The myth of the Mongol-Tatar yoke it is so firmly embedded in the consciousness of each of us by official historiography that it is extremely difficult to prove that there really was no yoke. But I'll try anyway. At the same time, I will not use speculative statements, but facts cited in his books by the great historian Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov.
Let's start with the fact that the ancient Russians themselves were not familiar with the word “yoke”. It was first used in a letter from the Zaporozhye Cossacks to Peter I, containing a complaint against one of the governors.
Further. Historical facts indicate that the Mongols never intended to conquer Rus'. The appearance of the Mongols in Rus' is associated with their war with the Cumans, whom the Mongols, ensuring the security of their borders, drove beyond the Carpathians. For this reason, a deep cavalry raid through Rus' was carried out. But the Mongols did not annex Russian lands to their state and did not leave garrisons in the cities.
Without critically perceiving the anti-Mongol chronicles, historians claim terrible devastation caused by the Tatars, but cannot explain why churches in Vladimir, Kyiv and many other cities were not destroyed and have survived to this day.
Little is known that Alexander Nevsky was adopted son Khan Batu. It is even less known that it was the alliance of Alexander Nevsky with Batu, and subsequently with Batu’s son Berku, that stopped the onslaught of the crusaders on Rus'. Alexander's treaty with the Mongols was, in fact, a military-political alliance, and the “tribute” was a contribution to the general treasury for the maintenance of the army.
It is also little known that Batu (Batu) emerged victorious from the confrontation with another Mongol Khan, Guyuk, largely thanks to the support provided to him by the sons of Grand Duke Yaroslav - Alexander Nevsky and Andrey. This support was dictated by deep political calculations. From the beginning of the 13th century Catholic Church began a crusade against the Orthodox: Greeks and Russians. In 1204, the Crusaders captured the capital of Byzantium, Constantinople. Latvians and Estonians were conquered and turned into serfs. A similar fate awaited Rus', but Alexander Nevsky managed to defeat the crusaders in 1240 on the Neva, and in 1242 on Lake Peipsi and thereby stop the first onslaught. But the war continued, and in order to have reliable allies, Alexander fraternized with Batu’s son, Spartacus, and received Mongolian troops to fight the Germans. This union survived even after the death of Alexander Nevsky. In 1269, the Germans, having learned about the appearance of a Mongol detachment in Novgorod, sued for peace: “The Germans, having made peace according to the entire will of Novgorod, were extremely afraid of the name of the Tatar.” Thus, thanks to the support of the Mongols, the Russian land was saved from the invasion of the Crusaders.
It should be noted that the first so-called Mongol campaign against Rus' was in 1237, and the Russian princes began to pay tribute only twenty years later, when the Pope declared a crusade against the Orthodox. To protect Rus' from the onslaught of the Germans, Alexander Nevsky recognized the sovereignty of the Khan of the Golden Horde and agreed to pay a kind of tax on military assistance to the Tatars, which was called tribute.
It is indisputable that where the Russian princes entered into an alliance with the Mongols, a great power grew - Russia. Where the princes refused such an alliance, and this White Rus', Galicia, Volyn, Kyiv and Chernigov, their principalities became victims of Lithuania and Poland.
A little later, during the so-called Mongol-Tatar yoke, Russia was threatened both from the East by the Great Lame (Timur) and from the West by Vytautas, and only an alliance with the Mongols made it possible to protect Russia from invasion.
Mongol-Tatars are to blame for the desolation of Rus'
Here is the generally accepted version. In the 12th century Kievan Rus was a rich country, with excellent crafts and brilliant architecture. By the 14th century, this country was so desolate that in the 15th century it began to be repopulated by immigrants from the north. In the interval between the eras of prosperity and decline, Batu’s army passed through these lands, therefore, it was the Mongol-Tatars who were responsible for the decline of Kievan Rus.
But in reality, everything is not so simple. The fact is that the decline of Kievan Rus began in the second half of the 12th century or even in the 11th century, when the trade route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” lost its significance due to the fact that the Crusades opened an easier road to the riches of the East. And the invasion of the Tatars only contributed to the desolation of the region, which began 200 years ago.
The widespread opinion that almost all the cities (“they are countless”) in Rus' were taken by the Tatars is also incorrect. The Tatars could not stop at every city to destroy it. They bypassed many fortresses, and forests, ravines, rivers, and swamps sheltered both villages and people from the Tatar cavalry.
Mongol-Tatars are a primitive, uncivilized people
The view that the Tatars were savage and uncivilized is widespread due to the fact that this was the official opinion of Soviet historiography. But, as we have seen more than once, the official is not at all identical to the true.
To debunk the myth of the backwardness and primitiveness of the Mongol-Tatars, we will once again use the works of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov. He notes that the Mongols, indeed, killed, robbed, drove away cattle, took away brides and committed many such acts that are usually condemned in any textbook for young children.
Their actions were far from gratuitous. As their habitat expanded, the Mongols encountered rivals. The war with them was a completely natural rivalry. Cattle driving is a kind of sport associated with a risk to the life of, first of all, the horse thief. Bride kidnapping was explained by concern for the offspring, since stolen wives were treated no less delicately than those matched by consent of both families.
All this, of course, brought a lot of blood and grief, but, as Gumilyov notes, unlike other so-called civilized regions, in the Great Steppe there were no lies and deception of those who trusted.
Speaking about the uncivilization of the Mongols, we “reproach” them for the fact that they did not have cities and castles. In fact, the fact that people lived in felt yurts - gers - cannot in any way be considered a sign of uncivilization, because this is saving the gifts of nature, from which they took only what was necessary. It is worth noting that animals were killed exactly as much as was needed to satisfy hunger (unlike “civilized” Europeans who hunted for fun). It is also important that clothes, houses, saddles and horse harnesses were made from unstable materials that returned back to Nature along with the bodies of the Mongols. The culture of the Mongols, according to L.N. Gumilyov, “crystallized not in things, but in words, in information about ancestors.”
A thorough study of the way of life of the Mongols allows Gumilyov to draw, perhaps a somewhat exaggerated, but essentially correct conclusion: “Just think... the Mongols lived in the sphere of earthly sin, but outside the sphere of otherworldly evil! And other nations drowned in both.”
Mongols - destroyers of cultural oases of Central Asia
According to the established opinion, the cruel Mongol-Tatars destroyed the cultural oases of agricultural cities. But was this really the case? After all, the official version is based on legends created by Muslim court historiographers. Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov talks about the value of these legends in his book “From Rus' to Russia”. He writes that the fall of Herat was reported by Islamic historians as a disaster in which the entire population of the city was exterminated, except for a few men who managed to escape in the mosque. The city was completely devastated, and only wild animals roamed the streets and tormented the dead. After sitting for some time and coming to their senses, the surviving inhabitants of Herat went to distant lands to rob caravans, guided by the “noble” goal of regaining their lost wealth.
Gumilyov further continues: “This is a typical example of myth-making. After all, if the entire population of a large city were exterminated and lay corpses on the streets, then inside the city, in particular in the mosque, the air would be contaminated with cadaveric poison, and those hiding there would simply die. No predators, except jackals, live near the city, and they very rarely penetrate into the city. It was simply impossible for exhausted people to move to rob caravans several hundred kilometers from Herat, since they would have to walk, carrying heavy loads - water and provisions. Such a “robber”, having met a caravan, would not be able to rob it, since he would only have enough strength to ask for water.”
Even more ridiculous are the reports of Islamic historians about the fall of Merv. The Mongols took it in 1219 and allegedly exterminated all the inhabitants of the city there until last person. Nevertheless, already in 1220 Merv rebelled, and the Mongols had to take the city again (and exterminate everyone again). But two years later, Merv sent a detachment of 10 thousand people to fight the Mongols.
There are many similar examples. They once again clearly show how much you can trust historical sources.
Most historians, when mentioning the church reforms of Peter I, will remember the new church charter, the abolition of the patriarchate and the establishment of the Holy Synod. However, these reforms were much deeper and much more comprehensive. For example, it was Peter the Great who, while still tsar, established the “Order of Proto-Inquisitorial Affairs,” that is, the Russian Orthodox Inquisition.
A number of church historians of both that time and the present say that the emperor introduced the actual destruction of the Church, for which they call Russian monarch even "Antichrist". They are right, perhaps, only in that the logic of church reforms stemmed from personal and difficult relationship monarch to the Russian Church.
Impatience with superstitions
As the historian Kartashov points out (by the way, the last chief prosecutor of the Synod in Russian history before the restoration of the patriarchate in 1917), talking about the personal religiosity of the Russian autocrat: “His religious psyche was alive and complete. Not tolerating ignorant cult superstition, Peter himself habitually loved liturgical splendor, often read the Apostle with enthusiasm and was interested in the details of church rites. He was smart and talented enough that the fashionable rationalism and utilitarianism characteristic of him could distort his complete Orthodox religiosity.”
However, on the other hand, the same author speaks of distrust in the Church as an institution, and especially in the patriarchate. This distrust “is fully explained by Peter’s vivid, hereditary-family memories of the tragic conflict between the tsar and Patriarch Nikon experienced under his father Alexei Mikhailovich, precisely with Nikon’s sharpened ideology, which deeply frightened all Russian statesmen at that time. For the generation that experienced the tragedy of the conflict between the tsar and the patriarch, the very title of patriarch contained the dangerous possibility of a new outbreak.”
Suppression of rebellion and schism
In other words, the establishment of the Synod and the Chief Prosecutor under it, the new Charter and the strict limitation of the power of the Church - all this was aimed at suppressing even a hint of a possible rebellion and schism. And in this sense, the establishment of the “Inquisitorial Order” should be considered precisely as another mechanism for supervision and control of the Church.
The “Order,” as it was said, was established in 1711. In the dioceses, “spiritual inquisitors” were appointed from among the white and black (monastic) clergy, who, in turn, were subordinate to the provincial inquisitor. Provincial inquisitors were based in cities at bishops' houses and exercised supervision over the ruling bishops of the Russian Church. This regional link of the Russian Inquisition was accountable to the proto-inquisitor located in Moscow.
