Misconceptions and Falsifications in the Study of the Role of Finno-Ugric Components in the History of Russia and the Ethnogenesis of the Russian People (The Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period)

Based on the principles of traditional scientific rationality, the article examines the essence, methodology of construction, and ideological origins of a number of popular conceptual and hypothetical assumptions related to the history of the Finno-Ugric ethnic groups in Russia, which have been transformed into pseudoscientific mythologems as a result of incorrect interpretations and the absolutization of the constructivist approach. The analysis draws on the results of archaeological, linguistic, source studies, and ethnogenetic research conducted by both domestic and foreign researchers. The article proposes a classification of mythologems and concludes that they are poorly substantiated in empirical and scientific terms, and that they are generally invalid in comparison with the picture of ethno-demographic and socio-cultural contacts between the Slavic and Finno-Ugric populations in European Russia, as described in Russian and Soviet academic historiography.