Most history textbooks say that in the 13th-15th centuries Rus' suffered from the Mongol-Tatar yoke. However, recently the voices of those who doubt that the invasion even took place have been increasingly heard. Did huge hordes of nomads really surge into peaceful principalities, enslaving their inhabitants? Let's analyze historical facts, many of which may be shocking.
The yoke was invented by the Poles
The term “Mongol-Tatar yoke” itself was coined by Polish authors. The chronicler and diplomat Jan Dlugosz in 1479 called the time of existence of the Golden Horde this way. He was followed in 1517 by the historian Matvey Miechowski, who worked at the University of Krakow. This interpretation of the relationship between Rus' and the Mongol conquerors was quickly picked up in Western Europe, and from there it was borrowed by domestic historians.
Moreover, there were practically no Tatars themselves in the Horde troops. It’s just that in Europe the name of this Asian people was well known, and therefore it spread to the Mongols. Meanwhile, Genghis Khan tried to exterminate the entire Tatar tribe, defeating their army in 1202.
The first census of Rus'
The first population census in the history of Rus' was carried out by representatives of the Horde. They had to collect accurate information about the inhabitants of each principality and their class affiliation. The main reason for such interest in statistics on the part of the Mongols was the need to calculate the amount of taxes imposed on their subjects.
In 1246, a census took place in Kyiv and Chernigov, the Ryazan principality was subjected to statistical analysis in 1257, the Novgorodians were counted another two years later, and the population of the Smolensk region - in 1275.
Moreover, the inhabitants of Rus' raised popular uprisings and drove out the so-called “besermen” from their land, who were collecting tribute for the khans of Mongolia. But the governors of the rulers of the Golden Horde, called Baskaks, lived and worked for a long time in the Russian principalities, sending collected taxes to Sarai-Batu, and later to Sarai-Berke.
Joint hikes
Princely squads and Horde warriors often carried out joint military campaigns, both against other Russians and against residents of Eastern Europe. Thus, in the period 1258-1287, the troops of the Mongols and Galician princes regularly attacked Poland, Hungary and Lithuania. And in 1277, the Russians took part in the Mongol military campaign in the North Caucasus, helping their allies conquer Alanya.
In 1333, Muscovites stormed Novgorod, and the next year the Bryansk squad marched on Smolensk. Each time, Horde troops also took part in these internecine battles. In addition, they regularly helped the great princes of Tver, considered at that time the main rulers of Rus', to pacify the rebellious neighboring lands.
The basis of the horde were Russians
The Arab traveler Ibn Battuta, who visited the city of Sarai-Berke in 1334, wrote in his essay “A Gift to Those Contemplating the Wonders of Cities and the Wonders of Wanderings” that there are many Russians in the capital of the Golden Horde. Moreover, they make up the bulk of the population: both working and armed.
This fact was also mentioned by the White émigré author Andrei Gordeev in the book “History of the Cossacks,” which was published in France in the late 20s of the 20th century. According to the researcher, most of the Horde troops were the so-called Brodniks - ethnic Slavs who inhabited the Azov region and the Don steppes. These predecessors of the Cossacks did not want to obey the princes, so they moved to the south for the sake of a free life. The name of this ethnosocial group probably comes from the Russian word “wander” (wander).
As is known from chronicle sources, in the Battle of Kalka in 1223, the Brodniks, led by the governor Ploskyna, fought on the side of the Mongol troops. Perhaps his knowledge of the tactics and strategy of the princely squads was of great importance for the victory over the united Russian-Polovtsian forces.
In addition, it was Ploskynya who, by cunning, lured out the ruler of Kyiv, Mstislav Romanovich, along with two Turov-Pinsk princes and handed them over to the Mongols for execution.
However, most historians believe that the Mongols forced Russians to serve in their army, i.e. the invaders forcibly armed representatives of the enslaved people. Although this seems implausible.
And a senior researcher at the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Marina Poluboyarinova, in her book “Russian People in the Golden Horde” (Moscow, 1978) suggested: “Probably, the forced participation of Russian soldiers in the Tatar army later ceased. There were mercenaries left who had already voluntarily joined the Tatar troops.”
Caucasian invaders
Yesugei-Baghatur, the father of Genghis Khan, was a representative of the Borjigin clan of the Mongolian Kiyat tribe. According to the descriptions of many eyewitnesses, both he and his legendary son were tall, fair-skinned people with reddish hair.
The Persian scientist Rashid ad-Din wrote in his work “Collection of Chronicles” (beginning of the 14th century) that all the descendants of the great conqueror were mostly blond and gray-eyed.
This means that the elite of the Golden Horde belonged to Caucasians. It is likely that representatives of this race predominated among other invaders.
There weren't many of them
We are accustomed to believe that in the 13th century Rus' was invaded by countless hordes of Mongol-Tatars. Some historians talk about 500,000 troops. However, it is not. After all, even the population of modern Mongolia barely exceeds 3 million people, and if we take into account the brutal genocide of fellow tribesmen committed by Genghis Khan on his way to power, the size of his army could not be so impressive.
It is difficult to imagine how to feed an army of half a million, moreover, traveling on horses. The animals simply would not have enough pasture. But each Mongolian horseman brought with him at least three horses. Now imagine a herd of 1.5 million. The horses of the warriors riding at the forefront of the army would eat and trample everything they could. The remaining horses would have starved to death.
According to the most daring estimates, the army of Genghis Khan and Batu could not have exceeded 30 thousand horsemen. While the population of Ancient Rus', according to historian Georgy Vernadsky (1887-1973), before the invasion was about 7.5 million people.
Bloodless executions
The Mongols, like most peoples of that time, executed people who were not noble or disrespected by cutting off their heads. However, if the condemned person enjoyed authority, then his spine was broken and left to slowly die.
The Mongols were sure that blood was the seat of the soul. To shed it means to complicate the afterlife path of the deceased to other worlds. Bloodless execution was applied to rulers, political and military figures, and shamans.
The reason for a death sentence in the Golden Horde could be any crime: from desertion from the battlefield to petty theft.
The bodies of the dead were thrown into the steppe
The method of burial of a Mongol also directly depended on his social status. Rich and influential people found peace in special burials, in which valuables, gold and silver jewelry, and household items were buried along with the bodies of the dead. And the poor and ordinary soldiers killed in battle were often simply left in the steppe, where their life’s journey ended.
In the alarming conditions of nomadic life, consisting of regular skirmishes with enemies, it was difficult to organize funeral rites. The Mongols often had to move on quickly, without delay.
It was believed that the corpse of a worthy person would be quickly eaten by scavengers and vultures. But if birds and animals did not touch the body for a long time, according to popular beliefs, this meant that the soul of the deceased had a grave sin.
N A S H K A L E N D A R B
November 24, 1480 - the end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke in Rus'
In the distant fifties, the author of this article, then a graduate student of the State Hermitage, took part in archaeological excavations in the city of Chernigov. When we reached the layers of the mid-13th century, terrible pictures of the traces of Batu’s invasion of 1239 unfolded before our eyes.
Ipatiev Chronicle under. 1240 describes the storming of the city in the following way: “The city of Chernigov was surrounded (“Tatarov” - B.S.) in heavy strength... Prince Mikhail Glebovich came to the foreigners with his troops, and the battle was fierce near Chernigov... But Mstislav was quickly defeated and a lot of howls (warriors - B.S.) beat him up quickly. And she took the hail and set it on fire...” Our excavations confirmed the accuracy of the chronicle record. The city was ravaged and burned to the ground. A ten-centimeter layer of ash covered the entire area of one of the richest cities of Ancient Rus'. Fierce battles took place for every house. The roofs of houses often bore traces of impacts from heavy stones of Tatar catapults, the weight of which reached 120-150 kg (The chronicles noted that these stones could barely be lifted by four strong men.) Residents were either killed or taken prisoner. The ashes of the burned city were mixed with the bones of thousands of dead people.
After graduating from graduate school, already as a museum researcher, I worked on creating a permanent exhibition “Russian culture of the VI-XIII centuries.” In the process of preparing the exhibition, special attention was paid to the fate of a small ancient Russian fortified city, erected in the 12th century. on the southern borders of Ancient Rus', near the modern city of Berdichev, now called Raiki. To some extent, its fate is close to the fate of the world famous ancient Italian city of Pompeii, destroyed in 79 AD. during the eruption of Vesuvius.
But Raiki was completely destroyed not by the forces of the raging elements, but by the hordes of Batu Khan. The study of material material stored in the State Hermitage and written reports on excavations made it possible to reconstruct the terrible picture of the death of the city. It reminded me of the pictures of Belarusian villages and cities burned by the occupiers, seen by the author during our offensive during the Great Patriotic War, in which the author took part. Residents of the city desperately resisted and all died in an unequal struggle. Residential buildings were excavated, on the thresholds of which two skeletons lay - a Tatar and a Russian, killed with a sword in his hand. There were terrible scenes - the skeleton of a woman covering a child with her body. A Tatar arrow was stuck in her vertebrae. After the defeat, the city did not come to life, and everything remained in the same form as the enemy left it.
Hundreds of Russian cities shared the tragic fate of Raikov and Chernigov.
The Tatars destroyed about a third of the entire population of Ancient Rus'. Considering that at that time about 6 - 8,000,000 people lived in Rus', at least 2,000,000 - 2,500,000 were killed. Foreigners passing through the southern regions of the country wrote that Rus' had practically been turned into a dead desert, and there is no such state on the map Europe is no more. Russian chronicles and literary sources, such as “The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land”, “The Tale of the Ruin of Ryazan” and others, describe in detail the horrors of the Tatar-Mongol invasion. The tragic consequences of Batu's campaigns were greatly multiplied by the establishment of an occupation regime, which not only led to the total plunder of Rus', but drained the soul of the people. He delayed the forward movement of our Motherland for more than 200 years.
The Great Battle of Kulikovo in 1380 inflicted a decisive defeat on the Golden Horde, but could not completely destroy the yoke of the Tatar khans. The Grand Dukes of Moscow were faced with the task of completely, legally eliminating Rus'’s dependence on the Horde.
November 24 of the new style (11 of the old) on the church calendar marks a remarkable date in the history of our Motherland. 581 years ago, in 1480, the “Standing on the Ugra” ended. The Golden Horde Khan Akhma (? - 1481) turned his tumen from the borders of the Grand Duchy of Moscow and was soon killed.
This was the legal end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. Rus' became a completely sovereign state.
Unfortunately, this date was not reflected either in the media or in the minds of the general public. Meanwhile, it is quite obvious that on that day a dark page in our history was turned, and a new stage in the independent development of the Fatherland began.
It is worth recalling, at least briefly, the development of events of those years.
Although the last khan of the Great Horde stubbornly continued to consider the Grand Duke of Moscow as his tributary, in fact, Ivan Sh Vasilyevich (reigned 1462 - 1505) was actually independent of the khan. Instead of regular tribute, he sent minor gifts to the Horde, the size and regularity of which he determined himself. The Horde began to understand that the times of Batu were gone forever. The Grand Duke of Moscow became a formidable opponent, and not a silent slave.
In 1472, the Khan of the Great (Golden) Horde, at the inspiration of the Polish king Casimir IV, who promised him support, undertook the usual Tatar campaign against Moscow. However, it ended in complete failure for the Horde. They could not even cross the Oka, which was the traditional defensive line of the capital.
In 1476, the Khan of the Great Horde sent an embassy to Moscow, headed by Akhmet Sadyk, with a formidable demand to completely restore tributary relations. In Russian written sources, in which legends and reports of true facts are intricately intertwined, the negotiations were complex nature. During the first stage, Ivan III, in the presence of the Boyar Duma, played for time, realizing that a negative answer meant war. It is likely that final decision Ivan III, under the influence of his wife Sophia Fominichna, accepted Paleolog, a proud Byzantine princess, who allegedly angrily told her husband: “I married the Grand Duke of Russia, not a Horde slave.” At the next meeting with the ambassadors, Ivan III changed tactics. He tore up the khan's letter and trampled the basma underfoot (a basma or paiza box filled with wax with an imprint of the khan's heel was given to ambassadors as a credential). And he expelled the ambassadors themselves from Moscow. Both in the Horde and in Moscow it became clear that a large-scale war was inevitable.
But Akhmat did not immediately take action. In the early eighties, Casimir IV began to prepare for war with Moscow. A traditional alliance of the Horde and the Polish crown against Russia emerged. The situation in Moscow itself worsened. At the end of 1479, there was a quarrel between the Grand Duke and his brothers Boris and Andrei the Great. They rose from their estates with families and “yards” and headed through the Novgorod lands to the Lithuanian border. There was a real threat of unification of the internal separatist opposition with an attack from external enemies - Poland and the Horde.
Considering this circumstance, Khan Akhmat decided that the time had come to strike a decisive blow, which should be supported by an invasion of the Russian borders by Polish-Lithuanian troops. Having gathered a huge army, the khan of the Great Horde in the late spring of 1480, when the grass needed to feed his cavalry turned green, moved towards Moscow. But not directly to the North, but bypassing the capital, from the southwest, to the upper reaches of the Oka, towards the Lithuanian border to connect with Casimir IV. In the summer, the Tatar hordes reached the right bank of the Ugra River, not far from its confluence with the Oka (Modern Kaluga region). There were about 150 km left to Moscow.
