Over the last three centuries, from whom have historians deduced the Russians: from the Slavs and Scandinavians, from the Ugrians and Khazars, from the Goths and Finns, and even from Georgians and Jews. And indeed, in the 10th–11th centuries, many people who considered themselves “of Russian descent” had Slavic, Iranian, Scandinavian, and Turkic names and nicknames. So what was the nationality of these mysterious Russians? The author of this book offers an unexpected and paradoxical hypothesis: is it possible, in principle, to approach the description of Rus' as an ethnic phenomenon? It is possible that the term “Rus” initially did not have an ethnic meaning, but only a socio-professional one, denoting people belonging to the military and trade layers and forming the sum of military-trading corporations operating along the entire length of the Volga and Dnieper trade routes, as well as in the adjacent territories.