In turn, the proto-inquisitor was also not a self-sufficient figure in terms of powers. He was already subordinate to the Synod. Interestingly, the Inquisition established by Peter initially worked to identify shortcomings in church economic and judicial activities “in matters of minor importance” that took place among bishops and diocesan clergy. That is, in essence, it was such a “church tax inspectorate” for minor and insignificant violations. IN " Full Assembly Laws of the Russian Empire”, the inquisitors were called “spiritual fiscals”.
First Proto-Inquisitor
Since 1711, this structure was formed gradually. The position of proto-inquisitor itself appeared only in 1721, designated in the “Spiritual Regulations”. The first proto-inquisitor was the abbot of the Moscow Danilov Monastery, Archimandrite Paphnutius. It is worth noting here the somewhat symbolic nature of this structure in that era.
As was said above, the Inquisition was completely subordinate to the Synod, and more precisely, to the synodal chief prosecutor, who at that time was Ivan Vasilyevich Boltin, who, according to rumors, received the name Judas in baptism, and only then took a different “pseudonym” " But, in general, the “spiritual fiscals” subordinate to Judas, who oversee the Church, sounded to the Orthodox in a very definite and very ominous way.
By 1721, the list of responsibilities of the Russian Inquisition included monitoring how the notorious Regulations were observed, whether there was sufficient veneration of the Holy Synod, and whether there were cases of simony (ordination and appointment to church positions for money) in the dioceses reporting to them. Among other things, the inquisitors supervised how taxes were collected from schismatics, as well as the appearance of preachers and “teachers” in the Old Believers’ communities. In this case, upon denunciation by the inquisitors, such an Old Believer was immediately taken into custody.
As for the work procedure, the local inquisitor, having discovered a violation, had to first notify not his immediate superiors, but the superiors of the person he accused.
Contrary to the spirit of Orthodoxy
The institution of the Inquisition in Russia, as was said, did not last long. The “Order” itself was dissolved during the life of Peter the Great, in 1724, and the positions of inquisitors were finally abolished by Catherine on January 25, 1727. However, reforms aimed at subordinating the Church to the state continued under her, but using different methods. The very name of the structure, its functionality based on denunciation, and even its subordination to “Judas”-Boltin, left a deep memory among Russian historians and publicists who specialized in church history.
Thus, the Russian writer Melnikov, speaking about the Russian Inquisition, noted: “The main thing is that the Inquisition did not have significant development in our country, because, being contrary to the spirit of Orthodoxy, it did not meet with sympathy from the clergy itself,” and the already mentioned Kartashov, summarizing the end of the Inquisition in Russia wrote: “Their ugly title and position were abolished in 1727.”
Was Rus' drunk?
The myth about the supposedly “traditional Russian drunkenness”, which has flourished in Rus' from time immemorial, has existed for a long time. The periodical Western press, especially fond of exaggerating it, came to the aid of Russophobes with academic degrees, who proved the alleged national penchant of the Russian people for alcoholic beverages. Let's try to figure out whether they drank a lot, a little, and from time immemorial in Rus', and how things stood among other peoples.
Ever since the human race acquired writing, he began to paint on stones, on tablets, and on ox skin about his interest in intoxicating drinks. Hoary antiquity has left us a lot of such evidence. Three, four thousand years before the new era in Ancient Egypt knew the taste of grape wine and beer. In Greece, the cult of wine was preached so widely that at festivities, next to the statue of Dionysus (the god of wine), some wit must have started to put Athena (the goddess of wisdom) as well, convincing the Greeks that wine makes a person’s mind sharper and more flexible. Sometimes, however, nymphs (goddesses of water sources) were placed between the statues of these deities as a symbol of moderation, calling for the dilution of viscous alcoholic drinks.
Literary monuments have brought to us the intemperance in drinking wine in Ancient Rome. The “Lucullus feasts” are described in detail and vividly, at which both public morals and generally accepted norms of behavior were drowned in a wine stupor. “It was very common among the most civilized and enlightened peoples to drink,” Montaigne concluded in his treatise on drunkenness. No, there was no people or state, either in the West or in the East, that did not have a craving for wine.
There were a great variety of wines. The ancient Egyptians made cheap and tasteless wine. And what a wonderful wine sunny Palestine exuded, the American historian X. J. Magualias admires. Well, how can you not drink it again and again? And the Old Testament prophet Isaiah reported about the ancient Jews that they got up early to chase intoxicating drinks, and stayed up at night to burn themselves with wine. Many other biblical testimonies are permeated with complaints about too destructive passions among the Jewish people. And even Christian Byzantium, which announced asceticism and restraint to the world through new religion, could not cope with the established vice.
True, even then they understood that drunkenness was a social illness and could be cured within the framework of the state. The ancient Egyptians subjected drunkards to punishment and ridicule. More than a thousand years before the new era, an imperial decree on drunkenness was adopted in China, which noted with alarm that it could cause the destruction of the state. The Chinese Emperor Wu Weng even issued a decree according to which all persons captured during a drinking binge were sentenced to death. death penalty. Those caught drunk in India were given... molten silver, lead, copper. In ancient Sparta, captive slaves were deliberately made drunk so that the young men would see their bestial condition and develop an aversion to wine.
Such examples could be given endlessly. Their essence is that drunkenness since ancient times has not been the prerogative of any country or nationality. Sweeping away ethnic and state borders on its way, it did not bypass any country or people.
But they labeled the Russian people as historically drunkards. And we somehow easily believed in this, resigned ourselves, did not doubt that our illustrious ancestors were not only listed as drunkards themselves, but also bequeathed this to us. Was ancient Rus' really drunk?
Such statements are completely devoid of historical background,” answers the historian Buganov. - Not a single ancient Russian written monument before the Tatar-Mongol invasion, that is, until the end of the first third of the 13th century, contains any complaints about excessive alcohol consumption, or any mention of drunkenness in general among our people. This is explained quite simply. Until the 10th century, the Russians did not know intoxicating grape wine; they brewed beer, made mash and kvass, and mead. These light drinks accompanied feasts and fraternities, and were brought as treats at feasts, causing joy in the drinkers, which did not turn into severe intoxication.
But what do those who accuse the Russian people of “traditional drunkenness” base on?
Here is one of the “historical” arguments. Political situation those years developed in such a way that Vladimir needed to adopt religion according to the Byzantine model, because Byzantium was entering the next zenith of its power, being a state where the monotheic religion consolidated and complemented the power of the emperor. The embassies sent by Vladimir to the East to find out the situation in the leading Muslim states reported that the Baghdad Caliphate, the largest state of Islam at that time, had lost its power, and its rulers did not exercise any real power. The strongest Muslim state in Central Asia, the Samanid power, was also on the decline. The Russian prince took all this into account, but, not wanting to quarrel with representatives of Islam, who convinced him to make his religion the state religion in Rus', he explained his refusal by the fact that in Rus' they cannot live without wine, which, as is known, Islam prohibits.
“Rus' has joy to drink, we cannot exist without it,” Prince Vladimir said, grinning into his beard.
Much later, enemies began to interpret Vladimir Svyatoslavovich’s words retroactively in a different sense. Allegedly, the Russian people cannot exist without alcohol. This is where this myth about Russian drunkenness originates. In fact, Russia entered the Middle Ages sober. And I will try to substantiate this statement.
Since 1951, Academician A. V. Artsikhovsky began conducting archaeological excavations on the territory of Novgorod. The most interesting scientific discovery was birch bark letters, which indicated that Rus' wrote and read widely. It was the state organization of Novgorod that brought to life the need to spread literacy, both among the owners and among the peasants. After all, the latter not only read, but also kept the answer in the letter.
Then these excavations were continued by Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences V.L. Yanin. In these birch bark letters, quite a lot of space was given to the smallest everyday issues. But none of the birch bark evidence contains any mention of wine and drunkenness. Widespread literacy did not record these phenomena.
Only by the 15th century on the territory of the Russian state did the tavern take shape as a public drinking establishment, the owners of which paid duties on drinks to the prince. Along with wine, they spent the night there, ordered food, sang and listened to music. However, there were taverns only in large centers: Kyiv, Novgorod, Pskov and Smolensk.
On the contrary, in Western Europe the Middle Ages were marked by a widespread increase in the consumption of not only wine and beer, but also spirits. Already in the 13th century, Western Europeans, unlike our ancestors, not only knew what vodka, gin and other things were, but also diligently consumed them. Varied and cheap strong drinks triumphantly marched from palaces to the common people through taverns and trading shops.
“Germany is plagued by drunkenness,” exclaimed church reformer Martin Luther. “My parishioners,” the English pastor William Ket complained at the same time, “every Sunday they are all dead drunk.” And this is in old and prim London, from where reproaches of Russia for traditional drunkenness are heard. Contemporaries reported that in London “every house, every street has a tavern.” Women drank there equally with men, and the prices on the price list were captivating with their cheapness. Simple intoxication - a penny, dead - two pence and straw for nothing.
Looking at the nationwide passion for drunkenness, which struck all classes, the papal ambassador Antony Companius bitterly exclaimed: “Here being is only drinking.” The diplomat was not far from the truth. Social consciousness In those years, drunkenness was not frowned upon in England. Moreover, a non-drinker was not considered a gentleman.
In Russia, the production of strong drinks occurred only at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries. The appearance of vodka was recorded around this time. Alcohol is an invention of ancient Egyptian sages and healers, who sold it to many countries for a lot of money. In Europe, the alcohol was diluted and given to Rus'. At first, vodka was consumed exclusively as a medicine. Aqua vita, living water, - in Russian okaya transcription - okovita. Even the 19th century found vodka under this name in some places. In the southern provinces they began to call it gorilka, and in Great Russia the name was adopted, which has survived to this day.