For his part, Ivan III took decisive measures to strengthen his positions. His intelligence services established contact with the enemy of the Great Horde - the Crimean Khan Mengli-Girey, who attacked the southern regions of Lithuania and thereby prevented Casimir IV from coming to the aid of Akhmat. Ivan III moved his main forces towards the Horde, which approached the northern left bank of the Ugra, covering the capital.
In addition, the Grand Duke sent an auxiliary corps by water along the Volga to the capital of the Horde - the city of Sarai. Taking advantage of the fact that the main forces of the Horde were on the banks of the Ugra, the Russian landing force defeated it, and, according to legend, plowed up the ruins of the city, as a sign that the threat to Rus' would never come from this place again (Now the village of Selitryany is located in this place) .
Two huge armies met on the banks of a small river. The so-called “Standing on the Ugra” began, when both sides did not dare to start a general battle. Akhmat waited in vain for Casimir's help, and Ivan had to deal with his brothers. As an extremely cautious person, the Grand Duke took decisive action only in cases where he was confident of victory.
Several times the Tatars tried to cross the Ugra, but when met by powerful fire from Russian artillery, commanded by the famous Italian architect Aristotle Fiorovanti, builder of the Assumption Cathedral in 1479, they were forced to retreat.
At this time, Ivan III, abandoning his troops, returned to Moscow, which caused unrest in the capital, since the threat of a breakthrough by the Tatar troops was not eliminated. Residents of the capital demanded active action, accusing the Grand Duke of indecisiveness.
Rostov Archbishop Vassian in the famous “Message to the Ugra” called the Grand Duke a “runner” and called on him to “harrow his fatherland.” But Ivan’s caution is understandable. He could not start a general battle without a reliable rear. In Moscow, with the assistance of church hierarchs, on October 6, he made peace with his brothers, and their squads joined the grand ducal army.
Meanwhile, the situation favorable for Akhmat changed dramatically. Busy with the defense of the southern borders, the Polish-Lithuanian troops never came to the aid of Akhmat. Strategically, the khan had already lost the failed battle. Time passed towards autumn. Winter was approaching, the Ugra River froze, which gave the Tatars the opportunity to easily cross to the other side. Having become accustomed to warm winters on the shores of the Black and Azov Seas, the Tatars endured the cold weather worse than the Russians.
In mid-November, Ivan III gave the command to retreat to winter quarters in Borovsk, located 75 km from Moscow. On the banks of the Ugra he left a “watchman” to monitor the Tatars. Further events developed according to a scenario that no one in the Russian camp could have foreseen. On the morning of November 11, old style - 24 new, the guards unexpectedly saw that the right bank of the Ugra was empty. The Tatars secretly withdrew from their positions at night and went south. The speed and well-camouflaged retreat of the Khan's troops were perceived by the Russians as an escape that they did not expect.
Ivan III Vasilyevich, Grand Duke of Moscow and All Rus', as a winner, returned to Moscow.
Khan Akhmat, who had no reason to return to the burned Sarai, went to the lower reaches of the Volga, where on January 6, 1481 he was killed by the Nogai Tatars.
Thus, the Tatar-Mongol yoke, which brought untold disasters to our people, was eliminated.
November 24 of the new style is one of the most significant dates in Russian history, the memory of which cannot dissolve over the centuries.
o (Mongol-Tatar, Tatar-Mongol, Horde) - the traditional name for the system of exploitation of Russian lands by nomadic conquerors who came from the East from 1237 to 1480.
This system was aimed at carrying out mass terror and robbing the Russian people by levying cruel exactions. She acted primarily in the interests of the Mongolian nomadic military-feudal nobility (noyons), in whose favor the lion's share of the collected tribute went.
The Mongol-Tatar yoke was established as a result of the invasion of Batu Khan in the 13th century. Until the early 1260s, Rus' was under the rule of the great Mongol khans, and then the khans of the Golden Horde.
The Russian principalities were not directly part of the Mongol state and retained the local princely administration, the activities of which were controlled by the Baskaks - the khan's representatives in the conquered lands. The Russian princes were tributaries of the Mongol khans and received from them labels for ownership of their principalities. Formally, the Mongol-Tatar yoke was established in 1243, when Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich received from the Mongols a label for the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. Rus', according to the label, lost the right to fight and had to regularly pay tribute to the khans twice annually (in spring and autumn).
There was no permanent Mongol-Tatar army on the territory of Rus'. The yoke was supported by punitive campaigns and repressions against rebellious princes. The regular flow of tribute from Russian lands began after the census of 1257-1259, conducted by Mongol “numerals”. The units of taxation were: in cities - yard, in rural areas - “village”, “plow”, “plough”. Only the clergy were exempt from tribute. The main “Horde burdens” were: “exit”, or “tsar’s tribute” - a tax directly for the Mongol khan; trade fees (“myt”, “tamka”); carriage duties (“pits”, “carts”); maintenance of the khan's ambassadors (“food”); various “gifts” and “honors” to the khan, his relatives and associates. Every year, a huge amount of silver left the Russian lands as tribute. Large “requests” for military and other needs were periodically collected. In addition, the Russian princes were obliged, by order of the khan, to send soldiers to participate in campaigns and in round-up hunts (“lovitva”). In the late 1250s and early 1260s, tribute was collected from the Russian principalities by Muslim merchants (“besermen”), who bought this right from the great Mongol Khan. Most of the tribute went to the Great Khan in Mongolia. During the uprisings of 1262, the “besermans” were expelled from Russian cities, and the responsibility for collecting tribute passed to the local princes.
Rus''s struggle against the yoke became increasingly widespread. In 1285 Grand Duke Dmitry Alexandrovich (son of Alexander Nevsky) defeated and expelled the army of the “Horde prince”. At the end of the 13th - first quarter of the 14th century, performances in Russian cities led to the elimination of the Baskas. With the strengthening of the Moscow principality, the Tatar yoke gradually weakened. Moscow Prince Ivan Kalita (reigned in 1325-1340) achieved the right to collect “exit” from all Russian principalities. From the middle of the 14th century, the orders of the khans of the Golden Horde, not supported by a real military threat, were no longer carried out by the Russian princes. Dmitry Donskoy (1359-1389) did not recognize the khan's labels issued to his rivals and seized the Grand Duchy of Vladimir by force. In 1378, he defeated the Tatar army on the Vozha River in the Ryazan land, and in 1380 he defeated the Golden Horde ruler Mamai in the Battle of Kulikovo.
However, after Tokhtamysh’s campaign and the capture of Moscow in 1382, Rus' was forced to again recognize the power of the Golden Horde and pay tribute, but already Vasily I Dmitrievich (1389-1425) received the great reign of Vladimir without the khan’s label, as “his patrimony.” Under him, the yoke was nominal. Tribute was paid irregularly, and the Russian princes pursued independent policies. The attempt of the Golden Horde ruler Edigei (1408) to restore full power over Russia ended in failure: he failed to take Moscow. The strife that began in the Golden Horde opened up the possibility for Russia to overthrow the Tatar yoke.
However, in the middle of the 15th century, Muscovite Rus' itself experienced a period of internecine war, which weakened its military potential. During these years, the Tatar rulers organized a series of devastating invasions, but they were no longer able to bring the Russians to complete submission. The unification of Russian lands around Moscow led to the concentration in the hands of the Moscow princes of such political power that the weakening Tatar khans could not cope with. The Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III Vasilyevich (1462-1505) refused to pay tribute in 1476. In 1480, after the unsuccessful campaign of the Khan of the Great Horde Akhmat and “standing on the Ugra”, the yoke was finally overthrown.
The Mongol-Tatar yoke had negative, regressive consequences for the economic, political and cultural development of the Russian lands, and was a brake on the growth of the productive forces of Rus', which were at a higher socio-economic level compared to the productive forces of the Mongol state. It was artificially preserved for long time purely feudal natural character of the economy. Politically, the consequences of the yoke were manifested in the disruption of the natural process of state development of Rus', in the artificial maintenance of its fragmentation. The Mongol-Tatar yoke, which lasted two and a half centuries, was one of the reasons for the economic, political and cultural lag of Rus' from Western European countries.
The material was prepared based on information from open sources.
How historiographies are written.
Unfortunately, there is no analytical review on the history of historiographies yet. It's a pity! Then we would understand how the historiography for the state’s toast differs from the historiography for its repose. If we want to glorify the beginning of the state, we will write that it was founded by hardworking and independent people who enjoy the well-deserved respect of their neighbors.
If we want to sing a requiem for him, then we will say that it was founded by wild people living in dense forests and impassable swamps, and the state was created by representatives of a different ethnic group, who came here precisely because of the inability of the local residents to establish a distinctive and independent state. Then, if we sing a eulogy, we will say that the name of this ancient formation was understood by everyone, and has not changed to this day. On the contrary, if we bury our state, we will say that it was named unknown what, and then changed its name. Finally, in favor of the state in the first phase of its development will be a statement of its strength. And vice versa, if we want to show that the state was so-so, we must show not only that it was weak, but also that it was able to be conquered by an unknown in ancient times, and very peace-loving and small people. It is this last statement that I would like to dwell on.
– This is the name of a chapter from Kungurov’s book (KUN). He writes: “The official version of ancient Russian history, composed by Germans discharged from abroad to St. Petersburg, is built according to the following scheme: a single Russian state, created by the alien Varangians, crystallizes around Kyiv and the middle Dnieper region and bears the name Kievan Rus, then evil wild nomads come from somewhere in the East, destroy the Russian state and establish an occupation regime called “yoke.” After two and a half centuries, the Moscow princes throw off the yoke, gather Russian lands under their rule and create a powerful Moscow kingdom, which is the legal successor of Kievan Rus and frees the Russians from the “yoke”; for several centuries in Eastern Europe there has been an ethnically Russian Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but politically it is dependent on the Poles, and therefore cannot be considered a Russian state, therefore, the wars between Lithuania and Muscovy should be considered not as civil strife between Russian princes, but as a struggle between Moscow and Poland for the reunification of Russian lands.
Despite the fact that this version of history is still recognized as official, only “professional” scientists can consider it reliable. A person who is accustomed to thinking with his head will very much doubt this, if only because the story of the Mongol invasion has been completely sucked out of thin air. Until the 19th century, Russians had no idea that they had allegedly once been conquered by Transbaikal savages. Indeed, the version that a highly developed state was completely destroyed by some wild steppe inhabitants, unable to create an army in accordance with the technical and cultural achievements of that time, looks delusional. Moreover, such a people as the Mongols were not known to science. True, historians were not at a loss and declared that the Mongols are the small nomadic Khalkha people living in Central Asia” (KUN: 162).
Indeed, all the great conquerors are known by comparison. When Spain had a powerful fleet, a great armada, Spain captured a number of lands in North and South America, and today there are two dozen Latin American states. Britain, as the mistress of the seas, also has or had a lot of colonies. But today we do not know a single colony of Mongolia or a state dependent on it. Moreover, except for the Buryats or Kalmyks, who are the same Mongols, not a single ethnic group in Russia speaks Mongolian.
“The Khalkhas themselves learned that they were the heirs of the great Genghis Khan only in the 19th century, but they did not object - everyone wants to have great, albeit mythical, ancestors. And in order to explain the disappearance of the Mongols after their successful conquest of half the world, a completely artificial term “Mongol-Tatars” is introduced into use, which means other nomadic peoples allegedly conquered by the Mongols, who joined the conquerors and formed a certain community among them. In China, foreign conquerors turn into Manchus, in India - into Mughals, and in both cases they form ruling dynasties. In the future, however, we do not observe any Tatar nomads, but this is because, as the same historians explain, the Mongol-Tatars settled on the lands they conquered, and partially went back to the steppe and disappeared there completely without a trace” (KUN: 162- 163).
Wikipedia about the yoke.
Here is how Wikipedia interprets the Tatar-Mongol yoke: “The Mongol-Tatar yoke is a system of political and tributary dependence of the Russian principalities on the Mongol-Tatar khans (before the early 60s of the 13th century, the Mongol khans, after the khans of the Golden Horde) in the 13th-15th century centuries. The establishment of the yoke became possible as a result of the Mongol invasion of Rus' in 1237-1241 and occurred for two decades after it, including in unravaged lands. In North-Eastern Rus' it lasted until 1480. In other Russian lands it was liquidated in the 14th century as they were absorbed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland.
The term “yoke,” meaning the power of the Golden Horde over Russia, does not appear in Russian chronicles. It appeared at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries in Polish historical literature. The first to use it were chronicler Jan Dlugosh (“iugum barbarum”, “iugum servitutis”) in 1479 and professor at the University of Krakow Matvey Miechowski in 1517. Literature: 1. Golden Horde // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: In 86 volumes (82 volumes. and 4 additional). - St. Petersburg: 1890-1907.2. Malov N. M., Malyshev A. B., Rakushin A. I. “Religion in the Golden Horde.” The word formation “Mongol-Tatar yoke” was first used in 1817 by H. Kruse, whose book was translated into Russian and published in St. Petersburg in the mid-19th century.”
So, this term was first introduced by the Poles in the 15th-16th centuries, who saw a “yoke” in the Tatar-Mongol relations with other peoples. The reason for this is explained by the second work of 3 authors: “Apparently, the Tatar yoke first began to be used in Polish historical literature of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. At this time on the borders Western Europe The young Moscow state, freed from the vassal dependence of the Golden Horde khans, is pursuing an active foreign policy. In neighboring Poland, there is an increased interest in the history, foreign policy, armed forces, national relations, internal structure, traditions and customs of Muscovy. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the first word combination Tatar yoke was used in the Polish Chronicle (1515-1519) by Matvey Miechowski, professor at the University of Krakow, court physician and astrologer of King Sigismund I. The author of various medical and historical works spoke enthusiastically about Ivan III, who threw off the Tatar yoke , considering this his most important merit, and apparently a global event of the era.”
