Prince Rurik is the first prince. Who ruled Russia before the calling of Rurik

The history of Rus' is usually traced back to the “calling of the Varangians.” The same thing that happened before Rurik came to “rule over us” is rarely mentioned in textbooks. Nevertheless, the presence of statehood in Rus' and “before Rurik” is confirmed by an abundance of facts.

When did the Russians have a state?

Official domestic historiography says that statehood in Rus' arose in 862 after the Rurik dynasty came to power. However, recently many researchers have questioned this point of view. In particular, political scientist Sergei Chernyakhovsky argues that the beginning of Russian statehood should be pushed back at least 200 years into history. And not without reason.

Many sources speak about the centralized Russian state before the Rurikovichs, for example, the “Joachim Chronicle”, published in the 18th century by Vasily Tatishchev.

If we assume that the Varangians were “called to rule” in the Russian lands, then the conclusion arises that there were not scattered Slavic tribes here, but a people who had an idea of ​​​​centralized power. However, if we accept as correct the idea of ​​the historian Boris Rybakov that Rurik began to reign after the conquest of Novgorod, then in this case we see possessions subordinate to a single capital.

Greek and Latin sources name large cities around which the ancient Russian population was concentrated. In addition to Kyiv and Novgorod, the now forgotten Izborsk, Polotsk, Belozersk, Lyubech, Vyshgorod are mentioned there. For example, a Bavarian geographer of the 9th century counted up to 4000 cities among the Slavs!

One of the signs of statehood is the existence of writing. It is now clear that it existed in pre-Christian Rus'. The 10th century writer Ibn-Fodlan speaks about this, for example, as an eyewitness, who claimed that on the gravestone the Russians always indicated the name of the deceased, as well as the prince to whom he obeyed. The Byzantines and Scandinavians not only mentioned that the Slavs have their own letters - initial letters, but also called them an educated people.

Moreover, in Byzantine sources, when describing the life of the Rus, obvious signs of their government system: hierarchy of the nobility, administrative division of lands. Petty princes, over whom the “kings” stood, are also mentioned.

Who ruled Russia before Rurik

According to the generally accepted version, the first ruling dynasty in Rus' was founded by Rurik. However, modern researchers suggest that the Rurikovichs overthrew or at least replaced the dynasty that already existed here. Historian Alexander Samsonov speaks of the close continuity in Rus' of other developed cultures - Scythian and Sarmatian, from where the first princes of the Russian lands could have come.

“The Tale of Sloven and Rus” tells the story of two brothers, the sons of Scythian, who moved up from the Black Sea lands in search of new territories. They reached the banks of the Volkhov River, where they founded the city of Slovensk, which later became known as Veliky Novgorod.

Further, as it is said in the chronicle, “Sloven and Rus lived together in great love, and the princess there, and took possession of many countries in those regions. Likewise, according to them, their sons and grandsons became princes according to their tribes and gained eternal glory and much wealth for themselves with their sword and bow.” The source also mentions the close ties of the state of Slovenia and Rus with both barbarian peoples and developed countries West and East.

Proof of the authenticity of this story can be found in Arab-Persian sources of the 12th century, who wrote about the Rus and Slavs, referring to the eponyms Rus and Sloven. The Byzantine Simeon Logothetes in the 10th century also mentions Rus as the ancestor of the Russian people. And the Greeks, calling these lands “Great Scythia,” essentially confirm that the descendants of Scythia ruled here.

Based on the chronicles, the lands of Slovenia and Rus were repeatedly abandoned, but the ruling dynasty survived. A descendant of the first princes was Gostomysl, who, after the death of four sons, became the last in the family. The Magi, having interpreted one of Gostomysl's dreams, predicted that the new ruler in Novgorod would be the son of his daughter Umila and the Varangian prince Godoslav. This son is the legendary Rurik, who was called to replace (or continue, given the relationship) the Novgorod dynasty.

However, historians have ambivalent views on this version of dynastic succession. In particular, N. M. Karamzin and S. M. Solovyov questioned the reality of Gostomysl. Moreover, some archaeologists are not sure of the very existence of Novgorod before the 9th century. Excavations of the “Rurik settlement” confirmed only traces of the late Scandinavian and West Slavic presence in these lands.

All roads lead to Kyiv

If the reliability of the “Tale of Sloven and Rus” can be questioned, then the fact of the existence of the “Northern Archonties” has been recognized by historians. This is how the Byzantines called the rebellious land-states located in the Northern Black Sea region, which in the 6th and 7th centuries posed a serious threat to Constantinople.

Excavations in central Ukraine have confirmed the existence of once developed and densely populated territories. These proto-state formations were united by the concept of “Chernyakhov culture”. It has been established that ironworking, bronze casting, blacksmithing, stone cutting, as well as jewelry making and coinage developed on these lands.

Historians note the high level of management and active trade of representatives of the “Chernyakhov culture” with large ancient centers. According to Academician V.V. Sedov, the main population of these places were the Slavs-Antes and Scythian-Sarmatians.

Later, somewhere from the 5th century, it was in the center of the “Chernyakhov culture” that Kyiv began its rise - the future capital of the Old Russian state, the founder of which, according to the Tale of Bygone Years, was Kiy.

True, the historian N.M. Tikhomirov pushes back the founding of Kyiv to the 8th century. Other researchers object and find a new date in the 4th century, citing as an example one of the medieval chronicle sources: “It was founded in the year of Christ 334.”

A supporter of an earlier version of the founding of Kyiv, historian M. Yu. Braichevsky, relying on the works of the Byzantine writer Nicephorus Grigora, argues that Kiy, like many rulers of neighboring countries, received a symbol of power from the hands of Constantine the Great. In the text of Grigora there is a mention of the “ruler of Rus'”, to whom the emperor awarded the title of “tsar’s keeper”.

Thus, having received the go-ahead to reign, Kiy became the founder of the ruling dynasty of a young power with its capital in Kyiv.

In the “Book of Veles” (which, of course, cannot be considered a reliable source), Kiy is described as an outstanding commander and administrator who, having united a large number of Slavic tribes under his command, created a powerful state.

The Polish historian Jan Dlugosz, noting the role of Kiy in the formation of ancient Russian statehood, puts forward the thesis that the Kiev prince founded the line of dynastic succession: “After the death of Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv, ​​the heirs in the direct line, their sons and nephews dominated the Rusyns for many years, until the succession passed to two siblings Askold and Dir.”

As we know from the Tale of Bygone Years, in 882, Rurik’s successor Oleg killed Askold and Dir and took possession of Kiev. True, in the “Tale” Askold and Dir are called Varangians.

If we rely on the version of the Polish historian, then Oleg interrupted the legitimate dynasty coming from Kiy, and laid the foundations for the rule of a new dynastic branch - the Rurikovichs.

Thus, in a surprising way, the fates of two semi-legendary dynasties converge: the Novgorod one, originating from Sloven and Rus, and the Kyiv one, originating from Kiy. Both versions reasonably suggest that the ancient Russian lands could have been full-fledged states long before the “calling of the Varangians.”

But let's return to Rus'. What references exist about Russian (East Slavic) princes and about Rus' before the time of Rurik? What was happening then on the territory of the future Old Russian state and what evidence of this was preserved in historical sources? In the initial, undated part of the “Tale of Bygone Years” there is another legend about three brothers - the well-known legend about the founding of Kyiv, the future capital of Rus', and in that era the tribal center of the glades. It has long been noted that the chronicler especially distinguishes the Polyans from other East Slavic tribes. The narrative of the chronicle is, as it were, “field-centric,” which is not surprising, given the place of its creation. The chronicler is interested in the emergence of Kyiv, and he records local legends about the first Polyana princes. Here's what they look like in the Tale:

“In the field he lived as a person and ruled over his generations, like the brothers who lived in the fields before him, and each one lived with his family and in his own place, each ruling over his family. And there were 3 brothers: one was called Kiy, and the other was Cheek, and the third was Horeb, and their sister was Lybid. Kiy is sitting on the mountain, where Borichev is now taken away, and Shchek is sitting on the mountain, where is now called Shchekovitsa, and Khoriv is on the third mountain, from him he is nicknamed Khorevitsa. And he built a city in the name of his elder brother, and called its name Kyiv. There was a forest and a large forest near the city, and there was a forest catching animals, there were wise and understanding men, there were clearings, from them there are clearings in Kyiv to this day.

Or, ignorantly, rekosha, because Kiy was a carrier, Kyiv had more transportation then. from this side of the Dnieper, the verb ahu: for transportation to Kyiv. If only Kiy had been the carrier, he would not have gone to Tsar’s City; but behold, Kiy was a prince in his family, who came to the king, as they say, as if he received great honor from the king, in whose presence the kings came. Going back, he came to Dunaevi, and fell in love with the place, and cut down a small town, and wanted to sit down with his family, and did not give him that living nearby; Even to this day the Danube settlement is called Kievets. When Kiev came to his city of Kyiv, he died; and his brother Shchek and Khoriv and their sister Lybid died.

And to this day, the brothers often keep their reign in the fields, and in the villages theirs, and the Dregovichi theirs, and their slavs in Novgorod, and the other in Polot, like Polotsk.”

Here's the translation:

“The Glades lived separately in those days and were governed by their own clans; for even before that brethren (which will be discussed later) there were already glades, and they all lived with their clans in their own places, and each was governed independently. And there were three brothers: one named Kiy, the other - Shchek and the third - Khoriv, ​​and their sister - Lybid. Kiy sat on the mountain where Borichev now rises, and Shchek sat on the mountain that is now called Shchekovitsa, and Khoriv on the third mountain, which was nicknamed Khorivitsa after his name. And they built a city in honor of their elder brother and named it Kyiv. There was a forest and a large forest around the city, and they caught animals there, and those men were wise and sensible, and they were called glades, from them glades are still in Kyiv.

Some, not knowing, say that Kiy was a carrier; At that time, Kyiv had transportation from the other side of the Dnieper, which is why they said: “For transportation to Kyiv.” If Kiy had been a ferryman, he would not have gone to Constantinople; and this Kiy reigned in his family, and when he went to the king, they say that he received great honors from the king to whom he came. When he was returning, he came to the Danube, and took a fancy to the place, and cut down a small town, and wanted to sit in it with his family, but those living around did not let him; This is how the Danube residents still call the settlement - Kievets. Kiy, returning to his city of Kyiv, died here; and his brothers Shchek and Horiv and their sister Lybid died immediately.

And after these brothers, their family began to hold a reign near the Polans, and the Drevlyans had their own reign, and the Dregovichi had theirs, and the Slovenians had their own in Novgorod, and another on the Polota River, where the Polochans are.”

In the Novgorod First Chronicle of the younger edition, which, as we remember, reflected the so-called Primary Code of the 1090s that preceded the Tale of Bygone Years, the news about Kiy and his brothers looks somewhat different. At the very beginning of the chronicle text it is explained why Kyiv was named after Kiya: “Like the king of Rome of old, the city of Rome was named after him; and Antioch returned, and Antioch became great; and the packs of Seleucia, and the race of Seleucia; and again Alexandria, and Alexandria became in his name; and in many places the city was called in the names of those kings and princes: so the city was called alive in our country by the Grand Duke in the name of Kiya, and it is also called the former carrier; the frosts are active around the city.” Thus, the chronicler puts the name of Kyiv on a par with the names of other famous cities named after their founders. Just as all these cities were named after the people who created them, so Kyiv is named after a certain Kiy. There are two versions reported about Kiy himself: according to one, he was a carrier, and according to the second, he was a hunter (“did fishing” near the city). The motif of hunting is also present in the news of the Tale of Bygone Years, where, following the First Chronicle of Novgorod, it is said that animals were caught in the forests near the city, but Kiy himself is not mentioned.

