I'm not sure if I am putting this in the right place, but I have to ask about it. According to the Primary Chronicle, Vladimir I sent groups of diplomats out to investigate Eastern and Western Christianity, Islam, and Judaism; the ones sent to Constantinople gave the most favorable report, so he converted his people to Easern Orthodox. Now, I know that it was the most likely religion for him to convert to, with the Byzantines as trading partners and his grandmother having been a convert, but what if he had chosen Judaism? I'd think it wouldn't made much of a difference until Russia came into contact with the West, where a stable Jewish state, never mind one as big as Russia, might change history considerably. Perhaps a Crusade, or a similar war, into Russia? Or maybe Judaism becoming the dominant religion throughout Eastern Europe?
Jewish Russia?
- Thread starter Falconier111
- Start date
Perhaps the Khazar Khanate has a more complete conversion to Judaism? From the late 800's on, you get a great number of Jewish merchants, missionaries, etc. coming to the nascent Principality of 'Rus, giving them a leg up on the Muslims and Christians...hmm. How big were the early Russians on pork?
Borders wars existed OTL between the Poles and their Orthodox neighbors to the east, and I don't see this being particularly worse or better in the pre-Crusades era: it's not like they're going to get much help from the Germans or the French. I dunno how much their cultural isolation is going to hurt them in the first couple centuries - what did Russian "military tech" look like 1000 AD compared to it's neighbors? How much had it advanced by the 1200's?
Assuming we haven't butterflied away the Mongol invasions, Russia should look rather ripe for crusading Teutonic Knights and Poles after the 1240's (and then there's those pesky Lithuanians. What odds they convert to Judaism early in this TL to get allies against the Baltic crusade?). It's hard to say how well they'll do - again, I'm not sure how much their cultural isolation from both the Christian and Muslim worlds will retard their military skills compared to OTL. (I'll note that OTL, the Russians being "fellow Christians" didn't prevent the Knights from trying to take Novgorod. Indeed, will they crusade against Jewish Russia that much more energetically than against "heretical" Russia? The Ottoman empire OTL got along even worse with Shi'as than it did with Christians.)
Jewish legal and political influences: will a Russia under a Jewish monarch undergo the sort of devolution that it did OTL? Is there anything in medieval Jewish law and tradition that might push for primogeniture? (And we haven't even considered what a more solidly Jewish Kazhar state might come up with in terms of modifications of Jewish tradition, being an established state with needs rather different than a Diaspora. Quite possibly the Judaism of "Jewish Russia" is different enough that the Jews of Europe condemn it as heresy.)
BTW, Russia wasn't that "big" a country until recent times - geographically extensive, yes, but very thinly populated. Historical estimates are that the population of European Russia (including the Ukraine) didn't surpass France until the 18th century.
If Russia survives the 13th and 14th centuries to reemerge as a united kingdom, it may not be that different from OTL: a terribly backward and isolated state, looked upon perhaps like Safavid Persia - a useful ally against the Turk. (Thought: Russia reunified not by Moscow, but by a Jewish Lithuanian dynasty?) Whether it can ever overcome the severe cultural barriers to modernizing with European help as Russia did OTL, that's another question. (Although it's hard to see a Jewish Priest-King looking back to the glories of Solomonic Israel doing a Peter the Great in the shipyards of Amsterdam, Peter was hardly the model of a Byzantine emperor himself).
All rather improbable, perhaps. But I will admit to being tickled pink by a mental image of King Peter III of Russia leading an invasion of the Ottoman empire in the 1850's to liberate Jerusalem and rebuild the temple...
Bruce
Borders wars existed OTL between the Poles and their Orthodox neighbors to the east, and I don't see this being particularly worse or better in the pre-Crusades era: it's not like they're going to get much help from the Germans or the French. I dunno how much their cultural isolation is going to hurt them in the first couple centuries - what did Russian "military tech" look like 1000 AD compared to it's neighbors? How much had it advanced by the 1200's?
Assuming we haven't butterflied away the Mongol invasions, Russia should look rather ripe for crusading Teutonic Knights and Poles after the 1240's (and then there's those pesky Lithuanians. What odds they convert to Judaism early in this TL to get allies against the Baltic crusade?). It's hard to say how well they'll do - again, I'm not sure how much their cultural isolation from both the Christian and Muslim worlds will retard their military skills compared to OTL. (I'll note that OTL, the Russians being "fellow Christians" didn't prevent the Knights from trying to take Novgorod. Indeed, will they crusade against Jewish Russia that much more energetically than against "heretical" Russia? The Ottoman empire OTL got along even worse with Shi'as than it did with Christians.)