Mention of the yoke by historians.
Poland's attitude towards Russia has always been ambiguous, and its attitude towards its own fate as extremely tragic. So they could completely exaggerate the dependence of some peoples on the Tatar-Mongols. And then 3 authors continue: “Later, the term Tatar yoke is also mentioned in notes on the Moscow War of 1578-1582, compiled by the secretary of state of another king, Stefan Batory, Reinhold Heidenstein. Even Jacques Margeret, a French mercenary and adventurer, an officer in Russian service and a person far from science, knew what was meant by the Tatar yoke. Widely used this term other Western European historians of the 17th-18th centuries. In particular, the Englishman John Milton and the Frenchman De Thou were familiar with him. Thus, for the first time the term Tatar yoke was probably introduced into circulation by Polish and Western European historians, and not by Russian or Russian ones.”
For now, I will interrupt the quotation to draw attention to the fact that, first of all, foreigners write about the “yoke”, who really liked the scenario of weak Rus', which was captured by the “evil Tatars”. While Russian historians still knew nothing about this
"IN. N. Tatishchev did not use this phrase, perhaps because when writing Russian History he mainly relied on early Russian chronicle terms and expressions, where it is absent. I. N. Boltin already used the term Tatar rule, and M., M., Shcherbatov believed that liberation from the Tatar yoke was a huge achievement of Ivan III. N.M., Karamzin found in the Tatar yoke both negative aspects - the tightening of laws and morals, the slowdown in the development of education and science, and positive aspects - the formation of autocracy, a factor in the unification of Rus'. Another phrase, Tatar-Mongol yoke, also most likely comes from the vocabulary of Western rather than domestic researchers. In 1817, Christopher Kruse published an Atlas on European history, where he first introduced the term Mongol-Tatar yoke into scientific circulation. Although this work was translated into Russian only in 1845, it was already in the 20s of the 19th century. domestic historians began to use this new scientific definition. Since that time, the terms: Mongol-Tatars, Mongol-Tatar yoke, Mongol yoke, Tatar yoke and Horde yoke, have traditionally been widely used in Russian historical science. In our encyclopedic publications, the Mongol-Tatar yoke in Rus' of the 13th-15th centuries is understood as: a system of rule by the Mongol-Tatar feudal lords, using various political, military and economic means, with the goal of regular exploitation of the conquered country. Thus, in European historical literature, the term yoke refers to domination, oppression, slavery, captivity, or the power of foreign conquerors over conquered peoples and states. It is known that the Old Russian principalities were subordinated to the Golden Horde economically and politically, and also paid tribute. The Golden Horde khans actively interfere in the politics of the Russian principalities, which they tried to strictly control. Sometimes, the relationship between the Golden Horde and the Russian principalities is characterized as a symbiosis, or a military alliance directed against the countries of Western Europe and some Asian states, first Muslim, and after the collapse of the Mongol Empire - Mongolian.
However, it should be noted that even if theoretically the so-called symbiosis, or military alliance, could exist for some time, it was never equal, voluntary and stable. In addition, even in the eras of the developed and late Middle Ages, short-term interstate unions were usually formalized by contractual relations. Such equal-allied relationships between the fragmented Russian principalities and the Golden Horde could not exist, since the khans of the Ulus of Jochi issued labels for the rule of the Vladimir, Tver, and Moscow princes. Russian princes were obliged, at the request of the khans, to send troops to participate in the military campaigns of the Golden Horde. In addition, using the Russian princes and their army, the Mongols carried out punitive campaigns against other rebellious Russian principalities. The khans summoned the princes to the Horde in order to issue one with a label to reign, and to execute or pardon those who were undesirable. During this period, the Russian lands were actually under the rule or yoke of the Ulus of Jochi. Although, sometimes the foreign policy interests of the Golden Horde khans and the Russian princes, due to various circumstances, could somewhat coincide. The Golden Horde is a chimera state in which the elite are conquerors, and the lower strata are conquered peoples. The Mongolian Golden Horde elite established power over the Cumans, Alans, Circassians, Khazars, Bulgars, Finno-Ugric peoples, and also placed the Russian principalities in strict vassalage. Therefore, it can be assumed that the scientific term yoke is quite acceptable to denote in historical literature the nature of the power of the Golden Horde established not only over the Russian lands.”
Yoke as Christianization of Rus'.
Thus, Russian historians actually repeated the statements of the German Christopher Kruse, while they did not read such a term from any chronicle. It was not only Kungurov who drew attention to the oddities in the interpretation of the Tatar-Mongol yoke. This is what we read in the article (TAT): “Such a nationality as the Mongol-Tatars does not exist, and never existed at all. The only thing the Mongols and Tatars have in common is that they roamed the Central Asian steppe, which, as we know, is large enough to accommodate any nomadic people, and at the same time give them the opportunity not to intersect on the same territory at all. The Mongol tribes lived at the southern tip of the Asian steppe and often raided China and its provinces, as the history of China often confirms to us. While other nomadic Turkic tribes, called from time immemorial in Rus' Bulgars (Volga Bulgaria), settled in the lower reaches of the Volga River. In those days in Europe they were called Tatars, or TatAryans (the most powerful of the nomadic tribes, unbending and invincible). And the Tatars, the closest neighbors of the Mongols, lived in the northeastern part of modern Mongolia, mainly in the area of Lake Buir Nor and up to the borders of China. There were 70 thousand families, making up 6 tribes: Tutukulyut Tatars, Alchi Tatars, Chagan Tatars, Queen Tatars, Terat Tatars, Barkuy Tatars. The second parts of the names are apparently the self-names of these tribes. There is not a single word among them that sounds close to the Turkic language - they are more consonant with Mongolian names. Two related peoples - the Tatars and the Mongols - fought a war of mutual extermination for a long time with varying success, until Genghis Khan seized power throughout Mongolia. The fate of the Tatars was predetermined. Since the Tatars were the murderers of Genghis Khan’s father, exterminated many tribes and clans close to him, and constantly supported the tribes opposing him, “then Genghis Khan (Tey-mu-Chin) ordered a general massacre of the Tatars and not leave even one alive to that extent, which is determined by law (Yasak); so that women and small children should also be killed, and the wombs of pregnant women should be cut open in order to completely destroy them. …” That is why such a nationality could not threaten the freedom of Rus'. Moreover, many historians and cartographers of that time, especially Eastern European ones, “sinned” to call all indestructible (from the point of view of Europeans) and invincible peoples TatAriev or simply in Latin TatArie. This can be easily seen in ancient maps, for example, the Map of Russia 1594 in the Atlas of Gerhard Mercator, or the Maps of Russia and TarTaria by Ortelius. Below you can view these maps. So what can we see from the newfound material? What we see is that this event simply could not have happened, at least in the form in which it is conveyed to us. And before moving on to the narration of the truth, I propose to consider a few more inconsistencies in the “historical” description of these events.
Even in the modern school curriculum, this historical moment is briefly described as follows: “At the beginning of the 13th century, Genghis Khan gathered a large army of nomadic peoples, and, subordinating them to strict discipline, decided to conquer the whole world. Having defeated China, he sent his army to Rus'. In the winter of 1237, the army of the “Mongol-Tatars” invaded the territory of Rus', and subsequently won Russian army on the Kalka River, went further, through Poland and the Czech Republic. As a result, having reached the shores of the Adriatic Sea, the army suddenly stops and, without completing its task, turns back. From this period the so-called “Mongol-Tatar Yoke” over Russia began.
But wait, they were going to conquer the whole world... so why didn't they go further? Historians answered that they were afraid of an attack from behind, defeated and plundered, but still strong Rus'. But this is just funny. Will the plundered state run to defend other people's cities and villages? Rather, they will rebuild their borders and wait for the return of the enemy troops in order to fight back fully armed. But the weirdness doesn't end there. For some unimaginable reason, during the reign of the House of Romanov, dozens of chronicles describing the events of the “time of the Horde” disappear. For example, “The Tale of the Destruction of the Russian Land,” historians believe that this is a document from which everything that would indicate the Ige was carefully removed. They left only fragments telling about some kind of “trouble” that befell Rus'. But there is not a word about the “invasion of the Mongols.” There are many more strange things. In the story “about the evil Tatars,” the khan from the Golden Horde orders the execution of a Russian Christian prince... for refusing to bow to the “pagan god of the Slavs!” And some chronicles contain amazing phrases, for example: “Well, with God!” - said the khan and, crossing himself, galloped towards the enemy. So, what really happened? At that time, the “new faith” was already flourishing in Europe, namely Faith in Christ. Catholicism was widespread everywhere, and ruled everything, from the way of life and the system, to political system and legislation. At that time, crusades against infidels were still relevant, but along with military methods, “tactical tricks” were often used, akin to bribing authorities and inducing them to their faith. And after receiving power through the purchased person, the conversion of all his “subordinates” to the faith. It was precisely such a secret crusade that was carried out against Rus' at that time. Through bribery and other promises, church ministers were able to seize power over Kiev and nearby regions. Just relatively recently, by the standards of history, the baptism of Rus' took place, but history is silent about the civil war that arose on this basis immediately after the forced baptism.”
So, this author interprets the “Tatar-Mongol yoke” as a civil war imposed by the West, during the real, Western baptism of Rus', which took place in the 13th-14th centuries. This understanding of the baptism of Rus' is very painful for the Russian Orthodox Church for two reasons. The date of the baptism of Rus' is usually considered to be 988, and not 1237. Due to the shift in date, the antiquity of Russian Christianity is reduced by 249 years, which reduces the “millennium of Orthodoxy” by almost a third. On the other hand, the source of Russian Christianity turns out to be not the activities of Russian princes, including Vladimir, but the Western crusades, accompanied by mass protests of the Russian population. This raises the question of the legitimacy of the introduction of Orthodoxy in Rus'. Finally, responsibility for the “yoke” in this case is transferred from the unknown “Tatar-Mongols” to the very real West, to Rome and Constantinople. And official historiography turns out to be not science on this issue, but modern pseudo-scientific mythology. But let’s return to the texts of Alexei Kungurov’s book, especially since he examines in great detail all the inconsistencies with the official version.
Lack of writing and artifacts.
“The Mongols did not have their own alphabet and did not leave a single written source” (KUN: 163). Indeed, this is extremely surprising. Generally speaking, even if a people does not have its own written language, then for state acts it uses the writing of other peoples. Therefore, the complete absence of state acts in such a large state as the Mongol Khanate during its heyday causes not only bewilderment, but doubt that such a state ever existed. “If we demand to present at least some material evidence of the long existence of the Mongol Empire, then archaeologists, scratching their heads and grunting, will show a pair of half-rotten sabers and several women’s earrings. But don’t try to figure out why the remains of sabers are “Mongol-Tatar” and not Cossack, for example. Nobody can explain this to you for sure. At best, you will hear a story that the saber was dug up at the site where, according to an ancient and very reliable chronicle, there was a battle with the Mongols. Where is that chronicle? God knows, it has not survived to this day, but the historian N. saw it with his own eyes, who translated it from Old Russian. Where is this historian N.? Yes, it’s been two hundred years since he died - modern “scientists” will answer you, but they will certainly add that N’s works are considered classic and cannot be doubted, since all subsequent generations of historians wrote their works based on his works. I’m not laughing - this is approximately how things stand in the official historical science of Russian antiquity. Even worse - armchair scientists, creatively developing the legacy of the classics of Russian historiography, wrote in their plump volumes such nonsense about the Mongols, whose arrows, it turns out, pierced the armor of European knights, and battering guns, flamethrowers and even rocket artillery made it possible to take by storm for several days powerful fortresses, that this raises serious doubts about their mental capacity. It seems that they do not see any difference between a bow and a crossbow loaded with a lever” (KUN: 163-164).
But where could the Mongols encounter the armor of European knights and what do Russian sources say about this? “And the Vorogs came from overseas, and they brought faith in alien gods. With fire and sword they began to implant in us an alien faith, shower the Russian princes with gold and silver, bribe their will, and lead them astray from the true path. They promised them an idle life, full of wealth and happiness, and remission of any sins for their dashing deeds. And then Ros broke up into different states. The Russian clans retreated to the north to the great Asgard, and named their state after the names of their patron gods, Tarkh Dazhdbog the Great and Tara, his Sister the Light-Wise. (They called her the Great TarTaria). Leaving the foreigners with the princes purchased in the Principality of Kiev and its environs. Volga Bulgaria also did not bow to its enemies, and did not accept their alien faith as its own. But the Principality of Kiev did not live in peace with TarTaria. They began to conquer the Russian lands with fire and sword and impose their alien faith. And then the military army rose up for a fierce battle. In order to preserve their faith and reclaim their lands. Both old and young then joined the Ratniki in order to restore order to the Russian Lands.”
And so the war began, in which the Russian army, the land of the Great Arya (Army) defeated the enemy and drove him out of the primordially Slavic lands. It drove away the alien army, with their fierce faith, from its stately lands. By the way, the word Horde, translated according to the initial letters of the ancient Slavic alphabet, means Order. That is, the Golden Horde is not a separate state, it is a system. "Political" system of the Golden Order. Under which the Princes reigned locally, planted with the approval of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Defense, or in one word they called him KHAN (our defender).