Further, Kiy is mentioned in the dated part of this chronicle, in the article under the very first designated year number - 6362, that is, 854: “Everyone lives with his family in their own places and countries, owning each of his family. And there were three brothers: one was named Kiya, the second was called Shchek, the third was called Horeb, and their sister was Lybid. And Kyi sat on the mountain where Borichev was now taken away, and was with his family; and his brother Shchek on Druzia Mountain, from him he was nicknamed Shchekovitsa; and the third was Khoriv, ​​from whom it was called Khorivitsa. And he created a town in the name of his brother, the elder and drug addict, the name of Kyiv. And there was a forest and a great forest around them, and there was a trap for animals. And when the men became wise and understanding, they were called Polyana, and to this day from them they are the Kyyans; It’s trash, eating lakes and treasures and groves, like other trash.” Nothing is said about the princely origin of Kiy and his actions in this capacity in the First Novgorod Chronicle. But the pagan way of life of the glades during the time of Kiya is especially emphasized. This reflected not only the less “Kiev-centric” position of the chronicler of the First Novgorod Chronicle, a kind of ““Novgorod patriotism”, succumbing to which, the chronicler equated the glades with “other filthy””, while in the “Tale of Bygone Years” the glades stand out and even are opposed to others East Slavic tribes. Perhaps the Polans had a cult of the founders of Kyiv as the sacred ancestors of the clan, and therefore the chronicler did not fail to once again emphasize the pagan nature of the Polans’ beliefs. But be that as it may, the chronicler is not interested in Kiy’s princely origin here.

In the story “The Tale” it is not very clear how (by military campaign or peaceful journey) Kiy went to Byzantium, where he met with the emperor, from whom he received a “great honor”. Therefore, in the Nikon Chronicle of the 16th century, this situation was conjectured - Kiy went to Constantinople “with the strength of an army.” And in general, like a real warrior prince, he “fought” many countries and even defeated the Volga Bulgarians. This information, of course, is a product of later invention and cannot be considered reliable. I note that in the first half of the 16th century, on the eve of the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible, when relations with the Kazan Khanate were an important part of state policy, the imaginary campaigns of the ancient princes, and especially the founder of Kyiv himself, seemed especially relevant.

Let us return, however, to the early chronicle reports. The first thing that catches your eye in the story about Kya is the trinity of brothers. Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv form the same triad as Rurik, Sineus and Truvor. True, in the Kiev legend there is also a sister, which gives rise to doubts about whether this trinity was original in the legend. Nevertheless, the three princes as the founders of a city or state, the organizers of the earth, the ancestors of the people - the motive is the same for both the legend of Kiev and the story of Rurik. If you carefully analyze “The Tale of Bygone Years” in its early part, you will find more of the same triads. These, of course, are the three eldest sons of Yaroslav the Wise - Izyaslav, Svyatoslav and Vsevolod, who in 1054 received, according to their father’s will, Kyiv, Chernigov and Pereyaslavl, that is, those lands that made up the “Russian land” in the narrow sense of the word (in the broad in a sense, it was the territory of the entire Old Russian state). Historians even write about the “triumvirate” of the elder Yaroslavichs, although the use of this ancient term does not seem entirely successful. Somewhat earlier, Rus' was divided into three parts between the sons of Prince Svyatoslav Igorevich, the son of Igor and Olga - Yaropolk, Oleg and Vladimir (this happened in 970, during the lifetime of their father). But the main triad opens the Tale of Bygone Years itself, which begins with a story about the division of the earth between the sons of the biblical Noah into three parts and the settlement of peoples in each of these parts. Thus, in the chronicle, a trinity structure initially appears, which is then repeated in several significant, “key” moments of ancient Russian history: the founding of Kyiv and the reign of the Polyans, the calling of the Varangian princes to the north of Rus', the allocation of the first “destinies” by Svyatoslav, the division of possessions by Yaroslav Wise. And if we add to this some more triads in the news of foreign sources about Rus' (a story about three groups of Rus by Arab authors, a message about the three sons of Vladimir the Saint by the German chronicler Thietmar of Merseburg and three kings in Rus' at the beginning of the 11th century in the Scandinavian “Strands about Eymund "), then the picture turns out to be even more impressive. V. Ya. Petrukhin, who drew attention to this principle, even calls it “a certain “paradigm” of the ancient Russian succession to the throne,” as if a predetermined story about the division of the earth by the sons of Noah and at the same time reflecting historical reality. The biblical tradition, which emphasized the unity of the human race, led the chronicler to Russian history, which thus served as a continuation of world history and preserved the same idea of ​​clan unity - the unity of the princely family. Probably, the trinity of the Kyiv brothers, like the Varangian brothers, was a manifestation of the same tradition of historical writing. It is also possible that the ancient structure of Kyiv, which was formed from several (three?) settlements, could be behind the trinity of brothers.

However, along with his brothers, Kiya also has a sister. In order to understand where it came from, you need to look at the names of these four. The understanding of the names of Kiya with relatives as eponyms, that is, names that explain the name of a geographical object, has already become textbook in historical science. The name of the elder brother explains the name of the city itself - Kiy sat on the main Kyiv mountain, to which the Borichev ascent led from Podol. The names of the other two brothers explain the names of two Kyiv mountains: Shchekovitsa and Khorivitsa. And the sister’s name is the name of the Kyiv river, which flows into the Dnieper (nowadays it is a small, very polluted stream). Everything about him is clear: “lybed” is a swan, and no questions arise here. As for other names and their corresponding names, there are different assumptions. The name "Kyiv" (the more ancient form of "Kyiv") apparently goes back to the name Kiy (Kyi), which corresponds to a root meaning "staff, rod, club, club, wooden hammer." This Slavic etymology is confirmed by a large area where more than fifty geographical names similar to Kyiv are known (Old Russian Kyiv occupies the eastern border of this space on the Dnieper right bank). There are other etymologies, in particular, the erroneous Slavic one, which traces this name to a word meaning “sand hillock”, “dune”, and dubious attempts at explanation from other languages ​​- Turkic or Iranian (through Khazar influence).

The name “Chek” may go back to the Turkic root “cheka”, cf. "chasekan" - "battle axe". As for the name of Mount Horivitsa, the biblical Mount Horeb in the Arabian Desert comes to mind first of all. At Horeb it was revealed to Moses burning bush, Moses himself poured water out of the rock with a blow of his rod, and, according to one version, it was here that God gave Moses the Law. This correlation between the name of brother Kiy and the biblical name, as well as the fact that the founders of Kyiv built their city on the mountains, allowed us to suggest that the chronicler understood Kyiv as the new Jerusalem (standing on the mountains of Israel) and Sinai. However, the opinion was also expressed that the name of this Kyiv mountain could have been borrowed by local residents from the Jewish-Khazar community that existed in Kyiv, which combined biblical names with Kyiv realities. It is doubtful whether the chronicler could have been aware of this probable Biblicalism when presenting the story about the founders of Kyiv. Perhaps he simply used a local name or recorded an already established legend. There is another etymology for "Horeb" - it is an Iranian root meaning "sun".

The meaning of the root “cue” led researchers to the idea that the legendary cue was the East Slavic embodiment of the image of the mythological, divine blacksmith (“cue” - “hammer”). The motif of the struggle of a blacksmith (or blacksmith brothers) with a serpent, personifying the evil principle (cf. “Serpentine Ramparts” of Kievan Rus) could be reflected in the legend about the founders of Kyiv. At the same time, in Slavic folklore there is also a motif of the marriage of the blacksmith hero and the water maiden - it is significant that Lybid, unlike the brothers, symbolizes the name of the river (and according to one of the chronicle versions, Kiy was a ferryman on the Dnieper, and his friend went to the Danube). This motive suggested that initially the Kiev legend included only two heroes - the couple Kiya and Lybid, and the transformation of the founders of Kyiv into a triad of brothers was the next stage in its history. However, these ancient motives were not reflected in the narrative of the chronicle itself.

The correlation between cue and blacksmith (“cue” with “hammer”), on the other hand, does not seem so obvious. A wooden hammer can hardly serve as a tool for blacksmithing. A club or staff are not at all attributes of this production. Another thing is a staff or rod, as a sign of a tribal leader, princely power. In this regard, Polyansky Kiy can be compared with other characters in Slavic legends about the first princes. Thus, the blooming stick-staff of the plowman Přemysl, the founder of the Czech royal dynasty, symbolically predetermined his future high status (this story was outlined above). Typologically close to the club-“cue” and the meaning of the name of the founder of the Polish dynasty Piast, who was also a peasant - “pestle”, an object that is used for pounding.

Let us now take a closer look at the motifs about Kiy that the chronicles brought to us. According to one version, Kiy was a carrier on the Dnieper. The motif of transportation across the river connects the image of Kiya with mythological ideas about the border of two worlds. The cue in this case acts as a link between these worlds, like the ancient Greek Charon, transporting the souls of the dead through the Styx - the mediator between life and death. In this case, the Dnieper is perceived as a certain border, and the same motive can be seen in the story about Kiy as a prince - in the story about his campaign on the Danube. It is significant that Kyiv itself in the 8th–9th centuries was on the border of the left bank Volyntsev archaeological culture, which combined the features of the Slavic and steppe worlds and existed on the lands of those East Slavic tribes that paid tribute to the Khazars. The legend of Kiya as the prince of the glades, obviously later (absent in the First Novgorod Chronicle), turns out to be more preferable for the compiler of the Tale of Bygone Years. This is not surprising, because it answers one of the questions asked already at the beginning of the “Tale” - “who was the first prince in Kyiv.” On the other hand, with the help of this legend the name of the Kievets settlement on the Danube was explained, and Rus' itself was included in the context of world history and the cultural and state space of civilization, the center of which was Byzantium. But to what extent does this chronicle version reflect historical reality?

Historians tried to see this reality behind the words of the legend and attributed the activities of Kiy to the times of those Byzantine emperors, during whose reign the Slavs attacked the Danube borders of the empire - Justinian (VI century) or even Anastasius (the turn of the V-VI centuries), and then were accepted by the emperors into the service . Another point of view suggests that the story about Kiy’s trip (or campaign) to Constantinople could have arisen under the influence of the real campaigns of Russian princes against Byzantium, especially the Danube campaign of Svyatoslav, who, as is known, wanted to settle in Pereyaslavets on the Danube (cf. Kiy’s founding of Kievets on the Danube) . In any case, the “multi-layered” nature of the legends about Kiev reflected in the chronicle is clear. Researchers believe that the earliest layer of motifs recorded in the chronicle (not to mention the ancient mythological ideas about the hero-blacksmith and crossing the river, reconstructed based on the semantics of the name, and brought to us by the chronicle in the image of Kiya the carrier) is associated with the tribal legend about Kiy (and his brothers) as the ancestors of the Polyan tribe and the founders of the city of Kyiv. The formation of the image of Kiya as a prince is the next stage in the development of the legend, which may also include the motif of hunting - a traditional evidence of princely status. As a prince, Kiy no longer acts only as the founder of the city, but also makes a trip to Constantinople, where he receives confirmation of his high status. At this stage of the formation of the legend, it is the state component that becomes important. Kiy is not only the ancestor, the tribal leader, but also the first Kiev prince. Perhaps this stage is already connected with the activities of the chroniclers themselves, as evidenced by the parallels in the legend of Kiy with the stories about the deeds of the first princes.

