949), The Chronicles and Bylinas of Ancient Rus (1963), The First Centuries of Russian history (1964), The Tale of Igor's Campaign and Its Contemporaries (1971), Muscovite Maps of the 15th and early 16th Centuries (1974), and Herodotus' Scythia (1979). In the latter book he viewed the Scythians described by Herodotus as ancestors of modern Slavic nations.

Ancient Slavic Paganism (1981) and Ancient Paganism of Rus (1987) are probably the best known of Rybakov's writings outside the former Soviet Union.

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