This means that there were not more than two hundred years of oppression, but there was a time of peace and prosperity of the Great Aria or TarTaria. By the way, modern history also has confirmation of this, but for some reason no one pays attention to it. But we will definitely pay attention, and very closely...: Doesn’t it seem strange to you that the battle with the Swedes is taking place right in the middle of the “Mongol-Tatars” invasion of Rus'? Rus', blazing in fires and plundered by the “Mongols,” is attacked by the Swedish army, which safely drowns in the waters of the Neva, and at the same time the Swedish crusaders do not encounter the Mongols even once. And the Russians, who defeated the strong Swedish army, lose to the Mongols? In my opinion, this is just nonsense. Two huge armies are fighting on the same territory at the same time and never intersect. But if you turn to the ancient Slavic chronicles, then everything becomes clear.
From 1237, the Army of the Great TarTaria began to recapture their ancestral lands, and when the war was coming to an end, representatives of the church, losing power, asked for help, and the Swedish crusaders were sent into battle. Since they failed to take the country by bribery, it means they will take it by force. Just in 1240, the army of the Horde (that is, the army of Prince Alexander Yaroslavovich, one of the princes of the ancient Slavic family) clashed in battle with the army of the Crusaders, who came to the rescue of their minions. Having won the Battle of the Neva, Alexander received the title of Prince of the Neva and remained to rule Novgorod, and the Horde Army went further to drive the adversary out of the Russian lands completely. So she persecuted “the church and the alien faith” until she reached the Adriatic Sea, thereby restoring her original ancient borders. And having reached them, the army turned around and again went north. Establishing a 300-year period of peace” (TAT).
Fantasies of historians about the power of the Mongols.
Commenting on the lines quoted above (KUN: 163), Alexey Kungurov adds: “Here is what Doctor of Historical Sciences Sergei Nefedov writes: “The main weapon of the Tatars was the Mongolian bow, “saadak,” - it was thanks to this New Weapon that the Mongols conquered most of the promised world. It was a complex killing machine, glued together from three layers of wood and bone and wrapped with sinew to protect it from moisture; gluing was carried out under pressure, and drying continued for several years - the secret of making these bows was kept secret. This bow was not inferior in power to a musket; an arrow from it pierced any armor 300 meters away, and it was all about the ability to hit the target, because bows did not have sights and shooting from them required many years of training. Possessing this all-destructive weapon, the Tatars did not like to fight hand-to-hand; they preferred to fire at the enemy with bows, dodging his attacks; this shelling sometimes lasted several days, and the Mongols took out their sabers only when the enemies were wounded and fell from exhaustion. The last, “ninth” attack was carried out by “swordsmen” - warriors armed with curved swords and, together with their horses, covered in armor made of thick buffalo leather. During major battles, this attack was preceded by shelling from “fire catapults” borrowed from the Chinese - these catapults fired bombs filled with gunpowder, which, when exploding, “burned through the armor with sparks” (NEF). – Alexey Kungurov comments on this passage as follows: “The funny thing here is not that Nefyodov is a historian (this brethren has the deepest idea of natural science), but that he is also a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences. This is how much you have to degrade your mind to flog such nonsense! Yes, if a bow shot at 300 meters and at the same time pierced any armor, then firearms simply did not have a chance to appear. The American M-16 rifle has an effective firing range of 400 meters with a muzzle velocity of 1000 meters per second. Then the bullet quickly loses its damaging ability. In reality, aimed shooting from an M-16 with a mechanical sight is ineffective beyond 100 meters. Only a very experienced shooter can shoot accurately at 300 meters even from a powerful rifle without an optical sight. And the scientist Nefyodov weaves nonsense about the fact that Mongolian arrows not only flew accurately at a third of a kilometer (the maximum distance at which champion archers shoot in competitions is 90 meters), but also pierced any armor. Rave! For example, it will not be possible to pierce good chain mail even at point-blank range with the most powerful bow. To defeat a warrior in chain mail, a special arrow with a needle tip was used, which did not pierce the armor, but, under a successful combination of circumstances, passed through the rings.
In physics at school, I had grades no higher than three, but I know very well from practice that an arrow fired from a bow is imparted with the force that the arm muscles develop when it is pulled. That is, with approximately the same success, you can take an arrow with your hand and try to pierce at least an enamel basin with it. If you don't have an arrow, use any pointed object like half a pair of tailor's scissors, an awl or a knife. How is it going? Do you trust historians after this? If they write in their dissertations that short and thin Mongols pulled bows with a force of 75 kg, then I would award the degree of Doctor of Historical Sciences only to those who can repeat this feat in defense. At least there will be fewer parasites with scientific titles. By the way, modern Mongols have no idea about any saadaks - a superweapon of the Middle Ages. Having conquered half the world with them, for some reason they completely forgot how to do it.
It’s even easier with battering machines and catapults: you just have to look at the drawings of these monsters, and it becomes clear that these multi-ton colossuses cannot be moved even a meter, since they will get stuck in the ground even during construction. But even if in those days there were asphalt roads from Transbaikalia to Kyiv and Polotsk, how would the Mongols drag them thousands of kilometers, how would they transport them across large rivers like the Volga or Dnieper? Stone fortresses ceased to be considered impregnable only with the invention of siege artillery, and in previous times well-fortified cities were only taken by starvation” (KUN: 164-165). – I think this criticism is excellent. I will also add that, according to the works of Ya.A. Koestler, there were no reserves of saltpeter in China, so they had nothing to stuff gunpowder bombs with. In addition, gunpowder does not create a temperature of 1556 degrees, at which iron melts in order to “burn through armor with sparks.” And if he could create such a temperature, then the “sparks” would primarily burn through cannons and rifles at the moment of firing. It is also very funny to read that the Tatars shot and shot (the number of arrows in their quiver, apparently, was not limited), and the enemy was exhausted, and the skinny Mongol warriors fired the tenth and hundredth arrow with the same fresh strength as the first, without getting tired at all. Surprisingly, even rifle shooters get tired when shooting while standing, and this condition was unknown to the Mongol archers.
At one time I heard the expression from lawyers: “He lies like an eyewitness.” Now, probably, using Nefyodov’s example, we should suggest the addition: “He lies like a professional historian.”
Mongols-metallurgists.
It would seem that we can put an end to this, but Kungurov wants to consider several more aspects. “I don’t know much about metallurgy, but I can still very roughly estimate how many tons of iron are needed to arm at least a 10,000-strong Mongol army” (KUN: 166). Where did the figure of 10 thousand come from? – This is the minimum size of the army with which you can go on a campaign of conquest. Guy Julius Caesar with such a detachment was unable to capture Britain, but when he doubled the number, the conquest of Foggy Albion was crowned with success. “In fact, such a small army could not have conquered China, India, Rus' and other countries. Therefore, historians, without trifling, write about Batu’s 30,000-strong cavalry horde sent to conquer Rus', but this figure seems completely fantastic. Even if we assume that the Mongol warriors had leather armor, wooden shields, and stone arrowheads, then iron is still required for horseshoes, spears, knives, swords, and sabers.
Now it’s worth thinking about: how did the wild nomads know the high iron-making technologies at that time? After all, the ore still needs to be mined, and for this to be able to find it, that is, to understand a little about geology. Are there many ancient ore mines in the Mongolian steppes? Do archaeologists find many remains of forges there? They, of course, are still magicians - they will find anything, wherever they need it. But in in this case Nature itself made the task extremely difficult for archaeologists. Iron ore is not mined in Mongolia even today (although small deposits have recently been discovered)” (KUN: 166). But even if ore was found and smelting furnaces existed, the metallurgists would have to be paid for their work, and they themselves would have to live sedentary lives. Where are the former settlements of metallurgists? Where are the waste rock dumps (heap waste heaps)? Where are the remnants of finished product warehouses? None of this was found.
“Of course, weapons can be bought, but you need money, which the ancient Mongols did not have, at least they are completely unknown to world archeology. And they couldn’t have it, since their farm was not commercial. Weapons could be exchanged, but where, from whom and for what? In short, if you think about such little things, then Genghis Khan’s campaign from the Manchurian steppes to China, India, Persia, the Caucasus and Europe looks like complete fantasy” (KUN: 166).
This is not the first time I have come across this kind of “punctures” in mythological historiography. As a matter of fact, any historiographical myth is written in order to cover it up like a smoke screen. real fact. This kind of camouflage works well in cases where secondary facts are masked. But it is impossible to disguise advanced technologies, the highest at that time. It’s the same as putting on someone else’s suit and mask for a criminal taller than two meters—he is identified not by his clothes or face, but by his exorbitant height. If in the indicated period, that is, in the 13th century, Western European knights had the best iron armor, then it will in no way be possible to attribute their urban culture to the steppe nomads. Just like the highest culture of Etruscan writing, where the Italic, Russian, stylized Greek alphabets and runitsa were used, it cannot be attributed to any small people such as the Albanians or Chechens, who, perhaps, did not yet exist in those days.
Forage for the Mongol cavalry.
“For example, how did the Mongols cross the Volga or the Dnieper? You can't swim through a two-kilometer stream, you can't wade it. There is only one way out - wait until winter to cross the ice. It was in winter, by the way, that in Rus' they usually fought in the old days. But in order to make such a long journey during the winter, it is necessary to prepare a huge amount of forage, since although the Mongolian horse is capable of finding withered grass under the snow, for this it needs to graze where there is grass. In this case, the snow cover should be small. In the Mongolian steppes, winters have little snow, and the grass stand is quite high. In Rus', the opposite is true - the grass is tall only in floodplain meadows, and in all other places it is very sparse. The snowdrifts are such that the horse, let alone finding grass under it, will not be able to move through the deep snow. Otherwise, it is not clear why the French lost all their cavalry during the retreat from Moscow. They ate it, of course, but they ate already fallen horses, because if the horses were well-fed and healthy, then the uninvited guests would use them to quickly escape” (KUN: 166-167). – Let us note that it is for this reason that summer campaigns have become preferable for Western Europeans.
“Oats are usually used as fodder, of which a horse needs 5-6 kg per day. It turns out that the nomads, in advance of preparing for a campaign to distant lands, sowed the steppe with oats? Or did they carry the hay with them on carts? Let's perform some simple arithmetic operations and calculate what preparations the nomads had to make in order to go on a long journey. Let's assume that they gathered an army of at least 10 thousand mounted soldiers. Each warrior needs several horses - one specially trained combatant for battle, one for marching, one for a convoy - to carry food, a yurt and other supplies. This is a minimum, but we must also take into account that some of the horses will fall along the way, and there will be combat losses, so a reserve is needed.
And if 10 thousand horsemen march in marching formation even across the steppe, then when the horses graze, where will the warriors live - rest in the snowdrifts, or what? On a long hike you cannot do without food, fodder and a convoy with warm yurts. You need more fuel to cook food, but where can you find firewood in the treeless steppe? The nomads drowned their yurts, sorry, with poop, because there was nothing else. It stank, of course. But they got used to it. You can, of course, fantasize about the strategic procurement of hundreds of tons of dried crap by the Mongols, which they took with them on the road when setting out to conquer the world, but I will leave this opportunity to the most stubborn historians.
Some smart guys tried to prove to me that the Mongols did not have a convoy at all, which is why they were able to show phenomenal maneuverability. But how did they take the loot home in this case - in their pockets, or what? And where were their battering guns and other engineering devices, and the same maps and food supplies, not to mention their environmentally friendly fuel? Not a single army in the world could ever do without a convoy if it was going to make a transition lasting more than two days. The loss of a convoy usually meant the failure of a campaign, even if there was no battle with the enemy.
In short, according to the most conservative estimates, our mini-horde should have at its disposal at least 40 thousand horses. From the experience of mass armies of the 17th-19th centuries. it is known that the daily feed requirement of such a herd will be at least 200 tons of oats. This is just in one day! And the longer the journey, the more horses should be involved in the convoy. A medium-sized horse can pull a cart weighing 300 kg. This is on the road, but off-road in packs it’s half as much. That is, in order to provide for our 40,000-strong herd, we need 700 horses per day. A three-month campaign will require a convoy of almost 70 thousand horses. And this crowd also needs oats, and in order to feed 70 thousand horses carrying fodder for 40 thousand horses, more than 100 thousand horses with carts will be needed for the same three months, and these horses, in turn, want to eat - it turns out vicious circle"(KUN:167-168). – This calculation shows that intercontinental, for example, from Asia to Europe, trips on horseback with a full supply of provisions are fundamentally impossible. True, here are calculations for a 3-month winter campaign. But if the campaign is carried out in the summer, and you move in the steppe zone, feeding the horses with pasture, then you can advance much further.
“Even in the summer, the cavalry never did without forage, so the Mongol campaign against Rus' would still require logistical support. Until the twentieth century, the maneuverability of troops was determined not by the speed of horses' hooves and the strength of soldiers' legs, but by dependence on convoys and the capacity of the road network. A marching speed of 20 km per day was very good even for the average World War II division, and German tanks, when paved highways allowed them to carry out blitzkrieg, wound up on tracks at 50 km per day. But in this case, the rear inevitably lagged behind. In ancient times, in off-road conditions such indicators would have been simply fantastic. The textbook (SVI) reports that the Mongol army marched about 100 kilometers a day! Yes, it is hardly possible to find people who are the worst versed in history. Even in May 1945, Soviet tanks, making a forced march from Berlin to Prague along good European roads, could not break the “Mongol-Tatar” record” (KUN: 168-169). – I believe that the very division of Europe into Western and Eastern was made not so much for geographical, but for strategic reasons. Namely: within each of them, military campaigns, although they require supplies of fodder and horses, are within reasonable limits. And the transition to another part of Europe already requires the exertion of all state forces, so that a military campaign affects not only the army, but develops into a patriotic war, requiring the participation of the entire population.