Jewish legal and political influences: will a Russia under a Jewish monarch undergo the sort of devolution that it did OTL? Is there anything in medieval Jewish law and tradition that might push for primogeniture? (And we haven't even considered what a more solidly Jewish Kazhar state might come up with in terms of modifications of Jewish tradition, being an established state with needs rather different than a Diaspora. Quite possibly the Judaism of "Jewish Russia" is different enough that the Jews of Europe condemn it as heresy.)
BTW, Russia wasn't that "big" a country until recent times - geographically extensive, yes, but very thinly populated. Historical estimates are that the population of European Russia (including the Ukraine) didn't surpass France until the 18th century.
If Russia survives the 13th and 14th centuries to reemerge as a united kingdom, it may not be that different from OTL: a terribly backward and isolated state, looked upon perhaps like Safavid Persia - a useful ally against the Turk. (Thought: Russia reunified not by Moscow, but by a Jewish Lithuanian dynasty?) Whether it can ever overcome the severe cultural barriers to modernizing with European help as Russia did OTL, that's another question. (Although it's hard to see a Jewish Priest-King looking back to the glories of Solomonic Israel doing a Peter the Great in the shipyards of Amsterdam, Peter was hardly the model of a Byzantine emperor himself).
All rather improbable, perhaps. But I will admit to being tickled pink by a mental image of King Peter III of Russia leading an invasion of the Ottoman empire in the 1850's to liberate Jerusalem and rebuild the temple...
Bruce
Keenir
Banned
*sigh* why do so many people assume that _pork_ (of all things) would kill any deal? if pork is an obstacle, the Rus' will develop their own form of Judaism....one that allows the eating of pork.(there is precedent)
Tsar Peter III of Russia and Jerusalem. neat.
Interesting TL, but I don't see it realistically happening. I wonder what WWI and WWII would look like if Russia was an eminent Jewish power in the world. And what about the Communists, too?
Gaaaah! WWI, WWII, Communism, basically everything, is different with such a POD. A early mistake in AH is to assume that nothing changes when you change something
Look whos talking there, Naples-non-independence-in-1492-believerYeah, I say we pack up all the newbies and send them to a "reeducation camp".
Shame on you!
Actually, seeing the photographs of some other members on the 'How do you look' thread, I'd say I'm rather trim.
Except that he probably wouldn't be called Peter. Or, for that matter, Tsar- it comes directly from Caesar.
Valdemar II
Banned
They could still claim both it would not be taken serious by anyone, and seen as a big joke. Plus a Jewish Russia would lack the bond to roman adminstration Othodocs Russia had. It would be like a Indian (muslim) Prince taking the title Caesar.
According to this (in Russian) there were some slavs who converted to Judaism.
Keenir
Banned
nobody laughed when the Ottomans took the title Caesar (from their Roman holdings) or any of the titles from pre-Islamic Persia.
I thought we were talking about Russia, not Constantinople.
no it wouldn't...because neither India nor the Mughals has any tie to Rome. whereas both the Jews and Russia* did.
* = tenuously as the OTL claim of "the Third Rome" was.
Valdemar II
Banned
They would if the ottomans had taken title emperor of China
I thought we were talking about Russia, not Constantinople.
The Othodocts faith was part of late Roman Adminstration
Neither did the Jews except as subjects of the Roman Empirer.
It was as tenuously as the Ottomans
Keenir
Banned
WTF ? why are you making strawmen?? the thread is about if a Jewish man, ruling Russia, can claim what pagans (and later on, Muslims and Christians) did in OTL.
really? in Gaul and Iberia?
the Catholics were nothing more than subjects of the Roman Emperor, also...and yet they ended up ruling the successor states.
and yet they lost it to nobody.
Valdemar II
Banned
WTF ? why are you making strawmen?? the thread is about if a Jewish man, ruling Russia, can claim what pagans (and later on, Muslims and Christians) did in OTL..
Pagans never made that claim (outside Roman territorium), and I have never heard about muslims in Russia who made that claim
Yes of course, many serious historian call all christianity catholic and Orthodocts presplit christianity Orthodocts.
Really I think the Roman Emperors after Constantin (with the proto-neo-pagan exception) would be surprised to hear that
the words have meaning but their are no contect