>>212899603The people in charge of Russia historically do not think they are europeans. I'd love to write a whole lecture about this, but nobody's going to read it. Instead, I'll just focus on one aspect.
You know how the rulers of the Russian Empire are called Rurikids? That's because they all originate from a guy named Rurik. Rurik was a scandinavian viking. His wife Helga and his son Ingvar, were also norse. Ancient Rus owes its whole statehood to the european influence in the form of the european ruling dynasty. Anyone with a brain knows this. This is called the Norman Theory.
However, Russia has historically been run by people without brains, and they've pushed something called "anti-normanism", which denies the obvious and claims that actually all of Rus' original leaders were slavs, and any germanic influences were either non-existent or so minor, it's barely worth mentioning. Nobody outside of Russia subscribes to this pseudohistorical bullshit.