Food problem.
“What did the riders themselves eat on the way? If you are chasing a flock of lambs, then you will have to move at their speed. During the winter there is no way to reach the nearest center of civilization. But nomads are unpretentious people; they made do with dried meat and cottage cheese, which they soaked in hot water. Whatever one may say, a kilogram of food a day is necessary. Three months of travel - 100 kg of weight. In the future, you can slaughter the baggage horses. At the same time, there will be savings on fodder. But not a single convoy can move at a speed of 100 km per day, especially off-road.” – It is clear that this problem mainly concerns uninhabited areas. In densely populated Europe, the winner can take food from the vanquished
Demographic problems.
“If we touch on demographic issues and try to understand how the nomads were able to field 10 thousand warriors, given the very low population density in the steppe zone, then we will run into another unsolvable mystery. Well, in the steppes there is no population density higher than 0.2 people per square kilometer! If we take the mobilization capabilities of the Mongols as 10% of the total population (every second healthy man from 18 to 45 years old), then to mobilize a horde of 10,000 people, it will be necessary to comb a territory of about half a million square kilometers. Or let's touch on purely organizational issues: for example, how the Mongols collected taxes on the army and recruited, how did military training take place, how was the military elite educated? It turns out that for purely technical reasons, the Mongol campaign against Rus', as described by “professional” historians, was impossible in principle.
There are examples of this from relatively recent times. In the spring of 1771, the Kalmyks, who were nomadic in the Caspian steppes, annoyed that the tsarist administration had significantly curtailed their autonomy, unanimously left their place and moved to their historical homeland in Dzungaria (the territory of the modern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China). Only 25 thousand Kalmyks who lived on the right bank of the Volga remained in place - they could not join the others due to the opening of the river. Of the 170 thousand nomads, only about 70 thousand reached the goal after 8 months. The rest, as you might guess, died on the way. The winter transition would be even more disastrous. The local population greeted the settlers without enthusiasm. Who will now find traces of Kalmyks in Xinjiang? And on the right bank of the Volga today live 165 thousand Kalmyks who switched to a sedentary lifestyle during the period of collectivization in 1929-1940, but who have not lost their original culture and religion (Buddhism)” (KUN: 1690170). – This last example is amazing! Almost 2/3 of the population, who walked slowly and with good convoys in the summer, died along the way. Even if the losses of the regular army were less than, say, 1/3, then instead of 10 thousand troops, less than 7 thousand people would reach the target. It may be objected that they drove the conquered peoples ahead of them. So I only counted those who died from the difficulties of the transition, but there were also combat losses. Defeated enemies can be driven back when the victors are at least twice as numerous as the vanquished. So if half the army dies in battle (in fact, about 6 times more attackers die than defenders), then the remaining 3.5 thousand can drive in front of no more than 1.5 thousand prisoners, who will try in the first battle run over to the side of the enemies, strengthening their ranks. And an army of less than 4 thousand people is unlikely to be able to advance further into a foreign country - it’s time for him to return home.
Why is the myth of the Tatar-Mongol invasion needed?
“But the myth of the terrible Mongol invasion is cultivated for some reason. And for what, it’s not difficult to guess - virtual Mongols are needed solely to explain the disappearance of the equally phantom Kievan Rus along with its original population. They say that as a result of Batu’s invasion, the Dnieper region was completely depopulated. Why the hell, one might ask, did the nomads want to destroy the population? Well, they would have imposed tribute like everyone else - at least there would have been some benefit. But no, historians unanimously convince us that the Mongols completely devastated the Kiev region, burned the cities, exterminated the population or drove them into captivity, and those who were lucky enough to survive, having greased their heels with lard, fled without looking back into the wild forests of the northeast, where Over time they created a powerful Moscow kingdom. One way or another, the time before the 16th century seems to fall out of the history of Southern Rus': if historians mention anything about this period, it is the raids of the Crimeans. But who did they raid, if the Russian lands were depopulated?
It cannot be that for 250 years no events took place at all in the historical center of Rus'! However, no epochal events were noted. This caused heated debate among historians when disputes were still allowed. Some put forward hypotheses about the general flight of the population to the northeast, others believed that the entire population died out, and new ones came from the Carpathians in the following centuries. Still others expressed the idea that the population did not flee anywhere, and did not come from anywhere, but simply sat quietly in isolation from the outside world and did not show any political, military, economic, demographic or cultural activity. Klyuchevsky propagated the idea that the population, scared to death by the evil Tatars, left their inhabited places and went partly to Galicia, and partly to the Suzdal lands, from where they spread far to the north and east. Kyiv, as a city, according to the professor, temporarily ceased to exist, having shrunk to 200 houses. Solovyov argued that Kyiv was completely destroyed and long years was a pile of ruins where no one lived. In the Galician lands, then called Little Russia, refugees from the Dnieper region, they say, became slightly Polish, and when they returned several centuries later to their autochthonous territory as Little Russians, they brought there a peculiar dialect and customs acquired in exile” (KUN: 170-171).
So, from the point of view of Alexei Kungurov, the myth about the Tatar-Mongols supports another myth - about Kievan Rus. While I am not considering this second myth, I admit that the existence of a vast Kievan Rus is also a myth. However, let's listen to this author to the end. Perhaps he will show that the myth of the Tatar-Mongols is beneficial to historians for other reasons.
Surprisingly fast surrender of Russian cities.
“At first glance, this version looks quite logical: evil barbarians came and destroyed a flourishing civilization, killed everyone and dispersed them to hell. Why? But because they are barbarians. For what? And Batu was in a bad mood, maybe his wife cuckolded him, maybe he had a stomach ulcer, so he was angry. The scientific community is quite satisfied with such answers, and since I have nothing to do with this very community, I immediately want to argue with the luminaries of historical “science”.
Why, one wonders, did the Mongols completely clear out the Kiev region? It should be taken into account that the Kiev land is not some insignificant outskirts, but supposedly the core of the Russian state, according to the same Klyuchevsky. Meanwhile, Kyiv was surrendered to the enemy in 1240 a few days after the siege. Are there similar cases in history? More often we will see opposite examples, when we gave everything to the enemy, but fought for the core to the last. Therefore, the fall of Kyiv seems completely incredible. Before the invention of siege artillery, a well-fortified city could only be taken by starvation. And it often happened that the besiegers ran out of steam faster than the besieged. History knows cases of very long defense of the city. For example, during the Polish intervention during the Time of Troubles, the siege of Smolensk by the Poles lasted from September 21, 1609 to June 3, 1611. The defenders capitulated only when Polish artillery made an impressive opening in the wall, and the besieged were extremely exhausted by hunger and disease.
The Polish king Sigismund, amazed by the courage of the defenders, let them go home. But why did the Kievans so quickly surrender to the wild Mongols, who spared no one? The nomads did not have powerful siege artillery, and the battering guns with which they allegedly destroyed fortifications were stupid inventions of historians. It was physically impossible to drag such a device to the wall, because the walls themselves always stood on a large earthen rampart, which was the basis of the city fortifications, and a ditch was built in front of them. It is now generally accepted that the defense of Kyiv lasted 93 days. The famous fiction writer Bushkov is sarcastic about this: “Historians are a little disingenuous. Ninety-three days is not the period between the beginning and end of the assault, but the first appearance of the “Tatar” army and the capture of Kyiv. First, “Batyev Voivode” Mengat appeared at the Kyiv walls and tried to persuade the Kyiv prince to surrender the city without a fight, but the Kievans killed his ambassadors, and he retreated. And three months later “Batu” came. And in a few days he took the city. It is the interval between these events that other researchers call the “long siege” (BUSH).
Moreover, the story of the rapid fall of Kyiv is by no means unique. If you believe historians, then all other Russian cities (Ryazan, Vladimir, Galich, Moscow, Pereslavl-Zalessky, etc.) usually held out for no more than five days. It’s surprising that Torzhok defended itself for almost two weeks. Little Kozelsk allegedly set a record by holding out for seven weeks under siege, but falling on the third day of the assault. Who will explain to me what kind of superweapon the Mongols used to take fortresses on the move? And why was this weapon forgotten? In the Middle Ages, throwing machines - vices - were sometimes used to destroy city walls. But in Rus' there was a big problem - there was nothing to throw - boulders of the appropriate size would have to be dragged with you.
True, cities in Rus' in most cases had wooden fortifications, and theoretically they could be burned. But in practice, this was difficult to achieve in winter, because water was poured on the walls from above, as a result of which an ice shell formed on them. In fact, even if a 10,000-strong nomadic army had come to Rus', no catastrophe would have happened. This horde would simply melt away in a couple of months, taking a dozen cities by storm. The losses of the attackers in this case will be 3-5 times higher than those of the defenders of the citadel.
According to the official version of history, the northeastern lands of Rus' suffered much more severely from the adversary, but for some reason no one thought of running away from there. And vice versa, they fled to where the climate was colder and the Mongols were more outrageous. Where is the logic? And why was the “fleeing” population, until the 16th century, paralyzed by fear and did not try to return to the fertile lands of the Dnieper region? There was no trace of the Mongols long ago, and the frightened Russians, they say, were afraid to show their noses there. The Crimeans were not at all peaceful, but for some reason the Russians were not afraid of them - the Cossacks on their seagulls descended along the Don and Dnieper, unexpectedly attacked Crimean cities and carried out brutal pogroms there. Usually, if some places are favorable for life, then the struggle for them is especially fierce, and these lands are never empty. The vanquished are replaced by conquerors, who are ousted or assimilated by stronger neighbors - the issue here is not disagreements on some political or religious issues, but rather the possession of territory” (KUN: 171-173). “Indeed, this is a completely inexplicable situation from the point of view of the clash between steppe dwellers and townspeople.” It is very good for a denigrating version of the historiography of Rus', but is completely illogical. While Alexey Kungurov is noticing new aspects of the absolutely incredible development of events from the standpoint of the Tatar-Mongol invasion.
The unknown motives of the Mongols.
“Historians do not explain the motives of the mythical Mongols at all. Why did they participate in such grandiose campaigns? If in order to impose tribute on the conquered Russians, then why the hell did the Mongols raze 49 of 74 large Russian cities to the ground, and slaughter the population almost to the roots, as historians say? If they destroyed the aborigines because they liked the local grass and the milder climate than in the Trans-Caspian and Trans-Baikal steppes, then why did they go to the steppe? There is no logic in the actions of the conquerors. More precisely, it is not in the nonsense written by historians.
The root cause of the militancy of peoples in ancient times was the so-called crisis of nature and man. With the overpopulation of the territory, society seemed to push young and energetic people outside. If they conquer those lands of their neighbors and settle there - good. If they die in the fire, that’s also not bad, because there will be no “extra” population. In many ways, this is precisely what can explain the belligerence of the ancient Scandinavians: their stingy northern lands could not feed the increased population and they were left to live by robbery or be hired into the service of foreign rulers to engage in the same robbery. The Russians, one might say, were lucky - for centuries the excess population rolled back to the south and east, all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Subsequently, the crisis of nature and man began to be overcome through qualitative changes in agricultural technologies and industrial development.
But what could have caused the belligerence of the Mongols? If the population density of the steppes exceeds acceptable limits (that is, there is a shortage of pastures), some of the shepherds will simply migrate to other, less developed steppes. If the local nomads are not happy with the guests, then a small massacre will arise in which the strongest will win. That is, in order to get to Kyiv, the Mongols would have to conquer vast areas from Manchuria to the northern Black Sea region. But even in this case, the nomads did not pose a threat to strong civilized countries, because not a single nomadic people ever created their own statehood or had an army. The maximum that the steppe inhabitants are capable of is to raid a border village for the purpose of robbery.
The only analogue to the mythical warlike Mongols is the Chechen cattle breeders of the 19th century. This people is unique in that robbery has become the basis of its existence. The Chechens did not even have rudimentary statehood, lived in clans (teips), did not practice agriculture, unlike their neighbors, did not possess the secrets of metal processing, and in general mastered the most primitive crafts. They posed a threat to the Russian border and communications with Georgia, which became part of Russia in 1804, only because they supplied them with weapons and supplies, and bribed local princes. But the Chechen robbers, despite their numerical superiority, could not oppose the Russians with anything other than the tactics of raids and forest ambushes. When the patience of the latter ran out, the regular army under the command of Ermolov quite quickly carried out a total “cleansing” of the North Caucasus, driving the abreks into the mountains and gorges.
I am ready to believe in many things, but I categorically refuse to take seriously the nonsense of the evil nomads who destroyed Ancient Rus'. All the more fantastic is the theory about the three-century “yoke” of wild steppe inhabitants over the Russian principalities. Only the STATE can exercise dominion over conquered lands. Historians generally understand this, and therefore they invented a certain fabulous Mongol Empire - the world’s largest state in the entire history of mankind, founded by Genghis Khan in 1206 and including the territory from the Danube to the Sea of Japan and from Novgorod to Cambodia. All the empires known to us were created over centuries and generations, and only the greatest world empire was allegedly created by an illiterate savage literally with the wave of his hand” (KUN: 173-175). – So, Alexey Kungurov comes to the conclusion that if there was a conquest of Rus', it was carried out not by wild steppe inhabitants, but by some powerful state. But where was its capital?