Another interesting aspect is connected with the twin legend of the Kyiv legend. We are talking about such a monument of Armenian historiography as “The History of Taron”. Taron is a historical region of ancient Armenia, located west of Lake Van (now the territory of Turkey). Taron played a big role in the history of the Armenian church and Armenian culture; It was here that the creator of the Armenian alphabet, Mesrop Mashtots, was born. The monument itself is a collection, the time of its compilation varies from the 8th to the 10th centuries. The “History of Taron” contains a story about the founding of three cities of the same name by three brothers - Quar, Melteus and Horean - in the country of Paluni. These names, as well as the name of the country, reveal a surprising correspondence to the legend about the founding of Kyiv (Kiy, Khoriv, ​​Polyana). There is an assumption that it was the Kiev legend that was reflected in the Armenian “History,” but since the dating of the Armenian source itself is uncertain, it is impossible on this basis to date the existence of the legend about Kiev and his brothers.

So, the legend about the founders of Kyiv refers in the Tale of Bygone Years to the legendary period of ancient Russian history. Nevertheless, in historical science, peculiar assumptions arose that the dynasty of princes, the founder of which was Kiy, ruled in the land of the glades for a long time and even that the Kyiv princes Askold and Dir, who, according to chronicles, were Varangians and “boyars” "Rurik, were the last descendants of this Slavic dynasty. Of course, such an assumption is fantastic. Not to mention the fact that the names “Askold” and “Dir” are definitely not Slavic; the basis for this version was the words of the Polish historian of the 15th (!) century, Jan Dlugosz, who, in the first book of his “Polish History”, talking about the princes of the East Slavs, noted: “Then, after the death of Kiy, Shchek and Korev, their sons and descendants, inheriting in a direct line, reigned among the Russians for many years, until this kind of inheritance led to two siblings - Oscald and Dir.” This phrase became the source of the statement about the direct family connection between the two princes killed by Oleg in 882 and the founders of Kyiv. Meanwhile, Dlugosz’s information is directly related to his concept of the origin of the Russian people from the Poles. Dlugosh substantiated Poland's claims to ancient Russian, including Kyiv, lands. Having compared the ethnonyms “Poles” and “Polyane” (which have a similar etymology, but are not genetically descended from one another), the chronicler came to the conclusion that the Poles were the ethnic basis of the Russians, and the legendary Kiy himself was the Polish prince. Since Askold and Dir were his descendants, Kiev was originally ruled by the Polish dynasty.

Phrases of this kind, taken out of the context of the work itself, often became sources of various misconceptions, the number of which, especially in relation to the early centuries of Russian history, is quite large. This also applies to the assumption, which thundered in its time, that the name “Rus” was already known in the 6th century. The Syriac Chronicle dates back to the middle of the 6th century (approximately 550-560), which is a translation of Zechariah the Rhetor’s “Ecclesiastical History,” written around 518, apparently in Greek. Zacharias himself served in Constantinople and was a Monophysite Christian by religion (later, he probably converted to Orthodoxy and became a bishop). His Ecclesiastical History covers the period from 436 to 491. The translation of the “History” into Syriac was carried out by an unknown resident of the Syrian city of Amida, who is conventionally called Pseudo-Zechariah. Pseudo-Zechariah added new chapters to the chronicle, and at the beginning of his text he gave a geographical description of the world, based on the classical ancient “Geography” of Claudius Ptolemy.

It is in this text that the reference we are interested in is contained, which is absent from Ptolemy. Pseudo-Zechariah describes the peoples living north of the Caucasus beyond the “Caspian Gate”: “Bazgun is a land with [its] language, which adjoins and extends to the Caspian Gate and the sea, which [are] within the Hunnic borders. Outside the gates live the Burgars, with [their] language, a pagan and barbarian people, they have cities, and Alans, they have five cities. From the borders of Dadu they live in the mountains, they have fortresses. Auangur, people living in tents, Augar, Sabir, Burgar, Kurtargar, Avar, Khazar, Dirmar, Sirurgur, Bagrasik, Kulas, Abdel, Ephtalite, these thirteen peoples live in tents, subsist on livestock and fish meat, wild animals and weapons . Inland from them [live] the Amazrat people and dog people, to the west and north of them [live] the Amazons, women with one breast, they live on their own and fight with weapons and on horses. There are no men among them, but if they wish to settle down, then they go peacefully to the peoples neighboring their land and communicate with them for about a month and return to their land. If they give birth to a male, then they kill it, if it is female, then they leave it and thus they maintain their position. Their neighboring people are the Eros, men with huge limbs who have no weapons and cannot be carried by horses because of their limbs. Further east, near the northern regions, there are three more black nations.” Mention of a certain people “Eros” among the well-known Alans, Avars, Khazars, in the northern reaches of the “Hunnic”, that is, in the southern part of Eastern Europe, was perceived by some researchers as an indication of the mention of Rus' already in the 6th century. Accordingly, this Rus' was identified with the Ants - the ancestors of the Eastern Slavs, known from Byzantine sources of the 6th–7th centuries. These antes were the “Rus” of the Middle Dnieper region, which then became the center of the Old Russian state.

However, in fact, the evidence of the Syrian chronicle cannot be taken literally. The “Eros” people coexist with various mythical peoples - dog-headed people (cynocephalians), dwarf Amazratians, Amazons - and are themselves described absolutely fantastically. This, however, did not bother researchers who tried to discern some reality behind these fantastic descriptions. Meanwhile, all these monstrous peoples on the edge of the ecumene are contrasted as an alien and hostile world with the mastered, “civilized” world - the usual tradition of ancient geographical descriptions. And besides, the “dews” in this description form a kind of pair with the Amazon people: the Amazons are warlike women on horses, armed to the teeth, the “dews” are big-legged men who cannot sit on horses and do not have weapons. Where did the mention of the fantastic people “eros” come from?

The source for this was the Bible. The fact is that in the biblical Book of the prophet Ezekiel, the leader of the peoples of the north, Gog, is mentioned: “But you, son of man, prophesy against Gog and say: thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, Gog, prince of Rosh, Meshech and Tubal ! And I will turn you, and lead you, and bring you out from the ends of the north, and bring you to the mountains of Israel. And I will knock your bow out of your left hand, and throw your arrows out of your right hand. You will fall on the mountains of Israel, you and all your armies and the nations that are with you; I will give you over to be devoured by all kinds of birds of prey and wild beasts” (Ezek. 39:1-4). The coming of Gog, the leader of the peoples of the north, at the instigation of Satan to Jerusalem should mark the end of the world: “When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and gather them to swearing; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they went out into the breadth of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And God sent fire down from heaven and consumed them” (Rev. 20:7-9). So, the terrible peoples of the north, led by Gog from the land of Magog, must fall on Christians. This is exactly how Byzantium perceived the invasions of the Rus, who were destroyed, by the way, by “Greek fire,” a flammable mixture spilled by the Greeks on the water. But what kind of nations does Gog lead? Meshech and Tubal are the Tibaren and Mosh of Herodotus (or the lands of Tabal and Muski of the Assyrian inscriptions), placed on the southeastern coast of the Black Sea. The Rosh people are the fruit of a translation misunderstanding. The fact is that in the Hebrew original of the Bible this place sounded like “nasi-rosh”, that is, “supreme head”, literally “supreme head of Meshech and Tubal”. And in the Greek translation of the Bible, the so-called Septuagint (done in Alexandria in the 3rd–2nd centuries BC), these words were translated as “archon rosh,” that is, the second word was left without translation and began to be perceived as the name of the people. It is in this sense that, apparently, the “Eros” people were described by Pseudo-Zechariah, who, in accordance with biblical tradition, placed them in the Far North, next to other monster peoples.

The first mentions of the Slavs by Arab authors date back to the 6th century. The Arabs called the Slavs as-sakaliba, but they also had a name for the Rus - ar-rus. Historians who worked on the territory of Arab Persia testify about the Rus, in relation to the 6th–7th centuries, but it is not entirely clear how reliable this information is. The Persian historian and philologist Abu Mansur al-Hussein ibn Muhammad al-Sa'alibi, who wrote in Arabic, around 1021 created a work entitled “The best of the biographies of the Persian kings and news about them.” In it he paid a lot of attention to the history of Sasanian Iran and in the story of the construction of the Derbent defensive wall by Shah Khosrow I Anushirvan (ruled in 531–579) among the hostile northern peoples, the Rus were mentioned along with the Turks and Khazars by another historian, Zahir ad-din Mar'ashi, who wrote “The History of Tabaristan” at the end of the 15th century. , Ruyan and Mazandaran" (lands on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea), where the Rus were placed in the 6th century north of the Caucasus.

Another author, the vizier of the Samanid state Muhammad Bal'ami, in 963 compiled in Persian an abbreviated and revised version of the “History of Prophets and Kings” by the Arab scholar Abu Jafar Muhammad ibn Jarir at-Tabari (838–923). Among other events in this The work also tells how in 643, during the period of the Arab conquests, the ruler of Derbent, Shahriyar, arrived in the camp of the Arab commander Abd ar-Rahman ibn Rabi and recognized himself as a vassal of the caliphate. Shahriyar achieved exemption from tribute in exchange for protecting the Derbent Pass from his northern neighbors. Among these neighbors, Bal "ami twice names the Rus, although in the surviving brief Arabic edition of the History of at-Tabari only the Khazars and Alans are named as such. Perhaps later authors, writing about events three hundred years ago or more, transferred information about the contemporary Rus people to events of the 6th–7th centuries. In relation to Bal’ami’s message, it is important to remember that his work was created when the memory of the ruinous campaigns of Rus' on the Caspian Sea in the first half of the 10th century was still alive. And therefore he could place the Rus among the peoples who threatened the Persians and Arabs in the Caspian back in the 7th century. The mention of “Russian ships” in the fleet of the Byzantine Emperor Constantine V in 774, which is contained in the “Chronography” of the Byzantine historian Theophan the Confessor, compiled in the 810s, can also be considered a misunderstanding. In fact, the text does not mention “Russian” ships, but “purple, crimson” ones - this is how this adjective should be understood. Thus, an incorrect understanding of one word can lead to incorrect historical conclusions.

In Byzantine and Slavic hagiographic literature there are two stories about the attacks of the Ros on Byzantium at the end of the 8th - beginning of the 9th century. But again, it is unclear to what extent these messages, presented in such a unique source as the lives of saints, can be trusted. The first news is contained in the “Life of Stephen of Sourozh” and is frankly legendary. Stefan of Sourozh in the 8th century was the bishop of the Crimean city of Sugdei (Surozh in Slavic), which was then part of the Byzantine Empire (later the Genoese called this city Soldaya, and now it is Sudak). Stephen died shortly after 787. His relics were in the altar of the Church of St. Sophia in Surozh, and the bishop himself was eventually recognized as a saint. “The Life of Stephen of Sourozh” exists in two editions - a short Greek (XIV-XV centuries) and a lengthy Old Russian one. The short version does not contain the story that interests us, but the Old Russian version does. The time of creation of the Old Russian edition is determined approximately as the 15th century. In this edition of the text there is a section “On the coming of Prince Bravlin from Veliky Novagrad to Surozh,” that is, Veliky Novgorod; in some texts of the Life the prince is also referred to as Bravalin or Branliv. According to the hagiographic story, a few years after the death of Stephen (that is, at the end of the 8th - beginning of the 9th century), the great Russian army came from Novgorod, led by Prince Bravlin, which captured the Crimean coast from Korsun (Chersonese) to Korch (Kerch) and approached Surozh . After ten days of siege, Bravlin’s warriors burst into the city, “breaking down” the iron gates. They entered the Church of Hagia Sophia, breaking the doors of the temple, and robbed it, taking censers, golden vessels, gold, pearls and an expensive cover from the tomb of Stephen. After this, Bravlin “fell ill”, his face turned back, and foam began to come out of his mouth. The prince shouted that it was the holy man who hit him in the face, and ordered his “boyars” to return everything looted from the temple. They put everything back and wanted to take the prince out of the church, but Bravlin said that the holy elder pressed him so hard to the floor that his soul “wanted to leave.” Bravlin ordered his army to leave the city without taking any loot with them. However, the prince still could not get up and ordered to return all the church vessels taken in Korsun, Kerch and other places, and bring everything to the saint’s tomb. Even after this was done, the saint said to the prince: “If you are not baptized in my church, you will not return and you will not leave here.” After which the prince, together with the “boyars,” was baptized by Archbishop Filaret, and his face fell into place (“but his neck still hurt,” noted in the Life).

