During 14 through 17 May 2007, the Hermitage hosted an international conference on the Formation of Russian Statehood in the Context of Early Medieval History of the Old World. The conference had the goal of generalizing from data available today with regard to "the beginnings of medieval Russia (Rus')" and to review both the received wisdom that has been established in science and unresolved issues as well as areas of fundamental disagreement. The chronological limits under discussion embraced the period from the active emergence of Slavs on the historical scene (6th century) up to the end of the rule of Yaroslav the Wise (1050s) and the final division of the Universal church into Eastern and Western churches. Special attention was devoted to the period of the 8th-10th centuries, from the time when Slavs settled the whole territory of what was becoming the Ancient Russian state until the adoption of Christianity as the state religion of medieval Rus'. Among the participants in the conference were scientific institutions from St Petersburg (the State Hermitage; St Petersburg State University; the Institute of the History of Material Culture, Russian Academy of Sciences; the St Petersburg Society of Byzantine-Slavic Research; the St Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences), Moscow (Institute of Archeology, Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of World History, Russian Academy of Sciences), Kazan (Institute of History, Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan), Yekaterinburg (Urals State Technical University), Kursk (Kursk State Oblast Museum of Archeology), Tula (Kulikovo Pole State Military-History and Natural Museum-Preserve), Lipetsk (Lipetsk State Pedagogical University), Minsk (Belarus National Museum of History and Culture), Kiev (Institute of Archeology, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences), Lvov (Insittute of Ukrainian Studies, National Academy of Sciences of the Ukraine), Goettingen (Georg Augustus University), and Luleo (Sweden). The reports covered many different aspects of the history of the formation of the Ancient Russian State. A series of reports delivered on the first day concerned the period prior to the process of state formation among the Eastern Slavs (I.I. Yeremeev, I.V. Islanova, A.G. Furasiev, P.V. Shuvalov, O.A. Shcheglova). Reports by K.K. Akentiev, L.P. Grot, A.V. Zorin, V.S. Kuleshov, D.A. Machinsky, E.A. Melnikova, V.Ya. Petrukhin, V.V. Fomin and A.G. Shpilev demonstrated the acute differences of opinion over the origin of the term “Rus'” as well as over the ethnic connections of the Rus' in written sources. A significant number of reports dealt with direct study of written, archeological and linguistic sources. Analysis of various subjects relating to the general them of the conference came up in reports by S.V. Beletsky, a.N. Kirpichnikov, A.V. Kurbatov, Yu. M. Lesman, T.L. Marsadolova, K.A. Mikhailov, N.I. Platanova, Z.V. Prusakova, and T.V. and M.V. Rozhdestvensky. Several reports dealt with the history of specific territories within Ancient Rus' (N.A. Plavinsky, S.V. Tomsinskii), relations with neighboring Turkic peoples (A.V. Grigoriev, S.G. Kliashtorny, Z.A. Lvova, V.Ia. Petrukhin, F.Sh. Khuzin) and the Western Slav world (S. Linneman, J. Shneeweiss). O.M. Ionnisian's reports dealt with the role of Christian conversion of the Rus' in the process of state building as revealed by church architecture; one of his reports was co-authored with Ukrainian and Russian colleagues.

At the end of the conference all participants shared the view that the Ancient Russian State was the product of the socio-economic and political development of the Slavs in the course of its settlement and assimilation of a polyethnic population of Eastern Europe. Notwithstanding the nearly unanimous wish to move beyond the opposition of "Normanists" and "anti-Normanists" that came down to us from the science of yesterday, an area of polemical tension arose precisely in the matter of determining the role of the Scandinavian peoples in the process of forming the Ancient Slavic State. At the same time, in the final debates there was general agreement over the idea of the need for exhaustive and multifaceted study of all the scientific sources, whose informational potential has by no means been exhausted (O.M. Ioannisian, O.A. Shcheglova et al). A suggestion was made (V.V. Fomin) that a scientific conference be held in several years dedicated to the memory of the outstanding historian and director of the Imperial Hermitage S.A. Gedeonov as we approach the 200th anniversary of his birth.