Capital of the steppes.
“If there is an empire, then there must be a capital. The fantastic city of Karakorum was appointed as the capital, the remains of which were explained by the ruins of the Buddhist monastery Erdene-Dzu of the late 16th century in the center of modern Mongolia. Based on what? And that’s what historians wanted. Schliemann dug up the ruins of a small ancient city and declared that this was Troy” (KUN: 175). I showed in two articles that Schliemann excavated one of the temples of Yar and took its treasures as a trace of ancient Troy, although Troy, as one of the Serbian researchers showed, was located on the shores of Lake Skoder (the modern city of Shkoder in Albania).
“And Nikolai Yadrintsev, who discovered an ancient settlement in the Orkhon valley, declared it Karakorum. Karakorum literally means “black stones.” Since there was a mountain range not far from the place of discovery, it was given the official name Karakorum. And since the mountains are called Karakorum, then the city was given the same name. This is such a convincing rationale! True, the local population had never heard of any Karakorum, but called the ridge Muztag - Ice Mountains, but this did not bother the scientists at all” (KUN: 175-176). – And rightly so, because in this case the “scientists” were not looking for the truth, but confirmation of their myth, and geographical renaming greatly contributes to this.
Traces of a grandiose empire.
“The largest world empire left the least traces of itself. Or rather, none at all. It, they say, broke up in the 13th century into separate uluses, the largest of which became the Yuan Empire, that is, China (its capital Khanbalyk, now Aekin, was allegedly at one time the capital of the entire Mongol Empire), the state of the Ilkhans (Iran, Transcaucasia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan), Chagatai ulus (Central Asia) and the Golden Horde (territory from the Irtysh to the White, Baltic and Black Seas). Historians cleverly came up with this. Now any fragments of ceramics or copper jewelry found in the expanses from Hungary to the coast of the Sea of Japan can be declared traces of the great Mongolian civilization. And they find and announce. And they won’t blink an eye” (KUN:176).
As an epigraphist, I am primarily interested in written monuments. Did they exist in the Tatar-Mongol era? Here is what Nefyodov writes about this: “Having installed Alexander Nevsky as Grand Duke of their own free will, the Tatars sent Baskaks and Chisniki to Rus' - “and the accursed Tatars began to ride through the streets, copying Christian houses.” This was a census carried out at that time throughout the vast Mongol Empire; The clerks compiled defter registers to collect taxes established by Yelu Chu-tsai: land tax, “kalan”, per capita tax, “kupchur”, and tax on merchants, “tamga”” (NEF). True, in epigraphy the word “tamga” has a different meaning, “tribal signs of ownership,” but that’s not the point: if there were three types of taxes, drawn up in the form of lists, then something certainly had to be preserved. - Alas, there is none of this. It is not even clear in what font all this was written. But if there are no such special marks, then it turns out that all these lists were written in Russian script, that is, in Cyrillic. – When I tried to find articles on the Internet on the topic “Artifacts of the Tatar-Mongol Yoke,” I came across a judgment that I reproduce below.
Why are the chronicles silent?
“During the time of the mythical “Tatar-Mongol yoke,” according to official history, decline came to Rus'. This, in their opinion, is confirmed by the almost complete lack of evidence about that period. Once, while talking with a history buff of my native land, I heard him mention the decline that reigned in this area during the time of the “Tatar-Mongol yoke.” As evidence, he recalled that a monastery once stood in these places. First, it should be said about the area: a river valley with hills in the immediate vicinity, there are springs - an ideal place for a settlement. And so it was. However, the chronicles of this monastery mention the nearest settlement only a few tens of kilometers away. Although you can read between the lines that people lived closer, only “wild ones”. Arguing on this topic, we came to the conclusion that, due to ideological motives, the monks mentioned only Christian settlements, or during the next rewriting of history, all information about non-Christian settlements was erased.
No, no, yes, sometimes historians excavate settlements that flourished during the “Tatar-Mongol yoke.” What forced them to admit that, in general, the Tatar-Mongols were quite tolerant of the conquered peoples... “However, the lack of reliable sources about general prosperity in Kievan Rus does not give reason to doubt the official history.
Actually, except for sources Orthodox Church we do not have reliable data about the occupation by the Tatar-Mongols. In addition, quite interesting is the fact of the rapid occupation of not only the steppe regions of Rus' (from the point of view of official history, the Tatar-Mongols are steppe dwellers), but also forested and even swampy territories. Of course, the history of military operations knows examples of the rapid conquest of the swampy forests of Belarus. However, the Nazis bypassed the swamps. But what about the Soviet army, which carried out a brilliant offensive operation in the swampy part of Belarus? This is true, however, the population in Belarus was needed to create a springboard for subsequent offensives. They simply chose to attack in the least expected (and therefore protected) area. But most importantly, the Soviet army relied on local partisans who thoroughly knew the terrain even better than the Nazis. But the mythical Tatar-Mongols, who did the unthinkable, immediately conquered the swamps - refused further attacks” (SPO). – Here the unknown researcher notes two curious facts: the monastery chronicle already considers as a populated area only the one where the parishioners lived, as well as the brilliant orientation of the steppe inhabitants among the swamps, which should not be characteristic of them. And the same author also notes the coincidence of the territory occupied by the Tatar-Mongols with the territory of Kievan Rus. Thus, he shows that in reality we are dealing with a territory that has undergone Christianization, regardless of whether it was in the steppe, in forests or in swamps. – But let’s return to Kungurov’s texts.
Religion of the Mongols.
“What was the official religion of the Mongols? - Choose any one you like. Allegedly, Buddhist shrines were discovered in the Karakorum “palace” of the Great Khan Ogedei (the heir of Genghis Khan). In the capital of the Golden Horde, Sarai-Batu, mostly Orthodox crosses and breastplates are found. Islam established itself in the Central Asian possessions of the Mongol conquerors, and Zoroastrianism continued to flourish in the South Caspian Sea. The Jewish Khazars also felt free in the Mongol Empire. A variety of shamanistic beliefs have been preserved in Siberia. Russian historians traditionally tell stories that the Mongols were idolaters. They say that they gave the Russian princes a “axe in the head” if they, coming for a label for the right to reign in their lands, did not worship their filthy pagan idols. In short, the Mongols did not have any state religion. All empires had one, but the Mongolian one did not. Anyone could pray to whomever they wanted” (KUN:176). – Let us note that there was no religious tolerance either before or after the Mongol invasion. Ancient Prussia with the Baltic people of the Prussians (relatives in language to the Lithuanians and Latvians) who inhabited it was wiped off the face of the earth by the German knightly orders only because they were pagans. And in Rus', not only the Vedists (Old Believers), but also the early Christians (Old Believers) began to be persecuted after Nikon’s reform as enemies. Therefore, such a combination of words as “evil Tatars” and “tolerance” is impossible, it is illogical. The division of the greatest empire into separate regions, each with its own religion, probably indicates the independent existence of these regions, united into a giant empire only in the mythology of historians. As for the finds of Orthodox crosses and breastplates in the European part of the empire, this suggests that the “Tatar-Mongols” implanted Christianity and eradicated paganism (Vedism), that is, forced Christianization took place.
Cash.
“By the way, if Karakorum was the Mongol capital, then there must have been a mint there. It is believed that the currency of the Mongol Empire was gold dinars and silver dirhams. For four years, archaeologists dug into the soil at Orkhon (1999-2003), but not like the mint, they didn’t even find a single dirham or dinar, but they dug up a lot of Chinese coins. It was this expedition that discovered traces of a Buddhist shrine under the Ogedei Palace (which turned out to be much smaller than expected). In Germany, a substantial tome “Genghis Khan and His Legacy” was published about the results of the excavations. This is despite the fact that archaeologists did not find any traces of the Mongol ruler. However, this does not matter, everything they found was declared the legacy of Genghis Khan. True, the publishers wisely kept silent about the Buddhist idol and Chinese coins, but filled most of the book with abstract discussions that are of no scientific interest” (KUN: 177). – A legitimate question arises: if the Mongols carried out three types of censuses, and collected tribute from them, then where was it stored? And in what currency? Was everything really translated into Chinese money? What could you buy with them in Europe?
Continuing the topic, Kungurov writes: “In general, IN ALL of Mongolia, only a few dirhams with Arabic inscriptions were found, which completely excludes the idea that this was the center of some kind of empire. “Scientific” historians cannot explain this, and therefore simply do not touch upon this issue. Even if you grab a historian by the lapel of his jacket and ask about it, looking intently into his eyes, he will act like a fool who doesn’t understand what he’s talking about” (KUN: 177). – I’ll interrupt the quotation here, because this is exactly how archaeologists behaved when I made my report at the Tver local history museum, showing that there was an INSCRIPTION on the stone cup donated to the museum by local historians. None of the archaeologists approached the stone and felt the letters cut out there. For to come up and touch the inscription meant for them to sign a long-standing lie about the lack of their own writing among the Slavs in the pre-Cyril era. This was the only thing they could do to protect the honor of the uniform (“I don’t see anything, I don’t hear anything, I won’t tell anyone anything,” as the popular song goes).
“There is no archaeological evidence of the existence of an imperial center in Mongolia, and therefore, as arguments in favor of a completely crazy version, official science can only offer a casuistic interpretation of the works of Rashid ad-Din. True, they quote the latter very selectively. For example, after four years of excavations on the Orkhon, historians prefer not to remember that the latter writes about the circulation of dinars and dirhams in Karakorum. And Guillaume de Rubruk reports that the Mongols knew a lot about Roman money, with which their budget bins were overflowing. Now they also have to keep quiet about this. You should also forget that Plano Carpini mentioned how the ruler of Baghdad paid tribute to the Mongols in Roman gold solidi - bezants. In short, all the ancient witnesses were wrong. Only modern historians know the truth” (KUN:178). – As we see, all the ancient witnesses indicated that the “Mongols” used European money that circulated in Western and Eastern Europe. And they didn’t say anything about the “Mongols” having Chinese money. Again, we are talking about the fact that the “Mongols” were Europeans, at least in economic terms. It would not occur to any cattle breeder to compile lists of landowners that the cattle breeders did not have. And even more so - to create a tax on traders, who in many eastern countries were wandering. In short, all these population censuses, very expensive actions, with the aim of collecting a STABLE TAX (10%) betray not greedy steppe dwellers, but scrupulous European bankers, who, of course, collected pre-calculated taxes in European currency. They had no use for Chinese money.
“Did the Mongols have a financial system, which, as you know, no state can do without? Did not have! Numismatists are not aware of any specific Mongolian money. But any unidentified coins can be declared as such if desired. What was the name of the imperial currency? It wasn't called anything. Where was the imperial mint and treasury located? And nowhere. It seems that historians wrote something about the evil Baskaks - tribute collectors in the Russian uluses of the Golden Horde. But today the ferocity of the Baskaks seems very exaggerated. It seems that they collected tithes (a tenth of the income) in favor of the khan, and recruited every tenth youth into their army. The latter should be considered a great exaggeration. After all, service in those days lasted not a couple of years, but probably a quarter of a century. The population of Rus' in the 13th century is usually estimated at at least 5 million souls. If every year 10 thousand recruits come to the army, then in 10 years it will swell to completely unimaginable sizes” (KUN: 178-179). – If you call up 10 thousand people annually, then in 10 years you will get 100 thousand, and in 25 years – 250 thousand. Was the state of that time able to feed such an army? - “And if you consider that the Mongols recruited not only Russians, but also representatives of all other conquered peoples into service, you will get a million-strong horde that no empire could feed or arm in the Middle Ages” (KUN: 179). - That's it.
“But where the tax went, how the accounting was carried out, who controlled the treasury, scientists cannot really explain anything. Nothing is known about the system of counting, weights and measures used in the empire. It remains a mystery for what purposes the huge Golden Horde budget was spent - the conquerors did not build any palaces, cities, monasteries, or fleets. Although no, other storytellers claim that the Mongols had a fleet. They, they say, even conquered the island of Java, and almost captured Japan. But this is such obvious nonsense that there is no point in discussing it. At least until at least some traces of the existence of steppe herder-seafarers on the earth are found” (KUN: 179). – As Alexei Kungurov considers various aspects of the activities of the Mongols, the impression arises that the Khalkha people, appointed by historians to the role of world conqueror, were minimally suitable for fulfilling this mission. How did the West make such a mistake? - The answer is simple. All of Siberia and Central Asia on European maps of that time was called Tartaria (as I showed in one of my articles, it was there that the Underworld, Tartarus, was moved). Accordingly, the mythical “Tatars” settled there. Their eastern wing extended to the Khalkha people, about whom at that time few historians knew anything, and therefore anything could be attributed to them. Of course, Western historians did not foresee that in a couple of centuries communications would develop so much that through the Internet it would be possible to receive any of the latest information from archaeologists, which, after analytical processing, would be able to refute any Western myths.
The ruling layer of the Mongols.
“What was the ruling class like in the Mongol Empire? Any state has its own military, political, economic, cultural and scientific elite. The ruling layer in the Middle Ages is called the aristocracy; today's ruling class is usually called the vague term “elite”. One way or another, there must be a government leadership, otherwise there is no state. And the Mongol occupiers had tensions with the elite. They conquered Rus' and left the Rurik dynasty to rule it. They themselves, they say, went to the steppe. There are no similar examples in history. That is, there was no state-forming aristocracy in the Mongol Empire” (KUN: 179). – The last one is extremely surprising. Let's take, for example, the previous huge empire - the Arab Caliphate. There were not only religions, Islam, but also secular literature. For example, tales of a thousand and one nights. There was a monetary system, and Arab money was long considered the most popular currency. Where are the legends about the Mongol khans, where are the Mongolian tales about the conquests of distant Western countries?
