WORLD

"His life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It had meaning only as a part of the whole, which he constantly felt." Leo Tolstoy

 In Russian, the word "Mir" means the entire universe. "Mir" means the universe, the temporal and spatial infinity. The same word is for peace, stable life and friendship, harmony and tranquillity. The coincidence is not accidental. But open a textbook on the ancient and medieval world (again, "Mir"!). Just flip, and you get tired of endless wars, skirmishes, conquest, and murder. Well, is it true that humanity before us was engaged only in this kind of activity? Fortunately, the peoples of the Earth ("MIR" again) not only fought but worked and lived in peace ("Mir").
 Or how would they have grown grains, raised cattle, forged the instruments of labour and life, and built canals, ships, temples and huts?
We are more attentive to the international antagonism of the past for some reason than to the testimony of friendship and peaceful cooperation among the peoples, without which the world would have been destroyed.
The Earth, even in ancient times, was not so vast. Viking's ships sailed across the Atlantic. Herodotus knew how our distant ancestors whipped themselves in a bath by the birch twigs. Thor Heyerdahl proved to all that the possibility of crossing the Pacific Ocean had existed long before Magellan's travel. Athanasius Nikitin travelled to India from Tver, Russia, on the horse and without visas.
Russian Pomors (Russians living on the shores of the White Sea) knew about the great Northern Sea Route for many centuries before the "Krasin" and "Chelyuskin" ice-breakers went that route. And why, at the ancient bazaars of Samarkand and Bukhara, were all the major languages of the world heard, and people got along just fine? Languages were heard but were mixed.
People of different nationalities have only sometimes sorted out their relationship with the ringing of swords and daggers. Proofs of this are countless. And if anyone had seriously investigated the history of trade and navigation, then even a general view of the past could be much brighter. However, inter-tribal communication was carried out not only through the exchange.
     In most nations, there is curiosity and aesthetic interest in other people, unlike them. To continue to be yourself is not necessarily to destroy the neighbour's house that is quite unlike yours by fire and sword. Quite the contrary. How did you understand yourself, stand out among the others, if all the houses were identical if food and clothing had the same taste?
Moving to the east and north, ancient Novgorodians were not inherently conquerors. Stephen of Perm, the Zyryan's Alphabet creator, showed a high example of unselfishness in dealing with the natives. Russian and Zyryan's settlements still stand side by side; military skirmishes between Novgorodians and Finn-Ugric tribes were sporadic. In any case, rarer than with the blood brothers: the Muscovites and Suzdalians...
Hospitality, whose remnants are still preserved in many places of the immense North in ancient times, had apparently reached a cult level. Marrying people of different nationalities was not considered a sin by the Russians - neither by Pagans nor Christians, though it was not encouraged, so to speak, by public opinion.
    The same public opinion made possible a light mockery over the antics of the people of another nation but did not allow them to grow into antagonism. What for? If you need more land, take the axe and go in any direction, uproot stumps, burning forest.
 Invader, carpetbagger, bloody villain, and trickster did to his tribe neither honour nor advantage. Respect for other people's rights and national traditions originated primarily from self-preservation. But this does not mean that the Russian people quickly parted with their lands and customs. Even three centuries of domination of the nomads have not taught them, for example, to eat horse meat or to kidnap other men's wives. The world ("Mir") for the Russian people is not so good that it is immense, but also because there is a lot of variety; it always has something to marvel at.