IN mid-16th century century, a tavern appears in Russia - a place for state-owned or farm-out sales of alcoholic beverages. Ivan the Terrible ordered the construction of the first tavern in Zamoskvorechye, returning from the Kazan campaign. According to the Russian Archives (1886), he forbade Moscow residents from drinking vodka, but allowed, however, to build a special house for the guardsmen called a tavern. Drops of golden rain fell into the royal treasury and began to drum more and more often through the efforts of nimble servants who realized that this business was extremely profitable. Already by the first half of the 17th century, “tsar’s taverns” sprang up like mushrooms after rain not only in cities, but also in small villages. Those who came there quickly became tipsy. Perhaps, from these years on, a myth began to form about widespread drunkenness in Rus', based on the testimony of visiting foreigners.
So, from the time of Ivan the Terrible, tavern income, or “drinking money,” began to be collected. This was carried out by jurors and kissers, that is, elected officials.
Along with the state-owned - royal taverns - another form arose in Rus' - granted taverns to boyars, landowners and monasteries. At the same time, the Moscow government harshly persecuted feeding, jealously protecting its monopoly on production and sale alcoholic drinks. And yet, in Muscovy there were people who saw in the current system of soldering, although very profitable, one of the main reasons for “harm to souls.” This is what Patriarch Nikon called drunkenness, under whose influence Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich conceived a broad reform of the tavern business. From this time on, attempts to state regulation of alcohol production began.
In February 1652, letters were sent to the cities, which announced that from the new year “there will be no taverns in the cities, but only one circle courtyard.” The sale of wine was prohibited during Lent and Holy Week. The governors were ordered to close the taverns during this time. In August 1652, a “council on taverns” was convened, at which the details of the reform, which had already been accepted in principle and implemented in its main features, were to be clarified. The composition of the participants in the cathedral, as can be seen from the letter sent to Uglich on August 16, 1652 outlining the resolutions of the cathedral, was usual for the 17th century.
Among the resolutions of the cathedral, the most important is the limitation of the time of trade in wine. Its sale was prohibited during fasting, on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. And it was allowed on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday only after mass, that is, after 14 hours, and stopped in the summer - an hour “before the evening” (about 17 hours 30 minutes), and in the winter - “in return for the hours of the day” (about 17 hours). It was strictly forbidden to sell wine at night. The amount of wine sold to one person was limited to one glass; it was not ordered to give on credit or on mortgage.
At the end of the letter on the tavern reform sent to Uglich, an interesting clause was added regarding the “drink money” - “collect before the previous one with a profit”! The Moscow government hoped to achieve this goal by destroying private taverns and increasing the price of wine. It is this inherently hypocritical policy that runs like a red thread through the history of the tavern issue in Russia. On the one hand, the monarch castigates drunkenness, on the other, he orders the “drinkers” to be collected at a profit.
Visiting foreigners vividly testify to this, although most of their conclusions are based only on impressions, most often visual, without comparative analysis with European states. In 1639, Adam Olearius, who represented the Holstein prince Frederick III in Moscow and often traveled around our land for long periods of time, concluded in the most famous book about Russia in the 17th century, “Description of a Journey to Muscovy and through Muscovy to Persia and Back,” that Russians “are more more addicted to drunkenness than any other people in the world."
This evidence should not only be verified, but also compared with what was happening at that time in Western Europe. For example, vodka in Russia was expensive, more expensive than in Europe. And this restrained its mass use.
B. May, an English historian, in a voluminous book published in London in 1984, citing A. Olearius, wrote: “For centuries, foreigners have been constantly shocked by the consumption of alcohol by Russians belonging to all classes of society...” B. May echoes American historian J. Wellington, by the way, advised President Reagan on relations with the Soviet Union. In a book with the pretentious title “The Icon and the Axe,” which went through two editions, he claims without evidence that the most common vice in Muscovy was drunkenness.
How objective are the observations of A. Olearius and the conclusions of scientists?
As you know, steppe nomads pushed our ancestors out of the black earth strip to the north. But even there our people continued to engage in their usual farming. And although the climate here was by no means favorable, and the soils were simply poor, our plowman continued to raise the soil and grow our daily bread. In the world, only two northern countries have developed large-scale agriculture. These are Russia and Canada. But in Canada, a significant part of the peasants live approximately at the latitude of our Crimea. Just like in Western Europe. In Russia in those years, agriculture developed in the most difficult climatic conditions. Compare. Winters are cold and long, while in Europe sun and warmth are by no means rare guests.
The soils in the non-chernozem zone are disfigured by swamps, and the field season is almost half as long as in Europe. Cattle grazing time was shortened by two months due to climatic conditions. It is obvious that in order to obtain a minimum of products, our ancestor invested incomparably more physical and spiritual strength and time than his Western European counterpart. When should you drink here? By God, the Russians would have died out, they would not have endured the most severe struggle with the nomads, if they poured into themselves alcoholic products even the same number as Europeans. How much courage, how much patience, will and endurance our people needed to survive, to accumulate material resources, undermined by the Tatar-Mongol invasion, in order, relying on them, to build a huge empire.
Almost a hundred years earlier than A. Olearius, the ambassador to Muscovy of Emperor Maximilian (from the Habsburgs), Sigismund Herberstein, traveled through the domains of Grand Duke Vasily Ivanovich, who wrote “Notes on Muscovite Affairs.” There is no mention of drunkenness among Russians. Unless there is a message that... “a few years ago, Emperor Vasily built his bodyguards new town Nadi." What kind of city this is, historians know well. But we’ll tell you about it from the book of A. Olearius, who has already been mentioned more than once.
He wrote: “The fourth part of the city (we are talking about Moscow. -A.S. - Streletskaya Sloboda - lies south of the Moscow River towards the Tatars and is surrounded by a fence of logs and wooden fortifications. They say that this part was built by Vasily, the father of the tyrant , for foreign soldiers: Poles, Lithuanians and Germans and was named after drinking sessions “Naleikas” from the word “pour in.” This name appeared because foreigners were more involved in drinking than Muscovites, and since it was impossible to hope that this habitual vice could be eradicated, then "They were given complete freedom to drink. However, so that they would not infect the Russians with a bad example, the drunken brethren had to live alone across the river."
Neither the Bulgarians nor the Russians, says Christa Orlovsky, Chairman of the National Temperance Committee of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, have ever had so-called drunken traditions. In Rus' back in late XVII century, a special “order for drunkenness” was established - a heavy cast-iron slab with an iron collar. We treated drinkers no less harshly.
The creator of the first Bulgarian alphabet, the philosopher Konstantin-Kirill, wrote a parable against drunkenness, ending it with these words: “Drunkards are neither like people nor like animals - only like devils. Angels turn away from them, people run around them.”
In the book of the famous everyday writer of the last century, Ivan Pryzhov, “The History of Taverns in Russia in Connection with the History of the Russian People” (1886), it is noted that “millions of people... saw God’s punishment in drunkenness and at the same time, drinking the mortal cup, protested, drank out of grief " After reading Pryzhov’s book, you become stronger in the conviction that drunkenness came to Russian soil from the outside.
The mechanism of alcoholic exploitation of the people in the 17th and 18th centuries, being more and more refined, increased the consumption of strong drinks in the country. The 19th century brought Russia factory production of pure alcohol. One of the leading psychiatrists of pre-revolutionary Russia, I. A. Sikorsky, wrote: “Before there was drunkenness, but in the 19th century alcoholism began...” Taverns and taverns opened throughout the country, trading day and night.
So, every year Russia became more and more drunk. But the vodka spread wide, not deep. And if its total quantity increased due to sales in individual provinces, then per capita, compared with other European states, Russia occupied a modest place among the latter. IN late XIX century, our country was in ninth place in alcohol consumption, leaving far behind France, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany and others.
One of the most prominent specialists in this field of those times, N. O. Osipov, wrote that “In terms of the amount of alcohol, Russia could be ranked among the most sober countries in Europe.” The Russian peasant had the opportunity to drink only a few dozen days a year - on patronal holidays, Easter, Maslenitsa, at weddings and bazaars. The rest of the time he worked hard, winning his daily bread from the land in the harsh conditions of our climate. Peasant labor did not tolerate two or three glasses every day.
When people in the West today talk about “primordial Russian drunkenness,” they do not take into account the social roots of this phenomenon in pre-revolutionary Russia. The persuasiveness of the arguments most often does not go beyond propaganda.
IN mid-19th century, a strong temperance movement took shape in Russia, which, along with the most prominent public figures, was supported by the church.
But these sprouts were trampled into the mud by the government, which ordered the destruction of public anti-alcohol institutions, despite the conflict with the church. On the one hand, moral condemnation was practiced, restrictions were introduced, but then they were lifted, and vodka production increased. In the 16th century, Ivan III closed the taverns, his son Vasily III allowed drinking only to his servants and foreigners, for whom he built a settlement in Zamoskvorechye for this purpose. Under Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in the 16th century, the sale of vodka in taverns was limited, but falling incomes forced everything to return to normal. In the first quarter of the 17th century, the treasury received more than 1 million rubles from vodka, in 1800 already 13.6 million, and at the end of the 19th century - 300.
Vadim DERUZHINSKY. "Lysenkoism in historical science." 2011.
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Herself “Old Russian nationality” is a great-power myth invented by Lomonosov to substantiate the claims of tsarism to the lands of Lithuania-Belarus and Rus'-Ukraine. Moreover, these claims came from the former Horde - from its four parts: the Moscow Ulus, the Kazan Horde, the Siberian Horde and the Astrakhan Horde. I would like to know what kind of “ancient Russian consciousness” the Golden Horde had? And what is this “historical struggle” of the Litvins of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for reunification with the “brotherly” people of the Golden Horde?
And why did the stay of Polotsk for 70 years under the rule of Kyiv - this sets a certain “ancient common consciousness”, and the stay of the Muscovites for 300 years as part of the Horde - suddenly does not set their common consciousness, although they have been a single state and a single people for 750 years? And why general history Poles and Belarusians, which is centuries longer than their joint 122-year stay as part of Tsarist Russia, also does not form a common Polish-Belarusian consciousness?