This story, like the prince’s name itself, reveals a clearly later origin. Most likely, Bravlin (Branliv) belongs to the same circle of fictional characters as Gostomysl and other heroes of early Russian history as told in the 15th–16th centuries. However, such an outstanding Byzantinist as V. G. Vasilievsky believed that the Old Russian edition of the Life was created on the basis of a fairly early Byzantine source of the 10th century. Accordingly, the story could reflect the fact of some kind of attack by the Rus on the Crimean coast of the Black Sea at the beginning of the 9th or even at the end of the 8th century. Some historians even tried to see behind this story some real features of the events of that time, linking, for example, one of the forms of the name Bravlin - Bravalin with the legendary Scandinavian battle of Bravalla (!). Others looked for the Novgorod mentioned in the Life, believing that it was not Novgorod the Great (well known, of course, in the 15th century) that was meant, but the Crimean Scythian Naples (which, however, ceased to exist in the 3rd century), the center of the Late Scythian state. These examples show how far reflection can go when dealing uncritically with historical sources. Meanwhile, in general, there are no real grounds to attribute the story of the mythical Novgorod prince, which came down to us in a work of the 15th century, to such ancient times. Hagiographic literature is replete with various legendary motifs, and the healing of warlike pagans at the relics of a saint is a fairly common plot.

It is also present in another Life, and on a similar occasion - “The Life of St. George of Amastris,” preserved in a manuscript of the 10th century. George was the bishop of Amastris, a city in the Byzantine province of Paphlagonia on the southern coast of the Black Sea. He died at the beginning of the 9th century and was revered by the inhabitants of Amastrida as the deliverer of the city from the attack of the Arabs. According to V. G. Vasilievsky, supported by other historians, the “Life” of George of Amastrida was created by Deacon Ignatius, the future Metropolitan of Nicea, before 842, and, therefore, the events described in it date back to approximately 820-830 years. The attack of the “Rus” on Amastrida is described in the Life in the following way: “There was an invasion of barbarians, the Ros - a people, as everyone knows, extremely wild and rude, not bearing any traces of philanthropy. Brutal in morals, inhuman in deeds, revealing their bloodthirstiness by their very appearance, in nothing else that is characteristic of people, not finding such pleasure as in murder, they - this destructive people both in deed and in name - began the ruin of the Propontis (Sea of ​​Marmara. - E.P.) and visiting the other coast, finally reached the holy fatherland, mercilessly cutting off every sex and every age, not sparing the elders, not neglecting infants, but equally armed against everyone with a deadly hand and hastening everywhere bring about destruction as much as they had the strength to do so.”

When the barbarians entered the temple and saw the tomb of George of Amastris, they, imagining that treasures were hidden there, rushed to it to excavate it. But then they felt their arms and legs relax, as if bound by invisible bonds, and could not move. Then the leader of the Dews, at the request of the saint, stopped the robberies and violence and released the captive Christians: “And so a generous lighting of lamps, and all-night vigils, and chanting are arranged; the barbarians are freed from divine wrath, some reconciliation is arranged and a deal is made between them and the Christians, and they no longer insult shrines, no longer trample on divine altars, no longer take away divine treasures with wicked hands, no longer desecrate temples with blood. One coffin was strong enough to expose the madness of the barbarians, to stop murder, to stop brutality, to bring those more ferocious than wolves to the meekness of sheep, and to force those who worshiped groves and meadows to respect the Divine temples.”

If the assumption that the “Life of George of Amastrid” was compiled before 842 is correct, then we have the first mention of the invasion of the Ros (Russ) on the Byzantine possessions - however, not on Constantinople itself, but on Amastris, a large trading city famous for its wealth. Moreover, it turns out that by that time they already knew about the Rus in Byzantium, because the Life says that their savagery and rudeness are known to everyone. However, the story of the Life itself is of a traditional nature for such monuments, and it is very difficult to discern the features of historical reality behind the legend of the miracles of the saint. There is another point of view. The Life reflected not a separate, “independent” campaign of the Rus against Byzantium, but the well-known campaign against the Greeks of Prince Igor Rurikovich in 941. Then the Russians ravaged a large territory and even reached Paphlagonia, committing violence and robbery everywhere. It is also possible that the Life speaks of the Russians’ campaign against Byzantium in 860. This assumption casts doubt on the early dating of the events mentioned in the Life. In any case, it does not seem possible to unequivocally recognize the reality of the Russian attack on Amastris in the 820-830s.

The story from the Byzantine “Chronography” of the so-called Continuer Theophan is even more uncertain. The already mentioned Theophanes the Confessor at the beginning of the 9th century created his “Chronography”, which ended with a description of the events of the reign of Michael I, that is, it reached the year 813. This work was continued by several authors and was brought to the reign of Roman II, the son of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The manuscript of this “Chronography” ends with descriptions of the events of 961; Accordingly, the name of the author of this work as the Continuer of Feofan is conditional. The biography of Emperor Michael III contains information about the Patriarch of Constantinople John the Grammar, who took the patriarchal see in 837. John was a very learned man and was even believed to have practiced divination and witchcraft. One of his predictions was associated with an attack on Byzantium by some pagan tribe. The famous Byzantinist, academician Fyodor Ivanovich Uspensky considered the Rus to be this tribe. The text of the source itself does not provide any particular basis for this, but this passage is so interesting that it is worth citing it in its entirety.

“John... was ranked among the palace clergy and won the ardent love of Michael Travl (Emperor Michael II. - H.P.) either because he alone shared this heresy (iconoclasm. - H.P.), or because that he has earned fame for his extraordinary learning. Be that as it may, Michael loved him and appointed Theophilus (son and successor of Michael II on the imperial throne - E.P.) as teacher. And he, having taken the reins of government in his hands, first elevated him to the rank of syncella (literally “fellow-keeper,” one of the highest spiritual ranks. - E.P.), and later made him patriarch of Constantinople for the predictions that he gave him with the help of witchcraft and fortune telling on a platter. This is his magic. When this unfaithful and cruel tribe, led by three leaders, attacked and plundered the Roman land, naturally disheartening Theophilus and his subjects, John gave advice not to lose heart, but to be filled with joy and hope, if only he wanted to follow his advice. The advice was as follows. They said that among the copper statues built on the barrier of the hippodrome there was one with three heads, which he, using some kind of magic spells, correlated with the leaders of the tribe. He ordered that huge iron hammers, as many as there were heads, be delivered and handed over to three men with excellent hand strength. At a certain hour of the night, they were supposed to approach the statue with hammers raised in their hands and, on his orders, lower them on their heads with enormous force at once so as to knock them off the statue with one blow. Delighted and amazed by his words, Theophilus ordered everything to be carried out. When men with hammers appeared in the dead of night, John, hiding, so as not to be recognized, under worldly clothes, began to whisper magic words to himself, transferred the power existing in the leaders into the statue, expelled the one that had been infused into it with magic spells before, and ordered to strike with all your might. The two men, hitting with all their might, knocked two heads off the statue. The third, hitting weaker, only bent his head a little, but did not knock it off entirely. The same thing happened with the leaders. A strong feud and internecine war began between them. One of the leaders killed the other two by beheading, only one remained alive, and even then not in one piece. The tribe, which had fallen into insignificance, fled to its homeland in trouble and sorrow.” As follows from the logic of the narrative, if this attack happened, it occurred before 837, that is, before John became patriarch. The assumption that the Russians are meant here is tempting, but unprovable.

So, all of the above evidence about the Rus is not very reliable. The first clearly indisputable mention of the name of the people “Ros” dates back to 839. It is contained in the “Bertinian Annals”, which, as we remember, were the official “chronicle” of the West Frankish kingdom, in the part that belongs to the pen of Prudentius. Apparently, the annalist himself witnessed what happened.

On the fifteenth calends of June, that is, May 18, 839, an embassy from the Byzantine emperor Theophilus, led by Bishop Theodosius and spafarius (literally “squire,” a Byzantine court title) Theophanes, arrived at the Frankish emperor Louis the Pious at his residence in Ingelheim on the Rhine. . The ambassadors sought confirmation of "peace and permanent alliance between both parties." During this period, Byzantium was in a difficult situation - the troops of Caliph al-Mutasim defeated the army of Theophilus and took the city of Amorium - the ancestral “nest” of the Byzantine dynasty. The threat of an Arab invasion loomed over Constantinople. Under these conditions, Theophilus sought to enlist the support of European rulers by sending embassies to the Venetian Doge, the Emir of Cordoba and the Frankish Emperor. The embassy to Louis asked the emperor to organize an attack on northern Africa in order to divert the forces of the caliphate from Asia Minor. This goal, however, was not achieved. But something else is interesting for us.

Theophilus “also sent... some people who claimed that they, that is, their people, were called Rhos; their king, called Khakan (chakanus), sent them to him (Theophilus - E.P.), as they assured, for the sake of friendship. He asked ... that by the mercy of the emperor and with his help they would be able to return safely through his empire [to their homeland], since the path along which they arrived in Constantinople ran through the lands of barbarians and, in their extreme savagery, exceptionally ferocious peoples, and he I did not want them to return this way, so as not to expose themselves to any danger if necessary. Having carefully investigated [the purpose of] their arrival, the emperor learned that they were from the people of the Swedes (Sueones), and, considering them rather scouts both in that country and in ours than ambassadors of friendship, he decided to detain them until it will be possible to find out for certain whether they came with honest intentions or not. He did not hesitate to... inform Theophilus about this, and also that, out of love for him, he received them kindly and that if they turned out to be worthy of trust, he would let them go, providing the opportunity for a safe return to their homeland and help; if not, then he will send them with our ambassadors before his (Theophilus - E.P.) eyes, so that he himself can decide how to deal with them.” What happened to the ambassadors of the “ros” people next is unknown. The news of the Vertinskiy Annals is unique. This is the first mention of the “dews” in general and of Russian statehood in particular. Meanwhile, the information presented in it is so original that it caused controversy in historical science that has not subsided to this day.

What is Prudentius telling us? First of all, the annals convey the self-name of the people - “ros” (this Latin word in the Vertinsky Annals is a transliteration of the Greek name, and the Greek clearly reflects the self-name). It was in this form that this word was used by the “Rus” ambassadors themselves. The ruler of the Ros bore the title of Khakan, Kagan. This title, as we know, was used to refer to the rulers of the Turkic states - in the south of Eastern Europe these were the Avar and Khazar Khaganates. This forces us to assume that the title of ruler of the Ros was borrowed from the Turkic rulers, namely from the rulers of the Khazar Kaganate, whose lands were probably adjacent to the “khaganate” of the Ros. It is noteworthy, however, that the ambassadors of the Khakan of the Ros turned out to be Swedes by origin! This means that these were Scandinavians who somehow penetrated deep into the territory of Eastern Europe and reached Constantinople. Where was the state of the Khakan of the Ros? There has been a long-standing debate about this in science. Some historians place the “khaganate” in the Dnieper region (and connect it with the Volyntsev archaeological culture of the Dnieper-Don region), others much further north - in the region of Rostov, upper Volga, Novgorod and Ladoga.