Mongolian infrastructure.
“Even today, any state cannot exist if it does not have transport and information connectivity. In the Middle Ages, the lack of convenient means of communication absolutely excluded the possibility of the functioning of the state. Therefore, the core of the state developed along river, sea, and, much less often, land communications. And the greatest Mongol Empire in the history of mankind did not have any means of communication between its parts and the center, which, by the way, did not exist either. More precisely, it seemed to exist, but only in the form of a camp where Genghis Khan left his family during campaigns” (KUN: 179-180). In this case, the question arises, how did state negotiations take place in the first place? Where did the ambassadors of sovereign states live? Is it really at military headquarters? And how was it possible to keep up with the constant transfers of these rates during combat operations? Where was the state chancellery, archives, translators, scribes, heralds, treasury, room for looted valuables? Did you also move with the Khan’s headquarters? – It’s hard to believe. – And now Kungurov comes to the conclusion.
Did the Mongol Empire exist?
“Here it is natural to ask the question: did this legendary Mongol Empire even exist? Was! - historians will shout in unison and, as evidence, will show a stone turtle of the Yuan dynasty in the vicinity of the modern Mongolian village of Karakorum or a shapeless coin of unknown origin. If this seems unconvincing to you, then historians will authoritatively add a couple more clay shards dug up in the Black Sea steppes. This will certainly convince the most inveterate skeptic” (KUN: 180). – Alexey Kungurov’s question has been asking for a long time, and the answer to it is quite natural. No Mongol Empire ever existed! – However, the author of the study is concerned not only about the Mongols, but also about the Tatars, as well as about the attitude of the Mongols to Rus', and therefore he continues his story.
“But we are interested in the great Mongol Empire because... Rus' was allegedly conquered by Batu, the grandson of Genghis Khan and the ruler of the Jochi ulus, better known as the Golden Horde. From the possessions of the Golden Horde to Rus' is still closer than from Mongolia. During the winter, you can get from the Caspian steppes to Kyiv, Moscow and even Vologda. But the same difficulties arise. Firstly, horses need fodder. In the Volga steppes, horses can no longer dig up withered grass from under the snow with their hoofs. The winters there are snowy, and therefore local nomads stocked up hay in their winter huts in order to survive during the most difficult times. In order for an army to move in winter, oats are needed. No oats - no opportunity to go to Rus'. Where did nomads get their oats?
The next problem is roads. From time immemorial, frozen rivers have been used as roads in winter. But a horse must be shod in order to be able to walk on ice. On the steppe it can run unshod all year round, but an unshod horse, and even with a rider, cannot walk on ice, stone deposits or a frozen road. In order to shoe the hundred thousand war horses and baggage mares required for the invasion, more than 400 tons of iron alone is needed! And after 2-3 months you need to shoe the horses again. How many forests do you need to cut down in order to prepare 50 thousand sleighs for a convoy?
But in general, as we found out, even in the event of a successful march to Rus', an army of 10,000 would find itself in an extremely difficult situation. Supply at the expense of the local population is almost impossible; increasing reserves is absolutely unrealistic. We have to conduct grueling assaults on cities, fortresses and monasteries, and suffer irreparable losses while delving deeper into enemy territory. What is the point of this deepening if the occupiers left behind a devastated desert? What is the general purpose of war? Every day the invaders will become weaker, and by spring they must go to the steppes, otherwise the opened rivers will lock the nomads in the forests, where they will die of hunger” (KUN: 180-181). – As we see, the problems of the Mongol Empire are manifested on a smaller scale in the example of the Golden Horde. And then Kungurov considers the later Mongol state - the Golden Horde.
Capitals of the Golden Horde.
“There are two known capitals of the Golden Horde - Sarai-Batu and Sarai-Berke. Even their ruins have not survived to this day. Historians also found the culprit here - Tamerlane, who came from Central Asia and destroyed these most prosperous and populated cities of the East. Today, archaeologists are excavating on the site of the supposedly great capitals of the great Eurasian empire only the remains of adobe huts and the most primitive household utensils. Everything valuable, they say, was plundered by the evil Tamerlane. What is characteristic is that archaeologists do not find the slightest trace of the presence of Mongolian nomads in these places.
However, this does not bother them at all. Since traces of Greeks, Russians, Italians and others were found there, it means the matter is clear: the Mongols brought craftsmen from conquered countries to their capital. Does anyone doubt that the Mongols conquered Italy? Read carefully the works of “scientific” historians - it says that Batu reached the coast of the Adriatic Sea and almost to Vienna. Somewhere there he caught the Italians. And what does it mean that Sarai-Berke is the center of the Sarsk and Podonsk Orthodox diocese? This, according to historians, testifies to the phenomenal religious tolerance of the Mongol conquerors. True, in this case it is not clear why the Golden Horde khans allegedly tortured several Russian princes who did not want to renounce their faith. The Grand Duke of Kiev and Chernigov Mikhail Vsevolodovich was even canonized for refusing to worship the sacred fire, and was killed for disobedience” (KUN: 181). Again we see a complete inconsistency in the official version.
What was the Golden Horde?
“The Golden Horde is the same state invented by historians as the Mongol Empire. Accordingly, the Mongol-Tatar “yoke” is also a fiction. The question is who invented it. It is useless to look for mentions of the “yoke” or the mythical Mongols in Russian chronicles. “Evil Tatars” are mentioned in it quite often. The question is, who did the chroniclers mean by this name? Either this is an ethnic group, or a way of life or class (akin to the Cossacks), or this is a collective name for all Turks. Maybe the word “Tatar” means a mounted warrior? There are a great many Tatars known: Kasimov, Crimean, Lithuanian, Bordakovsky (Ryazan), Belgorod, Don, Yenisei, Tula... just listing all kinds of Tatars will take half a page. The chronicles mention service Tatars, baptized Tatars, godless Tatars, sovereign Tatars and Basurman Tatars. That is, this term has an extremely broad interpretation.
The Tatars, as an ethnic group, appeared relatively recently, about three hundred years ago. Therefore, an attempt to apply the term “Tatar-Mongols” to modern Kazan or Crimean Tatars is a scam. There were no Kazan Tatars in the 13th century; there were Bulgars, who had their own principality, which historians decided to call Volga Bulgaria. At that time there were no Crimean or Siberian Tatars, but there were Kipchaks, they are Polovtsians, they are Nogais. But if the Mongols conquered, partially exterminating, the Kipchaks and periodically fought with the Bulgars, then where did the Mongol-Tatar symbiosis come from?
No newcomers from the Mongolian steppes were known not only in Rus', but also in Europe. The term “Tatar yoke,” meaning the power of the Golden Horde over Russia, appeared at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries in Poland in propaganda literature. It is believed that it belongs to the pen of the historian and geographer Matthew Miechowski (1457-1523), a professor at the University of Krakow” (KUN: 181-182). – Above, we read news about this both on Wikipedia and in the works of three authors (SVI). His “Treatise on the Two Sarmatias” was considered in the West the first detailed geographical and ethnographic description of Eastern Europe to the meridian of the Caspian Sea. In the preamble to this work, Miechowski wrote: “The southern regions and coastal peoples up to India were discovered by the king of Portugal. Let the northern regions with the peoples living near the Northern Ocean to the east, discovered by the troops of the Polish king, now become known to the world" (KUN: 182-183). - Very interesting! It turns out that Rus' had to be discovered by someone, although this state existed for several millennia!
“How dashing! This enlightened man equates Russians with African blacks and American Indians, and attributes fantastic merits to the Polish troops. The Poles never reached the coast of the Arctic Ocean, long ago developed by the Russians. Only a century after the death of Mekhovsky during the Time of Troubles, individual Polish detachments scoured the Vologda and Arkhangelsk regions, but these were not the troops of the Polish king, but ordinary gangs of robbers robbing merchants on the northern trade route. Therefore, one should not take seriously his insinuations about the fact that the backward Russians were conquered by completely wild Tatars” (KUN: 183) - It turns out that Mekhovsky’s writing was a fantasy that the West did not have the opportunity to verify.
“By the way, Tatars are the European collective name for all eastern peoples. Moreover, in the old days it was pronounced as “tartars” from the word “tartar” - the underworld. It is quite possible that the word “Tatars” came into the Russian language from Europe. At least, when European travelers called the inhabitants of the lower Volga Tatars in the 16th century, they did not really understand the meaning of this word, and even more so did not know that for Europeans it meant “savages who escaped from hell.” The association of the word “Tatars” by the Criminal Code with a specific ethnic group began only in the 17th century. The term “Tatars”, as a designation for the Volga-Ural and Siberian settled Turkic-speaking peoples, was finally established only in the twentieth century. The word formation “Mongol-Tatar yoke” was first used in 1817 by the German historian Hermann Kruse, whose book was translated into Russian and published in St. Petersburg in the mid-19th century. In 1860, the head of the Russian spiritual mission in China, Archimandrite Palladius, acquired the manuscript of “The Secret History of the Mongols,” making it public. No one was embarrassed that “The Tale” was written in Chinese. This is even very convenient, because any discrepancies can be explained by erroneous transcription from Mongolian to Chinese. Mo, Yuan is a Chinese transcription of the Chinggisid dynasty. And Shutsu is Kublai Khan. With such a “creative” approach, as you might guess, any Chinese legend can be declared either the history of the Mongols or a chronicle of the Crusades” (KUN: 183-184). – It is not for nothing that Kungurov mentions a clergyman from the Russian Orthodox Church, Archimandrite Palladius, hinting that he was interested in creating a legend about the Tatars based on Chinese chronicles. And it’s not for nothing that he builds a bridge to the Crusades.
The legend of the Tatars and the role of Kyiv in Rus'.
“The beginning of the legend about Kievan Rus was laid by the “Synopsis” published in 1674 - the first educational book on Russian history known to us. This book was reprinted several times (1676, 1680, 1718 and 1810) and was very popular until the middle of the 19th century. Its author is considered to be Innocent Gisel (1600-1683). Born in Prussia, in his youth he came to Kyiv, converted to Orthodoxy and became a monk. Metropolitan Peter Mohyla sent the young monk abroad, from where he returned an educated man. He applied his learning in a tense ideological and political struggle with the Jesuits. He is known as a literary theologian, historiographer and theologian” (KUN: 184). – When we talk about the fact that in the 18th century Miller, Bayer and Schlözer became the “fathers” of Russian historiography, we forget that a century earlier, under the first Romanovs and after Nikon’s reform, a new Romanov historiography under the name “Synopsis”, that is, summary, a German also wrote, so there was already a precedent. It is clear that after the eradication of the Rurikovich dynasty and the persecution of Old Believers and Old Believers, Muscovy needed a new historiography that would whitewash the Romanovs and denigrate the Rurikovichs. And it appeared, although it did not come from Muscovy, but from Little Russia, which since 1654 became part of Muscovy, although it was spiritually adjacent to Lithuania and Poland.
“Gisel should be considered not only a church figure, but also a political figure, for the Orthodox church elite in the Polish-Lithuanian state was an integral part of the political elite. As a protégé of Metropolitan Peter Mogila, he maintained active ties with Moscow on political and financial issues. In 1664 he visited the Russian capital as part of the Little Russian embassy of Cossack elders and clergy. Apparently, his works were appreciated, since in 1656 he received the rank of archimandrite and rector of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, retaining it until his death in 1683.
Of course, Innocent Gisel was an ardent supporter of the annexation of Little Russia to Great Russia, otherwise it is difficult to explain why Tsars Alexei Mikhailovich, Fyodor Alekseevich and ruler Sofya Alekseevna were very favorable to him and repeatedly presented him with valuable gifts. So, it is “Synopsis” that begins to actively popularize the legend of Kievan Rus, the Tatar invasion and the fight against Poland. The main stereotypes of ancient Russian history (the founding of Kyiv by three brothers, the calling of the Varangians, the legend of the baptism of Rus' by Vladimir, etc.) are arranged in an orderly row in the Synopsis and are precisely dated. Perhaps Gisel’s story “On Slavic Freedom or Liberty” may seem somewhat strange to today’s reader. - “The Slavs, in their bravery and courage, strive hard day by day, also fighting against the ancient Greek and Roman Caesars, and always receiving a glorious victory, in all freedom alive; It was also possible for the great King Alexander the Great and his father Philip to bring the power under the rule of this Light. To the same, glorious for the sake of military deeds and labors, Tsar Alexander granted the Slavs a letter on gold parchment, written in Alexandria, approving liberties and land to them, before the Nativity of Christ in the year 310; and Augustus Caesar (in his own Kingdom, the King of glory, Christ the Lord was born) did not dare to wage war with the free and strong Slavs" (KUN: 184-185). – I note that if the legend about the founding of Kiev was very important for Little Russia, which according to it became the political center of all ancient Rus', in light of which the legend about the baptism of Kiev by Vladimir grew to the statement about the baptism of All Rus', and both legends thus carried a powerful the political meaning of promoting Little Russia to first place in the history and religion of Rus', then the quoted passage does not carry such pro-Ukrainian propaganda. Here, apparently, we have an insertion of traditional views on the participation of Russian soldiers in the campaigns of Alexander the Great, for which they received a number of privileges. Here are also examples of interaction between Rus' and the politicians of late antiquity; later, the historiographies of all countries will remove any mention of the existence of Rus' in the specified period. It is also interesting to see that the interests of Little Russia in the 17th century and now are diametrically opposed: then Gisel argued that Little Russia is the Center of Rus', and all the events in it are epoch-making for Great Rus'; now, on the contrary, the “independence” of the Outskirts from Rus', the connection of the Outskirts with Poland are being proven, and the work of the first President of the Outskirts, Kravchuk, was called “The Outskirts is such a power.” Supposedly independent throughout its history. And the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Outskirts asks Russians to write “In the Outskirts”, and not “ON the Outskirts”, distorting the Russian language. That is, at the moment the Qiu power is more satisfied with the role of the Polish periphery. This example clearly shows how political interests can change the country’s position by 180 degrees, and not only abandon claims to leadership, but even change the name to a completely dissonant one. Modern Gisel would try to connect the three brothers who founded Kyiv with Germany and the German Ukrainians, who had nothing to do with Little Russia, and the introduction of Christianity in Kyiv with the general Christianization of Europe, which supposedly had nothing to do with Rus'.