In a word, there is a political falsification of history on the part of tsarist and then Soviet historians. This fictitious “Old Russian people” is based, in fact, only on the myth of some “Old Russian language” in which books were allegedly written in Kyiv, Polotsk, Novgorod and Muscovy. In fact, this is not “Old Russian language”, but Church Slavonic. This is the South Slavic Solunsky dialect of the 9th-11th centuries, which became extinct at the beginning of the Slavicization of Zalesye by the Kyiv princes. It cannot be called “Old Russian”, since that is exactly how it was written back then in Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Bohemia (Czech Republic), the lands of Poland, and Moldova (see our article “Myths and truth about the language of ancestors”, No. 23 , 2010). But for some reason no one calls these territories “Old Russian”, and their population “Old Russian people”, although everywhere they wrote in the same language - the Solunsky dialect of Macedonia, which formed the basis of the written language invented by Cyril and Methodius for the Slavs.
And then, why on earth should the forced presence of the Polotsk state as part of Kievan Rus for 70 years a thousand years ago suddenly mean in the 19th and 20th centuries supposedly “a craving for reunification with the fraternal Russian people,” if Lithuanians-Belarusians had never lived before? with Russians in the same state? The lands of the future Muscovy and the lands of the Polotsk state were part of Kievan Rus in different time, and Polotsk was freed from the power of the Kyiv princes even before their offspring set off to capture and Russify the Finnish lands of what is now Central Russia.
Millions of Belarusians were fooled in the USSR by the myth that they were supposedly the “younger brother” of the great Russian people, and this fooling continues to this day. The propagandist of this myth was the late Pyotr Petrikov, Doctor of Historical Sciences, professor, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. On August 31, 2006, in the newspaper “Soviet Belarus” he published an article “Methodological ideologies of historians”, in which, in particular, he wrote: “The historical struggle of the Belarusian people for reunification with the fraternal Russian people became a bone in the throat for some Belarusian historians... In Russia it began awakening of the ancient Russian consciousness of Belarusians...".
However, the encyclopedia “Belarus” (Minsk, 1995) says: “In the process of formation and development, the Belarusian people went through stages from the unification of tribal unions through nationality to the nation, many stages of the social structure of society. ... In the 13th-16th centuries, the Belarusian ethnic group was formed. ...The processes of consolidation of the Belarusian people into the Belarusian Nation began in the 16th - early 17th centuries.” How can the consciousness of a nationality – “Old Russian” in this case – “awaken” in an ancient Nation? This is as nonsense as an old man getting his baby teeth.
Here is a striking and little-known analogy. In the period from the XIV to the beginning of the XVI centuries. Polish cities, including Krakow, were formed as German ones. Krasnoyarsk historian Professor A. Burovsky wrote: “During that period, townspeople in Poland spoke German (or a mixture of German and Polish), and later the cities became completely Polish.” But it was similar with us - the language of the townspeople (Thessaloniki dialect, also known as Church Slavonic, also known as “Old Russian”) was not the language of the indigenous inhabitants. However, no one claims that since the townspeople of Poland then spoke German, then at that time Poland was a kind of “Ancient Germany” with the ancient Germanic consciousness of the Poles!
Throughout world historical Science, it is believed that all European (and Slavic) peoples developed according to a common scenario in their ethnogenesis. The exception - as they believe in Russia - are only three “East Slavic” peoples, who supposedly at the end of the 1st and beginning of the 2nd millennium managed to form a kind of “Old Russian nationality” with a single spoken language (Thessalonica dialect of Macedonia, now the Bulgarian language) in the vast BSSR, Ukrainian SSR and RSFSR, and then, for some unknown reason, this Bulgarian-speaking community suddenly broke up into “three fraternal peoples.” This fantastic concept was actively developed by such authors as V. Mavrodin, B. Rybakov, S. Tokarev, M. Rabinovich and others; they came up with the existence of some kind of “Ancient Rus'” with a single “Old Russian people” until the 13th century, on the ruins of which “three nations” arose in the 14th-16th centuries.
Today, many historians ridicule this Lysenkoism. Doctor of Historical Sciences, Belarusian professor Viktor Titov (b. 1938) in the essay “Ethnogenesis of the Litvins (Belarusians) in the Slavic Context” (Chapter 5 “On the Old Russian Nationality”) finds the following inconsistencies in this concept.
1. “Unknown so far historical documents, primary sources, even historical legends and myths (not taking into account the myths of the Soviet era), which would directly or indirectly report on a single ancient Russian nationality.”
2. “The process of formation of the East Slavic peoples in the form as it is presented to the authors of this concept completely contradicts the ethnogenesis of neighboring Slavic and European peoples - Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Lietuvis, Germans, who were mainly formed at the end of the 1st - beginning 2nd millennium. Their immediate ancestors were real ethno-tribal groups (unions), which stood at approximately the same level of historical development as the Krivichi, Dregovichi, Radimichi, Dnieper glades, and Volynians.”
3. “The formation of a single nationality is really possible only in conditions of constant ethnocultural and economic ties. In the vast expanses of the “Rurikovich empire”, a fragile political education with different cultural traditions of local tribes, different economic conditions, the process of their consolidation and integration into a single nation was simply impossible. This would amount to a historical paradox."
4. “Taking into account chronological framework, into which the authors of the Soviet concept “squeeze” the process of ethnogenesis of the Belarusians, one cannot help but notice that the period of the 15th-16th centuries is known in Belarus, as well as in Ukraine and Poland, as the Renaissance. The authors of the concept allow for the substitution of historical concepts, while ethnogenesis and the Renaissance are fundamentally different processes.”
5. “Another question inevitably arises: how and due to what circumstances in the vastness of Eastern Europe, in contrast to Western Europe, in the ancient period (VIII-XIII centuries) the processes of consolidation and integration prevailed (which supposedly led to the formation of a single nationality) , however later, in XVI-XVII centuries, already in the conditions of a single Slavic state - the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which was experiencing its “golden age” at that time, this “nationality” suddenly disintegrated, and in its “cradle” two new peoples appeared for the first time - Ukrainians and Belarusians. The authors of the concept of ancient Russian nationality do not give an answer to such questions.”
Professor Viktor Titov concludes:
“In the 19th century, this problem was solved much more simply by the ideologists of the Russian concept of “Western Russianism.” They denied the very fact of the existence of Belarusians and Ukrainians as independent peoples, reducing them to the concepts of ethnographic groups of a single Russian people. Indeed, the end justifies the means, just like the principle “no people - no problems!”
It is not difficult to notice the continuity between these two concepts: both here and there reveal the imperial character of thinking, the subordination of science to the great-power idea, the exaltation and justification of the cult of power at the expense of the humiliation of their “younger brothers”, allegedly liberated by the Russian Empire from under the “yoke of Lithuania and Poland” "".
To these words of the historian I will add the following. Today, from the lips of many Russian politicians and ordinary Russians, one can hear statements that, they say, three fraternal peoples need to unite again into one country. For example, in a recent TV story about the motor rally “For Belarus!” a certain Russian businessman said: “Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians are one people, and we need to be together again in a single country.”
In the eyes of ordinary people, such statements seem “friendly.” But in fact, these are the most hostile statements addressed to Belarusians and Ukrainians, which are absolutely identical to the tsarist concept of “Western Russianism,” which denied the very fact of the existence of our nations and reduced them to “part of the Russian people.” For comparison, this is exactly what the Poles said: “Poles and Kres, Belarusians and Ukrainians are the fraternal peoples of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which must unite again into one country.” It was this “integration” slogan that was popular in the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1920-1939). Such words about “brotherhood” and “one people” are great-power attacks on our national freedom and sovereignty.
If you hear someone say “Belarusians and Russians are one people,” this means that the speaker denies the existence of Belarusians as an independent nation - and thereby denies the right of Belarusians to their own State.
THE VAIN SEARCH OF “ANCIENT Rus'”
Honest scientists did not recognize the tsarist concept of “ancient Russian nationality” either in tsarist or Soviet times. For example, Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky stated:
“Russian land is everywhere, and nowhere, not in a single monument will you find the name Russian people... Russian state in the 9th-11th centuries. could not be the state of the Russian people, because this people did not yet exist.”
Absolutely correct remark: peoples in the medieval Eastern Europe began to take shape only from the 12th-13th centuries, therefore, in principle, some kind of “Old Russian people” could not have existed before this time.
Prominent Soviet historian A.N. Nasonov (1898-1965) wrote that the Polansky reign in the middle reaches of the Dnieper became the core of the state of Kievan Rus. IN last time the name “glade” is found in the “Initial Code” under 944. Then for the first time it was replaced by the name “Rus”. It gradually became attached to that part of the Slavicized Dnieper Balts and Sarmatians who lived around Kyiv, Pereyaslavl and Chernigov. Initially, only this territory was called “Russian Land”; it was this territory that became part of the Kyiv State as the territorial and politically dominant core.
Researcher of the history of the Eastern Slavs P.N. Tretyakov claims that the term “Old Russian nationality” is a “bookish” one invented by Soviet historians. He believes that this “nationality” was a very relative community: also for a long time its components retained their characteristics - the Baltic, Sarmatian, Finno-Ugric substrata of the tribes of this “nationality”. Not only in IX-X centuries, but also in the XI-XII centuries. Russia, the Russian land, was a small region within the borders of the Middle Dnieper region. Tretyakov argues that the term “Old Russian nationality” only makes it possible not to confuse the ethnic unification of the Slavs from the times of Kievan Rus with the “Russian nationality” of the 14th-16th centuries - that is, with the nationality of the Muscovites and the Slavicized peoples of the Golden Horde.