The second version seems to better match the sources. Indeed, Scandinavian antiquities in the first half of the 9th century were concentrated only in the north of Rus' - in the Ladoga region and the Ilmen region. Then the Baltic-Volga trade route was developed, and only later the famous route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” along the Dnieper. If we assume that the ambassadors represented the ruling elite of the “Kaganate”, then it is logical to assume that it was public education in the north of Rus' - precisely in those areas where Rurik later came. In addition, the Vertinsky Annals themselves give indirect indications of this. The path of the ambassadors of the Khakan of the Ros, and this, apparently, was a small detachment, turned out to be extremely difficult. It ran through the lands of “savage” peoples, full of dangers, so that the ambassadors did not dare to return along the same road. It turned out to be much easier and safer for them to return to their homeland “in a roundabout way” - through Europe. And indeed, for the Swedes, traveling around Europe was much more “familiar” than traveling along the unknown paths of the future Kievan Rus. It can be seen that the path to the south, to Byzantium through this forested and then steppe territory was still very poorly developed - perhaps the “embassy” of the Russians was one of the first detachments to make their way along this path. Of course, these difficulties would not have existed if the ambassadors had followed the usual and already mastered route along the Volga and then to the Don through the territory of Khazaria. But here, apparently, they were moving around. Would this path be so difficult, and the return through Europe and the Baltic so safe, if the lands of the Khakan of the Ros were located in the center of the East European Plain or even closer to the south - in the Dnieper region, in the Kyiv region? I think not. And if the “Kaganate” of the Ros was located in the north of Rus', then going all the way to Byzantium through the lands of the Eastern Slavs, and then the steppes, was a truly difficult task. And returning through the native Baltic to the same north of Rus' is quite simple and quite safe.

However, another question arises. Some researchers became so carried away by the factual side of the message of the annals (the arrival of the ambassadors of Khakan Rosov to Byzantium “for the sake of friendship”) that they began to reconstruct the diplomatic activities of the “Russian Kaganate” and integrate it into the whole system of foreign policy relations of that time. Meanwhile, in fact, the question that Louis the Pious asked himself when he suspected something was wrong does not go away. He, of course, had something to fear - the Frankish Empire had already experienced the onslaught of the Normans many times. Theophilus's embassy took place between the Norman attacks on Friesland in 837 and 839 and, in addition, between two embassies of the Jutland ruler Horik I, the first of which in 838 asked the emperor to transfer both Friesland itself and the land of the Obodrites to the control of Horik. Therefore, in such difficult situation there was no harm in being overly cautious. The emperor conducted a thorough investigation, as a result of which he found out the true ethnicity of the “Russian” ambassadors and, in addition, considered them intelligence officers. Whether this really turned out to be the case or not, we will never know. But it is impossible to deny this second option for the activities of the “Russian embassy”. In any case, it has an equal right to exist with the first. If so, and the “embassy” was in fact a reconnaissance mission sent to understand the situation among near and distant neighbors, then it is hardly worth overly trusting the assurances of friendship of the “Russian” Khakan to the Byzantine emperor, and also taking on faith the story of the “emergency” the savagery of ferocious peoples." To get to Ingelheim, the “ambassadors” could well refer to the difficulties of the return journey and ask Theophilus, who was so supportive of them (who, as we remember, was in dire need of support from other countries during this period) to send them to Louis the German. Whether the mission of the Khakan of the Ros to Byzantium, and then to Ingelheim, was diplomatic is a big question.

Around the same years as the arrival of the “Russian ambassadors” in Ingelheim, there is a message about “Russian merchants” recorded by Arab authors. It belongs to Abul-Qasim Ubaidallah ibn Abdallah ibn Khordadbeh (c. 820–912). Ibn Khordadbeh was born into a noble Persian family - his father was the ruler of Tabaristan, a region on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. Ibn Khordadbeh himself was a very educated man, he served as the head of the post in the province of Jibal (in northwestern Iran), and later became the head of the entire postal department of the caliphate, spending the last period of his life in Baghdad. As a postal official, Ibn Khordadbeh was naturally well aware of trade routes and, although he himself never undertook long journeys, collected extensive information about the routes and geography of different countries. The result was his work “The Book of Paths and Countries” (“Kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik”), which gained great popularity over time. Ibn Khordadbeh also wrote essays on genealogy, orientation by the stars, “culture of music perception,” cooking, and even the art of drinking (apparently he was a great lover of life), but, unfortunately, they have not survived. The Book of Ways and Countries was completed in the 880s. It is believed that there were two editions of this work, and the story we are interested in is already in the first edition, which dates back to the 840s.

In the list of “lords of the earth” Ibn Khordadbeh gives the titles of rulers different nations, and he calls the rulers of the Turks, Tibetans and Khazars Khakans, but he calls the ruler of the Slavs (as-sakaliba) K. Nan or K. Bad (in different manuscripts). Researchers believe that this is actually knaz. However, the description of the paths of the Russian merchants is more interesting. It follows the story of the trade route of Jewish merchants who travel by sea from Muslim Spain to the eastern regions of the caliphate and further to India and China. Then follows this passage:

“If we talk about the Ar-Rus (Rus) merchants, then this is one of the varieties of Slavs. They deliver hare skins, black fox skins and swords from the most distant [lands] of the Slavs to the Rumian Sea (Black Sea). The ruler (sahib) of ar-Rum (Byzantium) collects tithes (ushr) from them. If they go along [Ta?]nis - the river of the Slavs, then they pass by Khamlij, the city of the Khazars. Their owner (sahib) also collects tithes from them. Then they set off across the Dzhurdzhan (Caspian) Sea and land on any shore. The circumference of this sea is 500 farsakhs (about 3 thousand km). Sometimes they carry their goods from Jurjan to Baghdad on camels. The translators [for] them are Slavic eunuch servants. They claim that they are Christians and pay the poll tax (jizya).” After this, Ibn Khordadbeh returns to the description of the paths of Jewish merchants, but now he describes their movement by land - again from Muslim Spain or from the land of the Franks through North Africa to Baghdad and further to the east, and the second way “behind Rumiya to the country (or region) of the Slavs (as-sakaliba), then to Hamlij, the city of the Khazars, then to the Dzhurdzhan Sea, then to Balkh, Transoxiana (the Central Asian “mesopotamia” between the Syr Darya and Amu Darya), then to Vurt of the Toguzguz (the city of the Tokuz-Oguz), then to China." Thus, the paths of Russian merchants and Jewish merchants intersect.

A shortened and slightly modified version of the same story about the ways of the Russian merchants, which is contained in the book of Ibn Khordadbeh, is also present in another “Book of Countries”, the author of which was Ibn al-Faqih al-Hamadani, about whom only what is known is that he, probably came from the Persian city of Hamadan and was born into the family of a lawyer. The Book of Countries dates back to around 903. The story about the Rus merchants (according to al-Faqih - the Slavs) looks like this:

“As for the Slavic merchants, they bring the skins of foxes and hares from the lands of the Slavs and come to the Rumi Sea, and the ruler of Byzantium collects tithes from them. Then the Jews arrive by sea in Samkarsh (probably Tamatarkha - Tmutorokan of ancient Russian sources), then move on to the Slavs; or they follow from the sea of ​​the Slavs (what is meant by this sea is unknown; perhaps the Baltic) into this river, which is called the river of the Slavs, until they reach the strait (or gulf) of the Khazars, and the ruler of the Khazars takes tithes from them. Then they go to the Khorasan (Caspian) Sea. Sometimes they go out to Djurdzhana and sell everything they have. And all this goes to Rey.”

As you can see, both news are very close, but al-Faqih calls the merchants not Rus, but Slavs, names the city of Samkarsh (Samkush) as an important point on their way, and defines the final point of trade not as Baghdad, but as the city of Rey in Northern Iran. There are several interesting points in Ibn Khordadbeh's report. It is curious, and researchers have already repeatedly drawn attention to this, that Ibn Khordadbeh considers the Rus to be a “species” of Slavs. Arab authors, as a rule, distinguish between Slavs and Rus, and, judging by the description of the Rus, they mean Normans. Ibn Khordadbeh considers the Rus to be part of the Slavs, which is generally not surprising if we take into account not the ethnic, but the political affiliation of the Rus to the East Slavic state entity or to the East Slavic society. Russian merchants carry furs and Frankish (so-called Carolingian) swords that came from Western Europe to Rus', to the Black Sea, where they pay taxes to the Byzantine authorities. Apparently, another path goes along a certain river of the Slavs, the names of which are unclear in the manuscripts of the work of ibn Khordadbeh. Perhaps this is Tanis (Tanais) - Don, and perhaps the Volga. In any case, some kind of river is implied, the path along which leads to the Caspian Sea. What kind of city Hamlij is is also unknown - it is believed that it was located next to the Khazar Itil. Here the Russians pay another fee, and then sail along the Caspian Sea. Bringing goods to the city of Dzhurdzhan (Gurgan) on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea; they travel with caravans to Baghdad, using the services of Slavic translators. There they pretend to be Christians in order to pay the poll tax for Gentiles (Jizya) in a smaller amount than if they were considered pagans. Apparently, the Rus had to know at least Christian rituals in order to present themselves as Christians.

So, the story about the routes of the Rus merchants indicates that the trade route through the lands of the Khazar Kaganate to the Caspian Sea and further to the East was already well mastered by the Rus by the 840s. Probably, the route along the Volga connected with the countries of the East and the north of Rus', that Ladoga-Ilmen region, where the presence of the Scandinavians can be traced archaeologically from the middle of the 8th century and where Rurik subsequently gained a foothold. If this is so, then the lands of the hypothetical Russian Kaganate could reach the northern Volga and come into contact with the zone of influence of the Khazars, to whom, according to the Tale of Bygone Years, the Vyatichi paid tribute. This means that the Russian Kaganate and the Khazar Kaganate were neighbors (which probably explains the appearance of a Turkic title for the ruler of the Russians). The Upper Volga region (in the area of ​​the Sarsky settlement near Rostov), ​​as well as Ladoga and Rurikovo Settlement near Novgorod, are considered as possible centers of this state association. If you pay attention to its probable limits, it becomes clear that they are very close to the region over which Rurik’s power subsequently extended.

At the same time, when Russian merchants reached Baghdad in the east, Russian warriors in the west attacked Muslim Spain (called al-Andalus in eastern sources, that is, Andalusia). “West of the city called Jazira (Algeciras on the banks of Gibraltar - E.P.), [there is] a city called Seville, on the banks of a large river. And into this river of Cordoba (Guadalquivir. - E.P.) the Majus (al-Majus), who are called the Rus (ar-rus), entered in the year 229 (843–844), and robbed, and burned, and killed,” - the Arab geographer and historian Abu-l-Abbas Ahmad ibn Abu Ya'qub al-Ya'qubi reports in his “Book of Countries” (“Kitab al-buldan”). “The Book of Countries” was completed by him around 891, that is, half a century after the events described. Al-Majus are fire worshipers, as the Arabs originally called those peoples who worshiped fire or used it in funeral rites, that is, burned the dead (Persians-Zoroastrians, Hindus, etc.), and in a broader sense, they also called all pagans, including Slavs and Normans. Other Arab authors from the 10th to 17th centuries describe this attack in more detail. It began on August 20, 844, when the Majus appeared on the western coast of the Iberian Peninsula near Lisbon. The total number of attacking ships is calculated differently by different authors - 54 (al-"Uzri, 11th century) or 80 (al-"Izari, second half of the 13th - early 14th centuries). Despite stubborn resistance, on September 25 the Russians approached Seville. The city was captured by them, many residents were killed or captured. Finally, in November, the Majus were defeated in a battle with troops mobilized by the Emir of Cordoba, Abd ar-Rahman II: “A large number of Majus were hanged in Seville, they were raised on the trunks of the palm trees that were there.” The leader (emir) of the Majus died. However, they continued to remain in Spain for some time until they left for Niebla, which they also plundered, and then to Lisbon: “And after that there was no news from them” (al-Uzri). Thus, the Majus campaign was quite long , and the Arabs managed to get rid of the attackers with great difficulty. The authors who wrote after al-Ya'kubi also call the Majus al-urmaniyun, that is, the Normans. There is no doubt that this was an attack by the Norman Vikings, carried out from the north, from the Atlantic Ocean. The fact that al-Ya'kubi calls them Rus (as the Arabs usually called the Eastern European Normans) clearly indicates the identity of the Rus and Normans in the ideas of the Arab world.