“When an archimandrite, favored at court, undertakes to compose history, it is very difficult to consider this work as a model of unbiased scientific research. Rather, it will be a propaganda treatise. And a lie is the most effective method of propaganda if the lie can be introduced into the mass consciousness.
It is “Synopsis”, which was published in 1674, that has the honor of becoming the first Russian MASS print publication. Until the beginning of the 19th century, the book was used as a textbook on Russian history; in total, it went through 25 editions, the last of which was published in 1861 (the 26th edition was already in our century). From the point of view of propaganda, it does not matter how much Giesel’s work corresponded to reality, what is important is how firmly it was rooted in the consciousness of the educated layer. And it took root firmly. Considering that “Synopsis” was actually written by order of the ruling house of the Romanovs and was officially imposed, it could not have been otherwise. Tatishchev, Karamzin, Shcherbatov, Solovyov, Kostomarov, Klyuchevsky and other historians, brought up on the Giselian concept, simply could not (and hardly wanted) to critically comprehend the legend of Kievan Rus” (KUN: 185). – As we see, a kind of “Short Course of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)” of the victorious pro-Western Romanov dynasty was the “Synopsis” of the German Gisel, who represented the interests of Little Russia, which had recently become part of Rus', which immediately began to claim the role of leader in the political and religious life of Rus'. So to speak, from rags to riches! It was this peripheral newly acquired part of Rus' that completely suited the Romanovs as a historical leader, as well as the story that this weak state was defeated by equally peripheral steppe inhabitants from the Underworld - Russian Tartaria. The meaning of these legends is obvious - Rus' was allegedly defective from the very beginning!
Other Romanov historians about Kievan Rus and the Tatars.
“The court historians of the 18th century, Gottlieb Siegfried Bayer, August Ludwig Schlözer and Gerard Friedrich Miller, also did not contradict the Synopsis. Tell me, please, how could Bayer be a researcher of Russian antiquities and the author of the concept of Russian history (he gave rise to the Norman theory), when during the 13 years of his stay in Russia he did not even learn the Russian language? The last two were co-authors of the obscenely politicized Norman theory, which proved that Rus' acquired the features of a normal state only under the leadership of true Europeans, the Ruriks. Both of them edited and published Tatishchev’s works, after which it is difficult to say what remained of the original in his works. At least, it is known for sure that the original of Tatishchev’s “Russian History” disappeared without a trace, and Miller, according to the official version, used certain “drafts” that are now also unknown to us.
Despite constant conflicts with colleagues, it was Miller who formed the academic framework of official Russian historiography. His most important opponent and ruthless critic was Mikhail Lomonosov. However, Miller managed to take revenge on the great Russian scientist. And how! Prepared by Lomonosov for the publication “Ancient Russian history"through the efforts of his opponents, it was never published. Moreover, the work was confiscated after the author’s death and disappeared without a trace. And a few years later, only the first volume of his monumental work was printed, prepared for publication, it is believed, by Muller personally. Reading Lomonosov today, it is completely impossible to understand what he argued so fiercely with the German courtiers - his “Ancient Russian History” was in the spirit of the officially approved version of history. There are absolutely no contradictions with Müller on the most controversial issue of Russian antiquity in Lomonosov’s book. Consequently, we are dealing with a forgery” (KUN: 186). - Brilliant conclusion! Although something else remains unclear: the Soviet government was no longer interested in exalting one of the republics of the USSR, namely the Ukrainian, and belittling the Turkic republics, which precisely fell under the understanding of Tartary or Tatars. It would seem that it was time to get rid of the forgery and show the true history of Rus'. Why in Soviet time did Soviet historiography adhere to the version pleasing to the Romanovs and the Russian Orthodox Church? – The answer lies on the surface. Because the worse the history of Tsarist Russia was, the better the history of Soviet Russia was. It was then, during the time of the Rurikovichs, that it was possible to call on foreigners to rule a great power, and the country was so weak that it could have been conquered by some Tatar-Mongols. In Soviet times, it seemed that no one was called up from anywhere, and Lenin and Stalin were natives of Russia (although in Soviet times no one would have dared to write that Rothschild helped Trotsky with money and people, Lenin was helped by the German general staff, and Yakov Sverdlov was responsible for communications with European bankers). On the other hand, one of the employees of the Institute of Archeology in the 90s told me that the flower of pre-revolutionary archaeological thought did not remain in Soviet Russia, Soviet-style archaeologists were very much inferior in their professionalism to pre-revolutionary archaeologists, and they tried to destroy pre-revolutionary archaeological archives. “I asked her in connection with archaeologist Veselovsky’s excavations of the Kamennaya Mogila caves in Ukraine, because for some reason all the reports about his expedition were lost. It turned out that they were not lost, but deliberately destroyed. For the Stone Grave is a Paleolithic monument in which there are Russian runic inscriptions. And according to it, a completely different history of Russian culture emerges. But archaeologists are part of the team of historians of the Soviet era. And they created no less politicized historiography than historians in the service of the Romanovs.
“It remains only to state that the edition of Russian history that is still in use today was compiled exclusively by foreign authors, mainly Germans. The works of Russian historians who tried to resist them were destroyed, and falsifications were published under their name. One should not expect that the gravediggers of the national historiographical school spared dangerous primary sources. Lomonosov was horrified when he learned that Schlözer had gained access to all the ancient Russian chronicles that had survived at that time. Where are those chronicles now?
By the way, Schlözer called Lomonosov “a rude ignorant who knew nothing except his chronicles.” It is difficult to say what there is more hatred for in these words - towards the stubborn Russian scientist who considers the Russian people to be the same age as the Romans, or towards the chronicles that confirmed this. But it turns out that the German historian who received the Russian chronicles at his disposal was not guided by them at all. He respected political order above science. Mikhail Vasilyevich, when it came to the hateful little thing, also did not mince words. About Schlözer we have heard the following statement of his: “... what kind of vile dirty tricks would such cattle, allowed to them, do in Russian antiquities” or “He is a lot like some idol priest who, having smoked himself with henbane and dope and spinning fast on one leg, spun his head, gives dubious, dark, incomprehensible and completely wild answers.”
How long will we dance to the tune of the “stoned idol priests”?” (KUN:186-187).
Discussion.
Although on the topic of the mythological nature of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, I read the works of L.N. Gumilyov, and A.T. Fomenko, and Valyansky and Kalyuzhny, but no one wrote so clearly, in detail and conclusively before Alexei Kungurov. And I can congratulate “our regiment” of researchers of non-politicized Russian history for having one more bayonet in it. I note that he is not only well-read, but also capable of a remarkable analysis of all the absurdities of professional historians. It is professional historiography that comes up with bows that shoot 300 meters with the lethal force of a modern rifle bullet; it is precisely this that calmly appoints backward herders who had no statehood as the creators of the largest state in the history of mankind; it is they who suck out huge armies of conquerors that are impossible to feed. , nor move several thousand kilometers. The illiterate Mongols, it turns out, compiled land and capitation lists, that is, they conducted a population census throughout this huge country, and also recorded trade income even from itinerant traders. And the results of this enormous work in the form of reports, lists and analytical reviews disappeared somewhere without a trace. It turned out that there is not a single archaeological confirmation of the existence of both the capital of the Mongols and the capitals of the uluses, as well as the existence of Mongol coins. And even today, Mongolian tugriks are a non-convertible monetary unit.
Of course, the chapter touches on many more problems than the reality of the existence of the Mongol-Tatars. For example, the possibility of masking the real forced Christianization of Rus' by the West due to the Tatar-Mongol invasion. However, this problem requires much more serious argumentation, which is absent in this chapter of Alexei Kungurov’s book. Therefore, I am in no hurry to draw any conclusions in this regard.
Conclusion.
Nowadays, there is only one justification for supporting the myth of the Tatar-Mongol invasion: it not only expressed, but also expresses today the Western point of view on the history of Russia. The West is not interested in the point of view of Russian researchers. It will always be possible to find such “professionals” who, for the sake of self-interest, career or fame in the West, will support a generally accepted myth fabricated by the West.
Already at the age of 12 the future Grand Duke married, at the age of 16 he began to replace his father when he was absent, and at 22 he became the Grand Duke of Moscow.
Ivan III had a secretive and at the same time strong character (later these character traits manifested themselves in his grandson).
Under Prince Ivan, the issue of coins began with the image of him and his son Ivan the Young and the signature “Gospodar” All Rus'" As a stern and demanding prince, Ivan III received the nickname Ivan groznyj, but a little later this phrase began to be understood as a different ruler Rus' .
Ivan continued the policy of his ancestors - collecting Russian lands and centralizing power. In the 1460s, Moscow's relations with Veliky Novgorod became strained, whose residents and princes continued to look west, towards Poland and Lithuania. After the world failed to establish relations with the Novgorodians twice, the conflict reached a new level. Novgorod enlisted the support of the Polish king and Prince Casimir of Lithuania, and Ivan stopped sending embassies. On July 14, 1471, Ivan III, at the head of an army of 15-20 thousand, defeated the almost 40 thousand army of Novgorod; Casimir did not come to the rescue.
Novgorod lost most of its autonomy and submitted to Moscow. A little later, in 1477, the Novgorodians organized a new rebellion, which was also suppressed, and on January 13, 1478, Novgorod completely lost its autonomy and became part of Moscow State.
Ivan settled all the unfavorable princes and boyars of the Novgorod principality throughout Rus', and populated the city itself with Muscovites. In this way he protected himself from further possible revolts.
“Carrot and stick” methods Ivan Vasilievich gathered under his rule the Yaroslavl, Tver, Ryazan, Rostov principalities, as well as the Vyatka lands.
The end of the Mongol yoke.
While Akhmat was waiting for Casimir's help, Ivan Vasilyevich sent a sabotage detachment under the command of the Zvenigorod prince Vasily Nozdrovaty, who went down the Oka River, then along the Volga and began to destroy Akhmat's possessions in the rear. Ivan III himself moved away from the river, trying to lure the enemy into a trap, as in his time Dmitry Donskoy lured the Mongols into the Battle of the Vozha River. Akhmat did not fall for the trick (either he remembered Donskoy’s success, or he was distracted by sabotage behind him, in the unprotected rear) and retreated from Russian lands. On January 6, 1481, immediately upon returning to the headquarters of the Great Horde, Akhmat was killed by the Tyumen Khan. Civil strife began among his sons ( Akhmatova's children), the result was the collapse of the Great Horde, as well as the Golden Horde (which formally still existed before that). The remaining khanates became completely sovereign. Thus, standing on the Ugra became the official end Tatar-Mongolian yoke, and the Golden Horde, unlike Rus', could not survive the stage of fragmentation - several states, not connected with each other, later emerged from it. Here comes the power Russian state started to grow.
Meanwhile, the peace of Moscow was also threatened by Poland and Lithuania. Even before standing on the Ugra, Ivan III entered into an alliance with the Crimean Khan Mengli-Gerey, the enemy of Akhmat. The same alliance helped Ivan in containing pressure from Lithuania and Poland.
In the 80s of the 15th century, the Crimean Khan defeated the Polish-Lithuanian troops and destroyed their possessions in the territory of what is now central, southern and western Ukraine. Ivan III entered the battle for the western and northwestern lands controlled by Lithuania.
In 1492, Casimir died, and Ivan Vasilyevich took the strategically important fortress of Vyazma, as well as many settlements in the territory of what is now Smolensk, Oryol and Kaluga regions.
In 1501, Ivan Vasilyevich obliged the Livonian Order to pay tribute for Yuryev - from that moment Russian-Livonian War temporarily stopped. The continuation was already Ivan IV Grozny.
Until the end of his life, Ivan maintained friendly relations with the Kazan and Crimean khanates, but later relations began to deteriorate. Historically, this is associated with the disappearance of the main enemy - the Great Horde.
In 1497, the Grand Duke developed his collection of civil laws called Code of Law, and also organized Boyar Duma.
The Code of Law almost officially established such a concept as “ serfdom", although the peasants still retained some rights, for example, the right to transfer from one owner to another in St. George's day. Nevertheless, the Code of Law became a prerequisite for the transition to an absolute monarchy.
On October 27, 1505, Ivan III Vasilyevich died, judging by the description of the chronicles, from several strokes.
Under the Grand Duke, the Assumption Cathedral was built in Moscow, literature (in the form of chronicles) and architecture flourished. But the most important achievement of that era was liberation of Rus' from Mongol yoke.