Georgy Shtykhov (born 1927, laureate of the State Prize of the BSSR 1990, co-author of school textbooks), Doctor of Historical Sciences (1983), professor (1989), in the essay “At the Origins of the Belarusian Nationality (from Indo-Europeans to the Balts and Slavs)” in the chapter “On the Problem of the Old Russian Nationality” he writes that the Polotsk State was never any “Rus”:
“The territory of Belarus was outside the borders of Rus' in a “narrow sense”. First of all, this applies to the Polotsk land. In the Ipatiev list under 1140, the chronicler explains why Grand Duke Kiev Mstislav captured five Polotsk princes in 1129 and sent them to Byzantium: the Polotsk princes “will not listen to him /Mstislav/ if he goes to the Russian land to help” /from the Polovtsians/. Apparently, Polotsk residents had enough worries of their own.
In the recent past, Soviet historiography persistently introduced the understanding of the “Russian land” into in a broad sense- like the territories of all Eastern Slavs. However, chroniclers call different ethnic groups that existed for a long time. Thus, the Drevlyans appear until 1136, the Dregovichi - until 1149, the Krivichi - until 1162, the Radimichi - until 1169. Archaeological research data is in good agreement with this information.
Based on materials from excavations of burial mounds, ethnographic differences between the groups of Eastern Slavs can be traced. Thus, archaeologist L.V. Duchits identifies three sets of costumes for Krivichan women. A comparative study of archaeological and ethnographic materials, especially the Letgale-Belarusian borderland, allowed the researcher to conclude that Letgale relics could be traced in the ethnographic costume of the Vitebsk region even in the 19th century. It is more difficult for the Krivichi than any other tribal association to “fit” into a single ancient Russian nationality. Many researchers consider them more Balts than Slavs. “These were the Baltic tribes who left behind the culture of long mounds,” writes Professor E.M. Zagorulsky.
Economic ties between the lands of the ancient Russian state (Kievan Rus) were weak. The linguistic, cultural and other ethnic characteristics of the East Slavic groups did not have time to be erased. In the clothing, jewelry, way of life, language, and beliefs of their representatives, many differences remained that stemmed from tribal characteristics.
Therefore, it makes no sense to put on the same level the thesis about a single ancient Russian nationality with the thesis about a political community within the borders of a state that existed until the early 30s of the 12th century, and then disintegrated into independent principalities.
In 1996, at the VI International Congress of Slavic Archeology in Veliky Novgorod, a meeting was held dedicated to issues of the Old Russian people. One report concluded:
“The version that the Old Russian nationality was not fully formed and disintegrated due to the collapse of the Old Russian state has more reality and plausibility than the alternative based on the mythical idea of the existence of a single nationality, since the conditions for this were clearly not enough. The process of the emergence of related East Slavic peoples - Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian (Great Russian) - can be considered without using this controversial concept."
At the same time, a conclusion was made about the terms “Rus” and “Russian land”:
“The name “Rus” originally meant the core of the Kyiv state. In the 12th century, Russian Land was the name of a clearly undefined territory of the Middle Dnieper region. In the XIII-XIV centuries, the term “Rus” was already used as a collective name for the lands of the Eastern Slavs, whose population recognized Orthodox faith regardless of their location. During that period, the formation of three East Slavic nationalities took place.”
But to consider faith the only remaining guideline for accepting the name “Rus” (the word “acceptance” here is incorrect, but we must talk about the imposition of this in our country by tsarism in the 19th century - as a surrogate replacement for our Lithuania and our self-name Litvina) - this is simply stupid in the territory , for example, Minsk region. Here is an excerpt from the essay by historian A. Pyatchits “The Triumph of Orthodoxy in Belarus: the Imperial Version”:
“So, in 1861, the nobles of the Minsk province, led by the provincial “leader of the nobility” Lappa, drew up an appeal to Emperor Alexander II with a request to annex the province administratively to the Kingdom of Poland. The reason for such annexation was that “this province... is entirely populated by Catholics and Poles.” The same appeal was sent to the emperor noble assembly Mogilev province. However, both appeals were rejected, but it is interesting that among those who signed these petitions there were also “Russian” (Orthodox) nobles.” Source: Bryantsev P.D. Polish revolt of 1863. Vilnia, 1892. P. 147.
This completely refutes attempts to see the Minsk region as “Rus” based on the factor of religion - and there are no other reasons to see it as “Rus” or “White Russia” (a term in the Polish language).
We, as Lithuanians, were formed from 1219 (the agreement of our Lithuanian princes Novogrudok Bulevich and Ruskovich with Galicia) to 1840 - IN LITHUANIA ON and even under tsarism in the Lithuanian Province, and not within the framework of some “Rus”. This is 621 years of evolution of us as an ethnos and then a nation - and all this time we were Lithuania and Litvins (not to be confused with the current Lietuvis, who were and are Zhemoits, not Lithuania and not Litvins).
Tsarism’s forced renaming of our Lithuania - the main medieval rival of Moscow-Horde - into “Belarus”, and the Litvin nation into who knows what(and the North-Western Territory did not envisage the existence of any nation of its own there in the Russian Empire) - it's the same as renaming salt to sugar . And the search for the “ancient Russian consciousness” mentioned at the beginning of the article by Professor Petrikov among the Litvins of this centuries-old Lithuania-“Belarus” is an attempt to find the sweet in the taste of salt. Self-deception. No matter how much you say “halva”, it won’t make your mouth any sweeter.
As it is: our people throughout their history, free from Russian occupation, were proudly called by their neighbors Lithuania and Litvins. And the scientific position is that without the rule of tsarism over us in the 19th century, we would continue to call ourselves Litvins and Lithuania today. So why on earth are we - Great Lithuania - suddenly some kind of foreign “Rus”? This is a complete remake, a colonial invention.
So what really happened ?
Rus is a Varangian term that they spread throughout Central and part of Eastern Europe. The Varangians (tribes of the Goths and Slavs of Polabian Rus', Rurik, Obodrits and other Rusyns), who did not plow or sow, but were bandits, used this word to call their colonial fortresses, which controlled the main trade routes in the named regions (to collect tribute from traders) and collected tribute from the native peoples surrounding these fortresses. That is, they were engaged in racketeering, and also served as military mercenaries for the rulers of Europe.
The language of these Varangian bandits was a mixture of Gothic and Western Baltic languages (with an admixture, perhaps, of Sarmatian and others). So in this pirate community, Argo/Koine appeared - the “Slavic language” as a simplified mixture of mainly vocabulary and grammatical forms of the Gothic and Western Baltic languages. This koine was gradually adopted by the native population, from whom the Varangians took tribute; The Varangians called such natives “Slovenians” or “Slavs” - because they “understood the word.” For this reason, Nestor and other ancient chroniclers put a complete equal sign between the concepts of “Russian language”, “Slovenian language” and “Varangian language” - it was the same thing then.
In Central Europe, in the Balkans, and then in Eastern Europe, Rus' existed everywhere, first on the rivers controlled by the Varangians (according to one of the main and convincing versions, the word “Rus” means “oarsman”). And only from these rivers and the Varangian fortifications on them did the spread of the Slavic/Russian/Varangian Koine and the name “Rus” go deep into the territory. This is how a mass of Rus appeared on the territory of Central Europe, many centuries before the Rusyn-Obdritic prince Rurik.
Polabian Rus' is a country of Obodrits, Rusyns of the island of Rusen and Goths-Anglos (who later, together with the Obodrits, captured British Isles, moved to English language a lot of words from the Slavic Koine and the very name “Foggy Albion” from the Laba Elba River, as well as the Slavic name of Scotland - Scotland, from the ancient Slavic word “cattle” - wealth). Now Polabian Rus' is northern Germany, and the oldest German city of Oldenburg is the renamed most ancient Slavic city of Starograd, the former capital of Polabian Rus'.
Pomeranian Rus' is now northern Poland. Rus' in Thuringia (retained the name “Russian Duchy” until 1920), now Germany. Germany's Borussia is Porussia, just like Prussia is also Porussia. Likewise, Rus' was in Styria, now Austria. Most of Hungary was Carpathian Rus with its capital in the city of Kev, which is older than Kyiv and which historians often confuse with Kiev (from there, by the way, the Russification-Slavicization of its offspring Galician Rus took place). Greece almost switched to the Russian/Slavic/Varangian language, which was introduced into the Balkan peoples by the Varangians. Rus' was even in Italy, where tribes from Polabian Rus' invaded and remained to live there: so in modern Italy there is still a Russian/Slavic/Varangian Rezian literary microlanguage. The complete history of Rus' in Central Europe before and beyond “Ancient Rus'” is given by Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor A.G. Kuzmin in the collection “Where did the Russian Land Come From” (volume 2. Moscow, 1986).
Thus, the very concept of “Rus” has nothing to do with Eastern Europe, where it appeared with the arrival of the Varangians many centuries later than in Central Europe (there it has been known since the 4th-6th centuries and is an attribute of the appearance of the Slavs there). For this reason alone, which Russian historians have never advertised for obvious reasons, Moscow does not and cannot have any “monopoly” on Rus'.
What we today call “Kievan Rus” was not the state of our ethnic groups - in the generally accepted understanding that an ethnic group creates its own statehood. Many historians talk about this today, for example, the Moscow historian A. Bychkov called his book: “Kievan Rus: a country that never existed.”
Kievan Rus is a colony of foreign Varangians (Goths and followers of Rurik from present-day Mecklenburg) over our native peoples, created only to exact tribute from us. This “state” had no other goals.
The tribes of “Ancient Rus'” were united by only one single circumstance: all of them - local backward Balts, Sarmatians, Finno-Ugrians - paid tribute to the Varangians. Including, as the chronicles say, the Krivichi Balts. And what is this - “Old Russian nationality”? The only thing they have in common is that they are tributaries of the Slav/Goth squads from Polabia and Sweden? And what does “ancient Russian consciousness” mean here? Pay tribute to the Varangians?
The names of absolutely all Kyiv princes were originally Gothic, not Slavic. At the first stage of the existence of “Ancient Rus of Kyiv,” the Goths made up the majority in the princely squad and in the princely entourage. And at the second stage of the history of this “state,” Kyiv severed its umbilical cord between Rus' and the Goths, which was explained by the historical decline and degeneration of the “Varangianism” itself. Varangianism as a reality disappeared on the way from the Varangians to the Greeks, and the Kyiv former Varangians, under the auspices of the word “Rus” as a “tribute collector,” considered themselves the heir of the Varangians - essentially tribute collectors. That is why the name “Rus” was concentrated around Kyiv - as the collector of this tribute.