Another Arabic testimony about a Slavic ruler on the territory of the future Old Russian state dates back to the early 850s and belongs to the same al-Ya'kubi. In his other work - "History", brought up to 872 - this scientist describes, in particular , events in the Caucasus in the early 850s. Then the commander of the caliphate, Buga the Elder, suppressed protests against the power of the Arabs in Armenia and Georgia, and then attacked the Caucasian mountaineers-sanars (al-sanariya), who lived in the area of ​​​​the Daryal gorge, “but they defeated and they put him to flight." "Having retreated from them, he began to pursue those to whom he had granted pardon [earlier]. Some disappeared and wrote to the rulers of Rum (Sahib ar-Rum), the Khazars (Sahib al-Khazar) and the ruler of the Slavs (Sahib as). -sakaliba). They gathered with a large army. [Buga] informed al-Mutawakkil (caliph. - E.P.) about this, and he appointed him to rule the country (Arminia, that is, the Arab province in Transcaucasia. - E.P.) Muhammad ibn Khalid ibn Yazid ibn Maziad al-Shaybani. With his arrival, the rebels calmed down, and he granted them pardon.” So, the Sanars turned for help to the emperor of Byzantium, which probably had certain consequences, to the Khazar Khagan, who also responded to this call, and to the ruler of the Slavs. Perhaps this is the ruler of the Russian Kaganate, whose possessions by that time were already in the south of Eastern Europe, that is, in relative proximity to the places of residence of the Sanars. Or maybe the ruler of the Slavs should be understood as one of the princes of the East Slavic tribes - again, somewhere in the south of the future Old Russian state, not far from the possessions of Khazaria.

In 860, however, an event of enormous magnitude occurred, which left a memory in both Byzantium and Western Europe. The Rus first invaded the territory of the Roman Empire and besieged its capital, Constantinople. This event was also reflected in Russian chronicles as the starting point when the name of Rus' became known in the international arena. The campaign is mentioned in many sources, starting with the works of a contemporary of this event, the Patriarch of Constantinople Photius, who was already mentioned at the very beginning of the book. It was Photius who found himself at the head of the besieged inhabitants of Constantinople, since Emperor Michael III was then on a military campaign against the Arabs. Two homilies, that is, sermons, by Photius have been preserved, which were delivered by him from the pulpit of the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople to the townspeople in connection with the campaign of the Rus. One of them dates back to the time of the invasion itself, and the second was created after the danger had passed. In addition, Photius also wrote a “District Epistle” to the Eastern Patriarchs regarding the convening of a church council in Constantinople in 867, which mentions the baptism of Rus'.

Other, later sources contain important factual data about the campaign and even the exact date of the appearance of the Rus at the walls of the capital - June 18, 860. This is how it is said in the so-called “Brussels Chronicle”, compiled in Byzantium in the 11th century and reaching us in a manuscript from the end of the 13th century (so named because it is kept in Brussels, in the Royal Library): “In his (Emperor Michael) reign, on the 18th of June, 8 [indict], in 6368, in the 5th year of his reign, the dews came with two hundred ships, which, through the intercessions of the All-Praised Mother of God, were conquered by Christians, crushingly defeated and exterminated.”

How did the events of 860 develop and what was known about the “barbarians” who came to the capital of the Roman empire? The time for the attack was chosen extremely well - the main forces of the Byzantines were diverted to the war with the Arabs, and the army led by the emperor was in Asia Minor, at a fairly large distance from the capital. The Russians sailed to Constantinople on ships, the number of which in some sources is called 200, in others - 360. According to rough estimates, there were about eight thousand Russians. The Byzantines characterized the Ros as “a Scythian people, cruel and barbaric” (the first homily of Photius), “wild and rude” (“Chronography” of Theophanes the Continuator). The name of the Russians “Scythians” was completely in line with the medieval tradition of transferring the names of ancient peoples to modern ones, but the Byzantines could call “Scythians” not only the peoples living north of the Black Sea region, but also barbarians in general. The invasion of the Russians was metaphorically called by Photius “a terrible Hyperborean thunderstorm” (first homily). Hyperboreans in the ancient tradition are the inhabitants of the Far North.

Judging by the words of Photius, the Russians covered quite a long distance, but their attack still turned out to be completely unexpected: “The insidious raid of the barbarians did not give rumors time to report it so that any security measures could be considered, but reality itself fled along with the news - and this while they were attacking from where [we] are separated by so many lands and tribal possessions, navigable rivers and seas without piers. Woe to me that I see a cruel and savage people surrounding the city with impunity and plundering the suburbs, destroying everything, destroying everything - fields, homes, herds, cattle, wives, children, old people, young men - putting everything to the sword, not listening to any cries, not listening to anyone sparing. Universal destruction! (first homily). “The surprise of the attack and the incredible speed, the inhumanity of the barbarian race, the cruelty of morals and the savagery of thoughts show that the blow was struck from heaven, like thunder and lightning!” - exclaimed the patriarch (second homily). At the same time, Photius emphasizes that the Rus were until then little known in Byzantium. “How strange and terribly absurd the attack of the tribe that fell upon us is, the enormity of [our] sins is just as exposed; Again, as much as [this tribe] is imperceptible, insignificant and unknown to us until the invasion itself, the weight of shame is added to us and the triumph of shame is exalted, and the whips inflict pain more sharply" (second homily). Such an invasion was perceived, of course, as God's punishment for sins.

Further, Photius characterizes Rus' in even more detail: “An invisible people, a people not taken into account, a people ranked among slaves, unknown - but who received a name from the campaign against us, inconspicuous - but became significant, base and helpless - but rose to the pinnacle of splendor and wealth; a people who settled somewhere far from us, barbaric, nomadic, having insolence [as a] weapon, careless, uncontrollable, without a military leader, in such a crowd, so quickly rushed over our borders, like a sea wave...” (second homily). Here, of course, the patriarch compares the invasion of the Rus with a natural disaster, which is why, perhaps, he considers the Rus uncontrollable, “without a military leader,” which, of course, could not have happened in reality. On the contrary, the very suddenness of the appearance of the enemy army at the walls of Constantinople and the especially well chosen moment indicate good preparation for the campaign. Of course, in comparison with the clear military organization of the Byzantines, any barbarian invasions looked uncontrollable - but the defeat of the Byzantines, famous for their military art, was all the more shameful.

The weapons of the Rus, whose main advantage was “audacity,” also looked primitive in comparison with the weapons of the empire’s army. This insolence is contrasted by Photius with the frightened passivity of his compatriots: “For those to whom the mere rumor of the Romans once seemed intolerable, raised their weapons against their very power and shook their hands, enraged, in the hope of seizing the royal city like a nest. After all, they plundered its surroundings, ravaged the suburbs, savagely killed those captured and surrounded the entire city with impunity - so exalted and magnified by our helplessness that the inhabitants did not dare to look at them with a direct and fearless gaze, but because of which it became all the more courageous for them to enter into battle with the enemy fight, because of this they became limp and lost heart” (second homily).

This situation was, of course, largely due to the absence of imperial troops in the city, and possibly even a fleet sent against the Arabs in Crete or Italy. “Where is the Christ-loving basileus now? Where are the troops? Where are the weapons, [defensive] vehicles, general advice and preparations? Was it not the invasion of other barbarians that carried over and distracted all this? And the basileus endures long labors outside the borders [of the empire], the army went with him and shares the hardships - but we are exhausted by the disastrous murder, which before our eyes has overtaken some and is already overtaking others! - the patriarch (first homily) exclaimed sadly. According to the Byzantine chronicle of Simeon Logothet (mid-10th century), the basileus went on a campaign against the Muslims. The news of the invasion caught him on the banks of the Black River in Cappadocia. It was possible to cover the distance from it to the capital of the empire (more than 500 kilometers) in a month of regular travel or in at least a week of hasty travel.

Meanwhile, Constantinople was under siege. The Russes ravaged the suburbs, and according to the “Life of Patriarch Ignatius,” created by Nikita David the Paphlagonian at the end of the 9th–10th centuries, they also attacked the Princes’ Islands in the Sea of ​​Marmara, where they destroyed the monasteries, and also, having captured 22 people from the “servants” closest to the disgraced Patriarch Ignatius, They chopped them all up with axes.” The former patriarch himself, who lived on one of the islands, according to the testimony of the Life, “all the time repeated only these words: “The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; as the Lord willed, so it happened” and the like; Thus, thanking God and turning to Him in unceasing prayers, he appealed to His judgment and help, and considered any salvation from those who were considered rulers to be futile.”

Even in the besieged capital, they trusted only in God. “Do you remember the confusion, tears and screams into which the whole city then plunged with complete despair? Do you know that pitch-black night when the circle of life for all of us rolled into the abyss of the darkness of death? Do you know that hour, unbearable and bitter, when barbarian ships approached you, breathing ferocity, savagery and murder?.. When they sailed past the city, carrying and revealing those sailing towards them with outstretched swords and as if threatening the city with death from the sword? . When the minds were filled with trembling and darkness, and the ears were open only to rumors that the barbarians had broken into the walls and the city had been taken by enemies? - Photius asked his flock (second homily). Having lost all hope, the patriarch resorted to the “last” resort. In Blachernae, a district of Constantinople located along the Golden Horn, there was a church Holy Mother of God, in which the great shrine was kept - the cover (omophorion, maforium - a cape covering the head and shoulders) of the Virgin Mary, which was brought to Constantinople back in the 5th century. This shrine was repeatedly visited during enemy attacks on the Byzantine capital. In addition, the chasuble and belt of the Mother of God were kept in the Chalkopatrian temple. It is impossible to say for sure which of the shrines was taken by Photius to protect the city, but it was probably a maforium. This is how the patriarch himself spoke about it: “As soon as, left without any help and deprived of human support, we perked up in our souls, placing our trust in the Mother of the Word and our God... and, carrying Her vestments, in order to throw back the besiegers and protect the besieged, I and all the city with me diligently indulged in pleas for help and performed a prayer service, to which, out of unspeakable love for mankind, the Divine bowed down, heeding the frank maternal appeal, and anger turned away, and the Lord had mercy on His property. Truly, the vestment of the Mother of God is a most holy robe! It surrounded the walls - and at the unspeakable word the enemies showed their backs; the city clothed itself in it - and, as if on cue, the enemy camp disintegrated; dressed in it - and the opponents lost the hopes in which they hovered. For as soon as the Virgin’s vestment went around the walls, the barbarians, abandoning the siege, withdrew from the camp and we were redeemed from the impending captivity and were awarded unexpected salvation.” So, after surrounding the omophorion of the Mother of God around the city walls, the Rus lifted the siege and began to leave, taking rich booty.

Meanwhile, Emperor Michael returned to Constantinople. According to the chronicle of Simeon Logofet, “the basileus, having arrived, was barely able to cross (across the Bosphorus - E.P.). And they went with Patriarch Photius to the Blachernae Church of the Mother of God and there they called on the Divine for mercy and compassion. Then, having brought out the Holy Omophorion of the Mother of God with the singing of hymns, they dipped its edge into the sea; and although it was calm, gusts of wind immediately began, and on a calm sea the waves began to pile on top of each other, and the ships of the godless dews were broken, so that only a few escaped danger.” The storm thus destroyed the Russian fleet. Sometimes in historical literature you can find a statement that the siege of Constantinople ended on June 25. In fact, this opinion is wrong. This date, available in the synaxar (a church book, which is a collection of information about saints and church holidays for each day of the year) of the Great Church of Constantinople (Temple of Hagia Sophia), refers to the siege of Constantinople by the Arabs in the 670s.

But the story with the Russians did not end there. The “Chronography” of Theophan the Continuator says that “a little later, their (Russians - E.P.) embassy arrived in the royal city, begging to make them involved in Divine baptism, which happened.” This first baptism of the Ros occurred before 867, since it is also mentioned in the “District Epistle” of Photius:

“And not only this people (meaning the Bulgarians, whose baptism took place in the mid-860s - E.P.) changed their former wickedness to faith in Christ, but even they themselves became the subject of repeated rumors for many and are leaving everyone behind in cruelty and bloodthirstiness, the same so-called [people] Ros, those same ones who - having enslaved [those who lived] around them and therefore became overly proud - raised their hand against the Roman Empire itself! But now, however, they too have changed the pagan and godless faith in which they lived before, to the pure and genuine religion of Christians, willingly (with love, joyfully) placing themselves in the ranks of subjects (the peoples who adopted Christianity from Byzantium were considered as if they were subjects of the empire. - E . P.) and hospitality instead of the recent robbery and great boldness against us. And at the same time, their passionate attraction and zeal for faith were so inflamed - Paul exclaims again: Blessed is God forever! - that they received a bishop and a shepherd and with great zeal and diligence they devoted themselves to Christian rites.” Of course, in this text there is a noticeable exaggeration of the results achieved, but one thing is indisputable - some part of the Rus in the 860s adopted Christianity, and, moreover, a bishop was sent to them. Probably, the sudden death of the army after a generally successful campaign against Constantinople could have influenced the decision of the Rus to accept baptism. Apparently, this was preceded by the conclusion of a peace treaty between Russia and Byzantium, as indicated by some phrases and terms in the patriarch’s message. Such missionary activity was generally characteristic of the church activities of Photius.

In 867, Michael III was killed and Basil the Macedonian became the new Byzantine emperor. In his biography, included in the “Chronography” of Theophanes the Successor and attributed to Vasily’s grandson, Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, there is an interesting continuation of this story:

“But the people of the Ros, the most irresistible and the most godless, he (Emperor Vasily - E.P.), having won over to agreement with abundant gifts of gold, silver and silk robes and having concluded a peace treaty with them, also convinced them to join in the saving baptism and persuaded the recipient to accept ordination from Patriarch Ignatius Archbishop. He, having appeared in the country of the mentioned [people], was favorably received by the people after such an act. For when the archon (that is, the prince - E.P.) of this tribe gathered his subjects for a gathering (meeting) and sat down at the head of his elders, who were more devoted to superstition than others due to long habit, talking about their faith and the Christian one, he was called a priest who had recently arrived to them was questioned about what he preached and what he intended to teach them. And after he, holding out the book of the Gospel, told them about some miracles of our Savior and God and gave them examples of God’s miracles from Old Testament history, the dews immediately said: “If we don’t see something similar, especially what you are telling you are about the three youths in the oven (meaning the biblical youths Ananias, Azariah and Misail, thrown into the oven by order of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar and remaining unharmed by the power of prayer. - E.P.), we will not believe you at all and will no longer pay attention yours to your words." He... told them: “Although you cannot tempt the Lord God, still, if you have decided from the heart to turn to God, ask whatever you want, and God will do it in full for the sake of your faith, although we ourselves are simple and insignificant.” They asked that the very book of the Christian faith, that is, the Divine and Holy Gospel, be thrown into the fire they had built, and if it remained unharmed and unburned, then they would turn to the God proclaimed by them. When this was said, the priest, raising his eyes and hands to God, said: “Glorify Your name. Jesus Christ our God, even now in the eyes of all this people!” - the book of the Holy Gospel was thrown into a fiery furnace. After sufficient time had passed, when the stove was extinguished, it was discovered that the Holy Volume remained untouched and undamaged, without suffering any damage or damage from the fire, so that even the tassels on the book latches did not suffer any damage or distortion. Seeing this and amazed at the greatness of the miracle, the barbarians began baptism without hesitation.” Since the described baptism is associated with the time of the patriarchate of Ignatius, then, consequently, these events must be dated to the beginning of the 870s (Ignatius was patriarch from the end of 867 to 877). The story of the baptism of the Rus in the biography of Vasily follows the news of the baptism of the Jews (in 874) and the founding of the archbishopric in Bulgaria (the archbishop arrived in Pliska in 870).

But what kind of dews were they and why did the Byzantines call these people that? In his “District Epistle”, Photius directly names the name of the people - “ros”, and this name was fixed in Byzantine sources (although words with the root “rus” also appeared from the 11th century). There are different versions in science about the origin of this form of this name among Byzantine authors.

According to one, the form “ros” is recognized as going back to the word “Rus” (the self-name of the Rus in the 10th century) and its emergence is explained by the fact that the Greek language of Byzantine times was characterized by alternating root vowels o (so) and u (oi). The version associated with the biblical land (or people) Rosh, the form of the name of which in the Greek text of the Bible is similar to the Byzantine name of the Rus, has already been mentioned. Perhaps biblical images influenced the Byzantines, who compared the invasions of the Rus, the “savage” people from the north, with the legendary Gog and Magog. On the other hand, the name “ros” in the “Vertinsky Annals” most likely conveys the self-name of “Rus” in the late 830s. Therefore, perhaps the form “ros” was primary and only then was transformed into “Rus”. Then the assumption arises that the Byzantine “ros” directly goes back to the probable prototype of the Old Russian “Rus” - the Old Scandinavian self-name of participants in rowing trips to the east of the Baltic - “rops-men”, that is, “rowers”. This is to some extent confirmed by the fact that, according to the Vertinsky Annals, the ambassadors of the “Rus” turned out to be Swedes. The author of the “Chronicon of the Veneti” (“Venetian Chronicle”), Deacon John, writing at the beginning of the 11th century, directly calls the participants in the campaign against Constantinople in 860 “Normans.”

But if the Russians so unexpectedly attacked the capital of Byzantium, then where did they come from? The Byzantine chronicles, dating back to the “Chronography” of the Continuer Theophanes, contain seemingly more definite data about the habitats of the Rus. Thus, the Byzantine historian of the second half of the 11th century, John Skylitzes, in his “Review of Histories” says that the dews who attacked Constantinople are “the Scythian people living near the northern Taurus, wild and ferocious.” And another historian, John Zonara, who died in the middle of the 12th century, in his work “Abridged Histories” mentions that “the Scythian people of the Ros” are “from among the peoples living around the Taurus.” From these phrases it can be understood that the Rus inhabited the lands near the Crimean Peninsula. Although in fact these instructions can be understood in a broader sense - as the fact that the Rus live north of Taurida. Meanwhile, there is a whole hypothesis about the existence of a certain “Black Sea (or Azov) Rus'”, which allegedly made early campaigns against Byzantium (for linguistic arguments in favor of this, see below). The bishop was sent there after baptism. However, the information of Byzantine historians of the 11th–12th centuries could relate to their contemporary situation, and not to the realities of the mid-9th century. In the 11th century, the Rus actually lived in the Black Sea region - they owned Tmutorokan, which was one of the Russian principalities. In the second half of the 11th century, the Tmutorokan principality played a prominent role both in all-Russian affairs and in the Black Sea region as a whole, maintaining ties with Byzantium.

At the same time, the words of Patriarch Photius in his sermons speak for the fact that the land of the Rus was at a great distance from Byzantium (“a people who settled somewhere far from us”, from which “we are separated by so many lands and tribal possessions, navigable rivers and seas without piers"). And the appointment of a bishop (or even an archbishop), as well as the scale of the campaign itself, indicates that Byzantium was faced with a fairly strong state entity. It is unlikely that this could have been the Ilmen or Ladoga Rus'. Most likely (as Russian chronicles also confirm), the campaign was organized by Dnieper Russia, with the center, probably, in Kleve - on those lands to which the so-called “Russian Kaganate” may have extended its power in the middle of the 9th century.

What about Russian chronicles? They also contain information about the campaign of 860, borrowed from the tradition of Byzantine chronicles, dating back to the chronicle of Simeon Logothet. In the Novgorod first chronicle of the younger edition, the message about the campaign of Rus' follows the story about the founding of Kyiv. “Under this (Emperor Michael. - E.P.) Rus' came to Tsar-grad in ships, the ship was numberless; and in two hundred she entered the Court (Golden Horn Bay - E.P.), doing a lot of evil by the Greek and a great murder by the peasant. The Caesar and Patriarch Photeus pray in the church of the Holy Mother of God of Blachernae all night; The dance of the Holy Mother of God wore out the robe, and barely washed it into the sea; and during that time, as if there was stillness, a storm arose, and the Russian ship sank, and I cast out onto the shore, and returned to my own place.” The Tale of Bygone Years also tells about the campaign, but this event has a date and, moreover, the princes who led the campaign are named. “In the year 6374. Askold and Dir went to war against the Greeks and came to them in the 14th year of the reign of Michael. The tsar was at that time on a campaign against the Hagarians, had already reached the Black River, when the eparch sent him the news that Rus' was going on a campaign against Constantinople, and the tsar returned. These same ones entered the Court, killed many Christians and besieged Constantinople with two hundred ships. The king entered the city with difficulty and prayed all night with Patriarch Photius in the Church of the Holy Mother of God in Blachernae, and with songs they brought out the divine robe of the Holy Mother of God, and dipped its floor in the sea. At that time there was silence and the sea was calm, but then suddenly a storm arose with the wind, and huge waves arose again, scattered the ships of the godless Rus, and washed them to the shore, and broke them, so that few of them managed to avoid this disaster and return home "

The date 6374 (866) was calculated as the fourteenth year of the reign of Emperor Michael III, the beginning of whose reign is referred to in the Tale as 6360 (.852). The last dating is incorrect, just as it is also incorrect that the Russian campaign took place in the fourteenth year of Michael’s reign. In the Byzantine tradition, dating back to the chronicle of Simeon Logothetes, there is a mention of the tenth year of Michael’s reign as the year of the Russian campaign (which is also incorrect, since Michael ruled since 842). Probably, the date “6374 (866)” was obtained through several calculations and manipulations at different stages of editing the chronicle text. Since the date belonged to the time after the calling of the Varangians, and the campaign was obviously associated with Kiev, Askold and Dir became the leaders of the Rus under the pen of the chronicler. They were not like that in the Initial Code - in the First Novgorod Chronicle, Askold and Dir are spoken of after the story about the campaign of Rus', as two Varangians who came to Kyiv, became princes there and fought with the Drevlyans and the streets. In The Tale of Bygone Years, Askold and Dir are associated with Rurik. These are his “boyars” (but not of the same kind as him, which the chronicler especially emphasizes), who “asked to Tsaryugorod with their family.” Walking along the Dnieper, they saw a town on the mountain and asked the local residents whose it was. The Polyans replied that there were brothers Kiy, Shchek and Khoriv, ​​who built this town and “izgibosha” (disappeared), and we are sitting here, “their family,” and paying tribute to the Khazars. Askold and Dir remained in this city and gathered many Varangians and began to own the land of the glades. The campaign of 860 (866), which turned out to be associated with Askold and Dir in the “Tale of Bygone Years,” was thus compared with the desire of the two princes to go to “Tsaryugorod,” thanks to which the “boyars” asked for time off from Rurik. The first Novgorod chronicle does not contain these details - it only says that two Varangians came to Kyiv, but where and “from whom” is unknown. Apparently, they were not in the “Initial Code” either.