Indeed, Kyiv at some stage of our ancient history - even before the formation of ethnic groups in Europe - collected tribute from us. But no one remembered this short period of our history in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the Middle Ages, especially since this Kiev, liberated by us from the Horde, became our seedy province for a period longer than the short 70-year period of domination of “Kievan Rus” over Polotsk By the state. And then we gave it to the Polish Kingdom as something absolutely not “sacred” to us.
The very theme of “Kievan Rus” as supposedly the “Russian State” was first invented at the direction of Catherine II by the Tatar Karamzin. Before this falsification, which consists in the very emphasis on the emergence of “three fraternal” ethnic groups and especially nations not from the 13th century, but supposedly from the community of Varangian tributaries that existed before that, no one could have thought of such nonsense for more than half a century. No one had such ridiculous concepts.
Created by the creativity of our peoples 7 centuries ago, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (Belarus) and Russia (Ukraine) was completely erased from history, as if it had never existed. The inhabitants of this great in all aspects and most powerful European State were renamed Moscow-Horde. Lithuania and Litvinians were renamed into “Belarus” and “Belarusians”, and Rus' and Rusyns were renamed into “Ukraine” and “Ukrainians”. The name “Rus” was given to the former Golden Horde, and everything Muscovized from the Horde was henceforth called “Rus” and “Russian” as the standard of these concepts. Against the background of this standard, Kyiv itself, of course, ceased to be perceived as the “Mother of Russian Cities”, but became “non-Russian”.
In 1721, Peter I renamed the Horde (on his maps "Great Tartary") to "Russia", which is "Rus" in Latin and Greek. Thus, the Horde miraculously acquired the Varangian roots and origins of the Kyiv State, from which Kyiv itself - the capital of present-day Ukraine - is today protected by the ideologists of the Russian Federation: “Ukrainians have no relation to that state of Rus'” - this is what almost all Moscow historians say.
Let’s not get into the debate between Kyiv and Moscow historians about who and what their “real Rus'” is. Let them argue among themselves. We (Litvins-Belarusians) have a different history of our ancestors -
The pre-Epiphany period of Russian history was a big headache for Soviet historians and ideologists; it was easier to forget about it and not mention it. The problem was that in the late 20s and early 30s of the twentieth century, Soviet scientists humanities were able to more or less substantiate the natural “evolution” of the newly minted communist ideology of the “brilliant” Marx - Lenin, and divided the whole history into five well-known periods:
- from the primitive communal formation to the most progressive and evolutionary - communist.
But the period of Russian history before the adoption of Christianity did not fit into any “standard” pattern - it was neither a primitive communal system, nor a slaveholding system, nor a feudal one. But it was more like a socialist one.
And this was the whole comicality of the situation, and the great desire not to pay scientific attention to this period. This was also the reason for the dissatisfaction with Froyanov and other Soviet scientists when they tried to understand this period of history.
In the period before the baptism of Rus', the Rus undoubtedly had their own state, and at the same time there was no class society, in particular feudal. And the inconvenience was that the “classical” Soviet ideology argued that the feudal class creates the state as an instrument of its political domination and suppression of the peasants. And then there was a problem...
Moreover, judging by the military victories of the Rus over their neighbors, and that itself “Queen of the World” Byzantium paid them tribute, then it turned out that the “original” way of society and state of our ancestors was more effective, harmonious and advantageous compared to other ways and structures of that period among other peoples.
“And here it should be noted that the archaeological monuments of the Eastern Slavs recreate society without any clear traces of property stratification. The outstanding researcher of East Slavic antiquities I.I. Lyapushkin emphasized that among the dwellings known to us
“...in the most different regions forest-steppe zone, it is not possible to indicate those that, in their architectural appearance and in the content of the household and household equipment found in them, would stand out for their wealth.
The internal structure of the dwellings and the inventory found in them do not yet allow us to divide the inhabitants of these latter only by occupation - into landowners and artisans.”
Another well-known specialist in Slavic-Russian archeology V.V. Sedov writes:
“It is impossible to identify the emergence of economic inequality based on materials from settlements studied by archaeologists. It seems that there are no clear traces of property differentiation of Slavic society in the grave monuments of the 6th-8th centuries.”
All this requires a different understanding of archaeological material.”– notes I.Ya. Froyanov in his study.
That is, in this ancient Russian society, the meaning of life was not the accumulation of wealth and transferring it to children, this was not some kind of ideological or moral value, and this was clearly not welcomed and was contemptuously condemned.
What was valuable? This can be seen from what the Russians swore by, because they swore by the most valuable thing - for example, in the treaty with the Greeks of 907, the Russians swore not with gold, not with their mother and not with their children, but “with their weapons, and Perun, their God, and Volos, the cattle god " Svyatoslav also swore by Perun and Volos in the 971 treaty with Byzantium.
That is, they considered their connection with God, with the Gods, their veneration and their honor and freedom to be the most valuable. In one of the agreements with the Byzantine emperor there is such a fragment of Svetoslav’s oath in case of breaking the oath: “may we be golden like this gold” (golden tablet-stand of a Byzantine scribe - R.K.). Which once again shows the despicable attitude of the Russians towards the golden calf.
And now and then the Slavs, the Rus, stood out and stand out in their overwhelming majority for their goodwill, sincerity, tolerance for other views, what foreigners call “tolerance”.
A striking example of this is even before the baptism of Rus', at the beginning of the 10th century in Rus', when in the Christian world it was out of the question for pagan temples, shrines or idols (idols) to stand on “Christian territory” (with glorious Christian love for all , patience and mercy), - in Kiev, half a century before the adoption of Christianity, the Cathedral Church was built and a Christian community existed around it.
It is only now that enemy ideologists and their journalists have falsely screamed about the non-existent xenophobia of the Russians, and with all their binoculars and microscopes they are trying to see this xenophobia of theirs, and even more so, to provoke it.
A researcher of Russian history, the German scientist B. Schubart wrote with admiration:
“The Russian person has Christian virtues as permanent national properties. Russians were Christians even before they converted to Christianity” (B. Schubart “Europe and the Soul of the East”).
The Russians did not have slavery in the usual sense, although they did have slaves from those captured as a result of battles, who, of course, had a different status. I.Ya. Froyanov wrote a book on this topic “Slavery and Tribute among the Eastern Slavs” (St. Petersburg, 1996), and in his last book he wrote:
“East Slavic society was familiar with slavery. Customary law prohibited turning one's fellow tribesmen into slaves. Therefore, captured foreigners became slaves. They were called servants. For Russian Slavs, servants are primarily a subject of trade...
The situation of slaves was not harsh, as, say, in the ancient world. Chelyadin was a member of the related team as a junior member. Slavery was limited to a certain period, after which the slave, having acquired freedom, could return to his land or remain with his former owners, but in the position of a free man.
In science, this style of relationship between slave owners and slaves is called patriarchal slavery.”
Patriarchal is paternal. You will not find such an attitude towards slaves not among the wise Greek slave owners, not among the medieval Christian slave traders, nor among the Christian slave owners in the south of the New World - in America.
Russians lived in tribal and intertribal settlements, engaged in hunting, fishing, trade, agriculture, cattle breeding and handicrafts. The Arab traveler Ibn Fadlan described in 928 that the Russians built large houses in which 30-50 people lived.
Another Arab traveler Ibn-Ruste at the turn of the 9th-10th centuries described Russian baths in severe frosts as a curiosity:
“When the stones become extremely hot, water is poured over them, which causes steam to spread, heating the home to the point where one takes off one’s clothes.”
Our ancestors were very clean. Moreover, in comparison with Europe, in which, even during the Renaissance, at the courts of Paris, London, Madrid and other capitals, ladies used not only perfumes - to neutralize the unpleasant “spirit”, but also special traps for catching lice on the head, and the problem of excrement Even at the beginning of the 19th century, the French Parliament viewed it from the windows onto the city streets.
Pre-Christian ancient Russian society was communal, veche, where the prince was accountable to the people's assembly - the veche, which could approve the transfer of power to the prince by inheritance, and could also re-elect the prince.
“The ancient Russian prince was not an emperor or even a monarch, for above him stood a veche, or people’s assembly, to which he was accountable.”– noted I.Ya. Froyanov.
The Russian prince of this period and his squad did not demonstrate feudal “hegemonic” signs. Without taking into account the opinions of the most authoritative members of society: heads of clans, wise “dids” and respected military commanders, no decision was made. A good example of this was the famous Prince Svetoslav. A.S. Ivanchenko notes in his study:
“... Let us turn to the original text of Leo the Deacon... This meeting took place on the bank of the Danube on July 23, 971, after the day before Tzimiskes asked Svetoslav for peace and invited him to his headquarters for negotiations, but he refused to go there... Tzimiskes had to, taming his pride, go to Svetoslav himself.
However, thinking in the Roman way, the Emperor of Byzantium wanted, if he did not succeed with military force, then at least with the splendor of his vestments and the richness of the outfits of his retinue accompanying him... Leo the Deacon:
“The Emperor, covered in ceremonial, gold-forged armor, rode up on horseback to the bank of the Istra; He was followed by numerous horsemen sparkling with gold. Soon Svyatoslav appeared, having crossed the river in a Scythian boat (this once again confirms that the Greeks called the Russians Scythians).
He sat on the oars and rowed like everyone else, not standing out among the others. His appearance was like this: of average height, not very large and not very small, with thick eyebrows, With blue eyes, with a straight nose, a shaved head and thick long hair hanging from his upper lip. His head was completely naked, and only a tuft of hair hung from one side of it... His clothes were white, which did not differ in anything other than noticeable cleanliness from the clothes of others. Sitting in the boat on the rowers’ bench, he talked a little with the sovereign about the conditions of peace and left... The Emperor happily accepted the conditions of the Rus...”
If Svyatoslav Igorevich had the same intentions regarding Byzantium as against the Great Khazaria, he would special effort would have destroyed this arrogant empire even during his first campaign on the Danube: he had four days of travel left to Constantinople, when Sinkel Theophilus, the closest adviser to the Byzantine patriarch, fell on his knees before him, asking for peace on any terms. And indeed Constantinople paid a huge tribute to Rus'.”
I would like to emphasize the important evidence - the prince of the Rus Svetoslav, equal in status to the Byzantine emperor, was dressed like all his warriors and rowed with oars along with everyone... That is, in Rus' during this period the communal, veche (conciliar) system was based on equality, justice and accounting interests of all its members.
Taking into account the fact that in the modern language of smart people, “society” is society, and “socialism” is a system that takes into account the interests of the entire society or its majority, then we see in pre-Christian Rus' an example of socialism, moreover, as a very effective way of organizing society and the principles of regulation life of society.
The story of the invitation to the reign of Rurik around 859-862. also shows the structure of Russian society of that period. Let's get acquainted with this story and at the same time find out who Rurik was by nationality.
Since ancient times, the Rus have developed two centers of development: the southern one - on the southern trade routes on the Dnieper River, the city of Kyiv, and the northern one - on the northern trade routes on the Volkhov River, the city of Novgorod.
When Kyiv was built is unknown for certain, like much in the pre-Christian history of Rus', for numerous written documents, chronicles, including those on which the famous Christian chronicler Nestor worked, were destroyed by Christians for ideological reasons after the baptism of Rus'. But it is known that Kyiv was built by the Slavs, led by a prince named Kiy and his brothers Shchek and Khoriv. They also had a sister with beautiful name- Lybid.
The world of that time suddenly found out and started talking about the Kyiv princes when, on June 18, 860 Kyiv prince Askold and his governor Dir approached the capital of Byzantium Constantinople (Constantinople) with a Russian army from the sea on 200 large boats and presented an ultimatum, after which they attacked the capital of the world for a week.
In the end, the Byzantine emperor could not stand it and offered a huge indemnity, with which the Rus sailed to their homeland. It is clear that only an empire could resist the main empire of the world, and it was a great developed Slavic empire in the form of a union of Slavic tribes, and not dense barbarian Slavs, who were blessed by civilized Christians with their arrival, as the authors of books write about this even in 2006-7.
During the same period, another strong prince appeared in the north of Rus' in the 860s - Rurik. Nestor wrote that “Prince Rurik and his brothers arrived from their generations... those Varangians were called Russia.”
“...Russian Stargorod was located in the area of the present-day West German lands of Oldenburg and Macklenburg and the adjacent Baltic island of Rügen. It was there that Western Rus' or Ruthenia was located. – explained V.N. Emelyanov in his book. – As for the Varangians, this is not an ethnonym, usually mistakenly associated with the Normans, but the name of the profession of warriors.
Mercenary warriors, united under the common name Varangians, were representatives different kinds Western Baltic region. Western Russians also had their Varangians. It was from among them that the grandson of the Novgorod prince Rostomysl, Rurik, the son of his middle daughter Umila, was called up...
He came to Northern Rus' with his capital in Novgorod, since the male line of Rostomysl died out during his lifetime.
At the time of the arrival of Rurik and his brothers Saneus and Truvor, Novgorod was centuries older than Kyiv, the capital of Southern Rus'.”
“Novogorodtsi: these are the people of Novugorodtsi - from the Varangian family...” wrote the famous Nestor, as we see, meaning by Varangians all the northern Slavs. It was from there that Rurik began to rule, from Ladograd located to the north (modern Staraya Ladoga), as recorded in the chronicle:
“And Rurik, the oldest in Ladoz, is grayer.”
According to academician V. Chudinov, the lands of today’s northern Germany, where the Slavs previously lived, were called White Russia and Ruthenia, and accordingly the Slavs were called Rus, Ruten, Rugs. Their descendants are the Slavic Poles, who have long lived on the Oder and the shores of the Baltic.
“...The lie aimed at castrating our history is the so-called Norman theory, according to which Rurik and his brothers have been persistently considered Scandinavians, and not Western Russians, for centuries...– V.N. Emelyanov was indignant in his book. – But there is a book by the Frenchman Carmier “Letters about the North”, published by him in 1840 in Paris, and then in 1841 in Brussels.
This French researcher, who, fortunately, had nothing to do with the dispute between the anti-Normanists and the Normanists, during his visit to Macklenburg, i.e. precisely in the region from which Rurik was called, he also wrote down, among the legends, customs and rituals of the local population, the legend about the calling to Rus' of the three sons of the Slavic prince Godlav. Thus, back in 1840, among the Germanized population of Macklenburg there was a legend about the calling...”
Researcher of the history of ancient Rus' Nikolai Levashov in his book “Russia in Crooked Mirrors” (2007) writes:
“But the most interesting thing is that they couldn’t even make a fake without serious contradictions and gaps. According to the “official” version, the Slavic-Russian state of Kievan Rus arose in the 9th-10th centuries and arose immediately in a ready-made form, with a set of laws, a rather complex state hierarchy, a system of beliefs and myths. The explanation for this in the “official” version is very simple: the “Wild” Slavic Rus invited Rurik the Varangian, supposedly a Swede, to become their prince, forgetting that in Sweden itself at that time there simply was no organized state, but only squads of jarls who were engaged in armed robbery of their neighbors...
In addition, Rurik had no relation to the Swedes (who, moreover, were called Vikings, not Varangians), but was a prince from the Wends and belonged to the Varangian caste of professional Warriors who studied the art of combat from childhood. Rurik was invited to reign according to the tradition existing among the Slavs at that time to choose the most worthy Slavic prince as their ruler at the Veche.”
An interesting discussion took place in the magazine “Itogi” No. 38, September 2007. between the masters of modern Russian historical science, professors A. Kirpichnikov and V. Yanin, on the occasion of the 1250th anniversary of Staraya Ladoga - the capital of Upper or Northern Rus'. Valentin Yanin:
“It has long been inappropriate to argue that the calling of the Varangians is an anti-patriotic myth... At the same time, we must understand that before the arrival of Rurik we already had some kind of statehood (the same elder Gostomysl was before Rurik), thanks to which the Varangian, in fact, was invited reign over local elites.
The Novgorod land was the place of residence of three tribes: Krivichi, Slovenians and Finno-Ugric peoples. At first it was owned by the Varangians, who wanted to be paid “a squirrel from each husband.”
Perhaps it was precisely because of these exorbitant appetites that they were soon driven out, and the tribes began to lead, so to speak, a sovereign lifestyle, which did not lead to any good.
When fighting began between the tribes, it was decided to send ambassadors to (neutral) Rurik, to those Varangians who called themselves Russia. They lived in the southern Baltic, northern Poland and northern Germany. Our ancestors called the prince from where many of them themselves were from. You could say they turned to distant relatives for help...
If we proceed from the real state of affairs, then before Rurik there were already elements of statehood among the mentioned tribes. Look: the local elite ordered Rurik that he does not have the right to collect tribute from the population, only high-ranking Novgorodians themselves can do this, and he should only be given a gift for performing their duties, I will again translate into modern language, a hired manager. The entire budget was also controlled by the Novgorodians themselves...
By the end of the 11th century, they generally created their own vertical of power - the posadnichestvo, which then became the main body of the veche republic. By the way, I think it’s no coincidence that Oleg, who became the Novgorod prince after Rurik, did not want to stay here and headed to Kyiv, where he already began to reign supreme.”
Rurik died in 879, and his only heir Igor was still very young, so his relative Oleg led Rus'. In 882 Oleg decided to seize power in all of Rus', which meant the unification of Northern and Southern parts Rus' under his rule, and moved on a military campaign to the south.
And taking Smolensk by storm, Oleg moved towards Kyiv. Oleg came up with a cunning and insidious plan - he and the wars, under the guise of a large trade caravan, sailed along the Dnieper to Kyiv. And when Askold and Dir came ashore to meet the merchants, Oleg and the armed soldiers jumped out of the boats and, presenting a claim to Askold that he was not from the princely dynasty, killed both. In such an insidious and bloody way, Oleg seized power in Kyiv and thus united both parts of Rus'.
Thanks to Rurik and his followers, Kyiv became the center of Rus', which included numerous Slavic tribes.
“The end of the 9th and 10th centuries are characterized by the subordination of the Drevlyans, Northerners, Radimichi, Vyatichi, Ulichs and other tribal unions to Kyiv. As a result, under the hegemony of the Polyanskaya capital, a grandiose “union of unions” or super-union emerged, covering almost the whole of Europe geographically.
The Kiev nobility, the glades as a whole, used this new political organization as a means to receive tribute…” noted I.Ya. Froyanov.
The Ugric-Hungarians neighboring Russia once again moved through Slavic lands towards the former Roman Empire and along the way they tried to capture Kyiv, but it didn’t work out and, concluding in 898. a treaty of alliance with the people of Kiev, moved west in search of military adventures and reached the Danube, where they founded Hungary, which has survived to this day.
And Oleg, having repelled the attack of the Ugrians-Huns, decided to repeat Askold’s famous campaign against Byzantine Empire and began to prepare. And in 907, the famous second campaign of the Rus, led by Oleg, against Byzantium took place.
The huge Russian army again moved by boat and land to Constantinople - Constantinople. This time, the Byzantines, taught by previous bitter experience, decided to be smarter - and managed to tighten the entrance to the bay near the capital with a huge thick chain to prevent the entry of the Russian fleet. And they interfered.
The Russians looked at this, landed on land, put the boats on wheels (rollers) and, under their cover from arrows and under sails, went on the attack. Shocked by the unusual sight and frightened, the Byzantine emperor and his entourage asked for peace and offered ransom.
Perhaps it has gone on since then popular expression about achieving the goal by any means: “We don’t wash, we just roll.”
Having loaded a huge indemnity onto the boats and carts, the Rus demanded and bargained for unhindered access of Russian merchants to the Byzantine markets and a rare exclusive: duty-free trading rights for Russian merchants throughout the Byzantine Empire.
In 911, both parties confirmed and extended this agreement in writing. And the next year (912) Oleg handed over the rule of prosperous Rus' to Igor, who married the Pskovian Olga, who once transported him on a boat across the river near Pskov.
Igor kept Rus' intact and was able to repel the dangerous Pecheneg raid. And judging by the fact that Igor launched a third military campaign against Byzantium in 941, one can guess that Byzantium ceased to comply with the agreement with Oleg.
This time the Byzantines prepared thoroughly; they did not hang chains, but decided to throw vessels of burning oil (“Greek fire”) at the Russian boats from throwing weapons. The Russians did not expect this, they were confused, and, having lost many ships, they landed on land and staged a brutal battle. Constantinople was not taken, suffered serious damage, and then within six months the evil ones returned home with various adventures.
And they immediately began to prepare more thoroughly for a new campaign. And in 944 they moved to Byzantium for the fourth time. This time, the Byzantine emperor, anticipating trouble, halfway asked for peace on terms favorable to the Rus; They agreed and, loaded with Byzantine gold and fabrics, returned to Kyiv.
In 945, during the collection of tribute by Igor and his squad, some kind of conflict occurred among the Drevlyans. The Drevlyan Slavs, led by Prince Mal, decided that Igor and his squad had gone too far in their demands and committed injustice, and the Drevlyans killed Igor and killed his warriors. The widowed Olga sent a large army to the Drevlyans and took fierce revenge. Princess Olga began to rule Russia.
Since the second half of the 20th century, new written sources - birch bark letters - began to become available to researchers. The first birch bark letters were found in 1951 during archaeological excavations in Novgorod. About 1000 letters have already been discovered. The total volume of the birch bark dictionary is more than 3200 words. The geography of the finds covers 11 cities: Novgorod, Staraya Russa, Torzhok, Pskov, Smolensk, Vitebsk, Mstislavl, Tver, Moscow, Staraya Ryazan, Zvenigorod Galitsky.
The earliest charters date back to the 11th century (1020), when the indicated territory had not yet been Christianized. Thirty letters found in Novgorod and one in Staraya Russa date back to this period. Until the 12th century, neither Novgorod nor Staraya Russa had yet been baptized, therefore the names of people found in the 11th century charters are pagan, that is, real Russians. By the beginning of the 11th century, the population of Novgorod corresponded not only with recipients located inside the city, but also with those who were far beyond its borders - in villages and other cities. Even villagers from the most remote villages wrote household orders and simple letters on birch bark.
That is why the outstanding linguist and researcher of the Novgorod letters of the Academy A.A. Zaliznyak claims that “This ancient writing system was very widespread. This writing was spread throughout Rus'. Reading the birch bark letters refuted the existing opinion that in Ancient Rus' only noble people and the clergy were literate. Among the authors and addressees of the letters there are many representatives of the lower strata of the population; in the texts found there is evidence of the practice of teaching writing - alphabets, copybooks, numerical tables, “tests of the pen.”
Six-year-old children wrote: “There is one letter where, it seems, a certain year is indicated. It was written by a six-year-old boy.” Almost all Russian women wrote - “now we know for sure that a significant part of women could both read and write. Letters from the 12th century in general, in a variety of respects, they reflect a society that is freer, with greater development, in particular, female participation the closer society is to our time. This fact follows quite clearly from the birch bark letters.” The fact that “a picture of Novgorod from the 14th century” speaks eloquently about literacy in Rus'. and Florence of the 14th century, in terms of the degree of female literacy - in favor of Novgorod."
Experts know that Cyril and Methodius invented the Glagolitic alphabet for the Bulgarians and spent the rest of their lives in Bulgaria. The letter called “Cyrillic”, although it has a similarity in name, has nothing in common with Kirill. The name "Cyrillic" comes from the designation of the letter - the Russian "doodle", or, for example, the French "ecrire". And the tablet found during excavations in Novgorod, on which they wrote in ancient times, is called “kera” (sera).
In the Tale of Bygone Years, a monument from the early 12th century, there is no information about the baptism of Novgorod. Consequently, Novgorodians and residents of surrounding villages wrote 100 years before the baptism of this city, and the Novgorodians did not inherit writing from Christians. Writing in Rus' existed long before Christianity. The share of non-ecclesiastical texts at the very beginning of the 11th century accounts for 95 percent of all found letters.
However, for academic falsifiers of history, for a long time, the fundamental version was that the Russian people learned to read and write from alien priests. From strangers! Remember, you and I have already discussed this topic: When our ancestors carved runes on stone, the Slavs were already writing letters to each other.”
But in its own unique way scientific work“The Craft of Ancient Rus',” published back in 1948, archaeologist academician B.A. Rybakov published the following data: “There is an established opinion that the church was a monopolist in the creation and distribution of books; This opinion was strongly supported by the churchmen themselves. What is true here is that monasteries and episcopal or metropolitan courts were the organizers and censors of book copying, often acting as intermediaries between the customer and the scribe, but the performers were often not monks, but people who had nothing to do with the church.
We counted the scribes according to their position. For the pre-Mongol era, the result was this: half of the book scribes turned out to be laymen; for 14th - 15th centuries. the calculations gave the following results: metropolitans - 1; deacons - 8; monks - 28; clerks - 19; popov - 10; “servants of God” -35; Popovichey-4; parobkov-5. The Popovichs cannot be considered in the category of clergy, since literacy, which was almost obligatory for them (“a priest’s son cannot read and write—he is an outcast”) did not yet predetermine their spiritual career. Under vague names like “servant of God”, “sinner”, “sad servant of God”, “sinful and bold in evil, but lazy in good”, etc., without indicating affiliation with the church, we must understand secular artisans. Sometimes there are more specific instructions: “Wrote to Eustathius, a worldly man, and his nickname was Shepel,” “Ovsey Raspop,” “Thomas the Scribe.” In such cases, we no longer have any doubt about the “worldly” character of the scribes.
In total, according to our calculations, there are 63 laymen and 47 clergy, i.e. 57% of artisan scribes did not belong to church organizations. The main forms in the era under study were the same as in the pre-Mongol era: work to order and work for the market; Between them there were various intermediate stages that characterized the degree of development of a particular craft. Work to order is typical for some types of patrimonial craft and for industries associated with expensive raw materials, such as jewelry or bell casting.”
The academician cited these figures for the 14th - 15th centuries, when, according to the narratives of the church, she served almost as a helmsman for the multi-million Russian people. It would be interesting to look at the busy, single metropolitan, who, together with an absolutely insignificant group of literate deacons and monks, served the postal needs of the multi-million Russian people from several tens of thousands of Russian villages. In addition, this Metropolitan and Co. must have had many truly miraculous qualities: lightning speed of writing and movement in space and time, the ability to simultaneously be in thousands of places at once, and so on.
But not a joke, but a real conclusion from the data provided by B.A. Rybakov, it follows that the church was never in Rus' a place from which knowledge and enlightenment flowed. Therefore, we repeat, another academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences A.A. Zaliznyak states that “the picture of Novgorod of the 14th century. and Florence 14th century. in terms of the degree of female literacy - in favor of Novgorod." But by the 18th century the church led the Russian people into the fold of illiterate darkness.
Let's consider another side of the life of ancient Russian society before the arrival of Christians to our lands. She touches the clothes. Historians are accustomed to depicting Russian people dressed exclusively in simple white shirts, sometimes, however, allowing themselves to say that these shirts were decorated with embroidery. Russians seem so poor, barely able to dress at all. This is another lie spread by historians about the life of our people.
To begin with, let us recall that the world’s first clothing was created more than 40 thousand years ago in Rus', in Kostenki. And, for example, at the Sungir site in Vladimir, already 30 thousand years ago, people wore a leather jacket made of suede, trimmed with fur, a hat with earflaps, leather pants, and leather boots. Everything was decorated with various objects and several rows of beads. The ability to make clothes in Rus', naturally, was preserved and developed to high level. And silk became one of the important clothing materials for the ancient Rus.
Archaeological finds of silk on the territory of Ancient Rus' from the 9th to the 12th centuries were discovered in more than two hundred locations. The maximum concentration of finds is in the Moscow, Vladimir, Ivanovo and Yaroslavl regions. Precisely those that experienced population growth at that time. But these territories were not part of Kievan Rus, on whose territory, on the contrary, finds of silk fabrics are very few. As you move away from Moscow - Vladimir - Yaroslavl, the density of silk finds generally drops rapidly, and already in the European part they are rare.
At the end of the 1st millennium AD. The Vyatichi and Krivichi lived in the Moscow region, as evidenced by groups of mounds (near the Yauza station, in Tsaritsyn, Chertanovo, Konkovo, Derealyovo, Zyuzin, Cheryomushki, Matveevsky, Fili, Tushino, etc.). The Vyatichi also formed the original core of the population of Moscow.
According to various sources, Prince Vladimir baptized Rus', or rather, began the baptism of Rus' in 986 or 987. But there were Christians and Christian churches in Russia, specifically in Kyiv, long before 986. And it wasn’t even a matter of the pagan Slavs’ tolerance of other religions, and in one important principle - the principle of freedom and sovereignty of the decision of every Slav, for whom there were no masters , he was a king for himself and had the right to any decision that did not contradict the customs of the community, therefore no one had the right to criticize, reproach or condemn him if the decision or action of the Slav did not harm the community and its members. Well, then the history of Baptized Rus' began...
sources
The basis is the research of our modern scientist from St. Petersburg, Igor Yakovlevich Froyanov, who published a monograph in the USSR in 1974 entitled “Kievan Rus. Essays on socio-economic history”, then many were published scientific articles and many books have been published, and in 2007 his book “The Mystery of the Baptism of Rus'” was published.
A.A. Tyunyaev, academician of the Academy of Physical Sciences and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences
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