It has already been noted that the Tale of Bygone Years especially emphasizes the illegality of the princely status of Askold and Dir. The chronicle shows a desire to establish princely status only for the Rurik family. This is also confirmed by the story about the capture of Kyiv by Oleg in 882 and his murder of Askold and Dir. Oleg says to the Kyiv rulers: “You are not of the prince, nor of the princely family, but I am of the princely family” (“You are not princes and not of the princely family, but I am of the princely family”), and then, pointing to Igor: “And behold, there is the son of Rurik " In this way, a line of legitimate succession of power is built only in the Rurik family, and the legal status of this particular dynasty is emphasized. Askold and Dir turn out to be some kind of impostors. At the same time, all the heroes of early Russian history seem to be “attached” to Rurik and relate to him. Therefore, Askold and Dir “become” close associates, “boyars” of Rurik. And to explain why they went south, along the Dnieper, their goal is established - Constantinople (Constantinople), which, by the way, could correspond to reality. This goal seems to be confirmed by the campaign against the Greeks, which chronologically falls between the “calling” of Rurik in 862 and the death of Askold and Dir in 882. Thus, a consistent version of the activities of the two Kyiv princes is created.

The artificiality of the connection between the campaign of 860 (866) and the names of Askold and Dir in the Tale of Bygone Years is eloquently evidenced by the fact that in the text the verb “go” correlates with the names of the two princes in the singular, and not in the dual number (“ide”, and not “idost”, as it should be). While earlier, when talking about the arrival of Askold and Dir in Kyiv, a dual number is used (“byasta” - they were, “isprsista” - they asked for it, “ostasta” - they stayed, etc.). It is significant that in the news of the campaign itself, Askold and Dir are mentioned only once as its leaders, and then the text of the chronicle simply reproduces the Greek “original”.

Consequently, the first campaign of Rus' against Byzantium apparently had nothing to do with Askold and Dir. What do we know about these brothers? Chronicles indicate that Askold and Dir were Varangians; they, apparently, followed the path “from the Varangians to the Greeks” down the Dnieper, stopped in Kyiv, where they began to reign, and were later killed by Oleg during his capture of Kyiv in 882 . The Tale of Bygone Years reports the following about their burial: “And I killed Askold and Dir (again singular! - E.P.), and carried to the mountain, and buried and (“him” - 1 is also singular. - E. P.) on the mountain, now called Ugorskoye, where Olmin’s yard is now; on that grave Olma built the Church of St. Nicholas; and Dirov’s grave is behind Saint Orina.” That is, a certain Olma, much later, built the Church of St. Nicholas on the burial site of Askold, and Olma’s courtyard existed at least at the turn of the 11th–12th centuries, and Dir’s grave was located behind the Church of Irina, founded by Yaroslav the Wise, at the monastery created in honor of the patron saint of the same name Yaroslav's wife - the Swedish princess Ingigerd, who bore the name Irina at baptism.

Features of the text of the “Tale” and the topography of the graves of Askold and Dir, located in different places (although, strictly speaking, why did they have to be buried together?), led researchers to the conclusion about the artificial connection in the chronicle of the names of two princes, possibly living in different time. This opinion has become almost universal. The chronicle's indication of the location of the graves, of course, corresponds to the general tendency of the Tale to support the reliability of its information with some actually existing artifacts. Thus, according to the chronicle, Oleg’s grave exists “to this day” in Kyiv, Princess Olga’s sleigh “to this day” stands in Pskov, etc. This is a general trend in early historical writing (not only in ancient Russian culture). Therefore, specific topographical indications associated with the names of Askold and Dir could have been preserved until the time of compilation of the chronicle, where they came from the local, oral tradition and were then put together under the pen of the chronicler. Sometimes, as evidence of the different times of Askold and Dir, information from later chronicles of the 16th century is cited, which mentions, for example, one Prince Askold (Nikon Chronicle - “About Prince Rustem Oskold”). But these arguments can hardly be considered valid.

The opinion was expressed that “the co-government of two princes is unusual for Rus',” although it existed among the Scandinavian kings. Repeated attempts were made to explain the name “Dir” in some way: as a title of Askold (G.Z. Bayer, G.F. Miller) or as “Sarmatian tiar (dirar), i.e. stepson” (V.N. Tatishchev , from whom Askold becomes Rurik’s stepson). Not to mention completely exotic etymologies (B. A. Rybakov raised the name Askold in the version of the late Nikon Chronicle “Oskold”, which he considered the most ancient, to the name of the Oskol River and further to the Scythian tribe of Skolots mentioned by Herodotus, and V. A. Pakhomenko compared it with the name of the Polovtsian khan Iskal, mentioned in the chronicle under the year 1061), the names Askold and Dir are well explained from the Old Scandinavian language. Askold is Hoskuldr, Dir is Dyri (literally “beast”). Perhaps Askold and Dir were leaders of individual Varangian detachments unrelated to Rurik (their Varangian origin is clearly evidenced by the chronicles), who moved through the territories of Rus' and settled in different cities. It is not for nothing that “The Tale of Bygone Years” also names other princes “from across the sea” - Rogvolod (Rognvald) in Polotsk and Tura (Tyurir) in Turov.

Another aspect associated with Askold and Dir and casting doubt on their simultaneous existence concerns the message of the Arab scientist al-Mas "udi. Abu l-Hasan al-Mas"udi (c. 896–956), a native of Baghdad, was an outstanding historian and traveler of the 10th century, who is sometimes called the “Arab Herodotus.” One of his two works that has come down to us is called “Golden Mines and Placers of Gems” (“Muruj az-zahab wa ma’adin al-javahir”). It was written in the late 940s and then revised. “Golden Mines” represents is, in essence, historical and geographical encyclopedia, which contains information on the history and geography of different countries. This work contains a story about three rulers of Sakaliba (by Sakaliba, as already mentioned, Arab authors meant the Slavs, although not always). The first of the rulers is called ad-Dir. “He has vast cities and numerous lands. Muslim merchants are heading to his capital with goods." The second ruler is called “Malik al-f.” R. n. j”, and the third is “Malik at-Turk”. In the first of the rulers they saw Prince Dir. But this interpretation cannot be considered indisputable. It is necessary to analyze the entire fragment as a whole, since al-Mas'udi speaks not of one ruler, but of three. In addition, he does not name the other two rulers by name. According to one version, the first ruler, called by the Arab scholar, is the “king "Volga Bulgars Almush, the second is either the prince of Kiev, or the king of Danube Bulgaria, and the third is the ruler of the Hungarians (and the identification of the third ruler raises the least questions. Thus, information from al-Mas" can hardly be used to clarify any). information about Askold and Dir.

Another hypothesis about Askold is related to his possible baptism. From Byzantine sources it is known that after the Russian campaign against Constantinople in 860, the baptism of this people (or some part of it) took place. And since the Tale of Bygone Years connects the campaign with the names of Askold and Dir, one could conclude that the Kyiv princes themselves were baptized. In addition, a certain Olma subsequently erected the Church of St. Nicholas over Askold’s grave. Combining all this data together, we get the assumption that Askold was baptized after returning from an unsuccessful campaign against Byzantium, and his Christian name was Nicholas. This version became so popular that Askold-Nicholas became almost a holy martyr in some branches of “alternative” Orthodoxy. In fact, this version, as we see, is based on several assumptions. The campaign against Byzantium was artificially associated with the names of Askold and Dir, and Russian chronicles do not give any reason to consider Askold a Christian. The fact that a Christian church was erected on the site of his grave fully corresponds to the existing tradition of installing Orthodox churches on the site of pagan temples and other memorial sites in order to sanctify and “cleanse” the once “defiled” place. The same thing happened with the grave of Dir, next to which the Irininsky Monastery was built.

However, the chronicles say that Askold and Dir came to Kyiv when it was still a small town, and its inhabitants paid tribute to the Khazars. Of course, in such conditions, organizing a large-scale campaign against Byzantium is unlikely. Therefore, it is logical to assume that the campaign took place when the Varangians were firmly established in Kyiv. It is not for nothing that “The Tale of Bygone Years” reports that Askold and Dir “collected many Varangians.” It was the Varangians who could lead the attack on Constantinople in 860. Therefore, in principle, the campaign can be associated with the names of Askold and Dir, since the chronicles claim that before them there were no Varangians in Kyiv.

Be that as it may, the campaign of 860 “glorified” the name of Rus'. It is not for nothing that the chronicle notes that from that time “the nickname Ruska land began,” that is, “the Russian land began to be called.” This surprisingly correlates with the statement of Patriarch Photius that the Ros people “received their name from the campaign against us,” that is, they gained fame. Thus, both in Byzantium and in Rus', the campaign was considered a landmark event, as if opening the beginning of Russian history.

Apparently, the organization of a mission by Byzantium to the Khazar Kaganate is also connected with these events. This mission was supposed to contribute to the political rapprochement of both countries, and was also of a religious nature. The mission included (or even headed it) Constantine the Philosopher - Saint Cyril, educator of the Slavs and one of the creators of the Slavic alphabet. Thanks to this, information about the mission to Khazaria was preserved in the monuments of the Cyril and Methodius cycle - namely in the “Life of Constantine the Philosopher” (the so-called “Long Life”). The Life itself was created, apparently, in the 870s, but it came to us in copies no earlier than the 15th century. In 861, on his way to Khazaria, Constantine stopped in Chersonesus, through which he went to the lands of the Khazars. The Life says that there Constantine “learned Hebrew speech and writing, translating eight parts of grammar, and received even greater knowledge from this. A certain Samaritan lived there and, coming to him (that is, Constantine the Philosopher - E.P.), talked with him, and brought Samaritan books, and showed them to him. And having begged from him, the Philosopher shut himself up in the house and devoted himself to prayer and, having accepted knowledge from God, began to read (these) books without errors. Seeing this, the Samaritan cried out with a great voice and said: “Truly those who believe in Christ will soon receive the Holy Spirit and grace.” And when his son was soon baptized, then he himself was baptized after him.” The Samaritans are one of the Semitic peoples; their colonies were at that time in the countries of the Middle East, although there is no information that they were in Crimea. The writing of the Samaritans was similar to the Hebrew. Next, Constantine the Philosopher studied another language: “I found here the Gospel and the Psalter, written in Russian letters, and I found a man speaking that language, and talked with him, and understood the meaning of this speech, and, comparing it with my language, distinguished the letters vowels and consonants, and, making a prayer to God, soon began to read and expound (them), and many were surprised at him, praising God.”

This surprising news gave rise to a number of interpretations and hypotheses. A literal understanding of the text led to the assertion that some ancient Russian (Slavic) writing existed even before the Moravian mission of Cyril and Methodius. And not just writing, but Christian writing (!), into which the most important church books have already been translated. This means that the Christian tradition among these hypothetical Rus-Slavs was quite stable and quite old. The discovery of these books of Russian writing in Crimea fit into the framework of the hypothesis about Black Sea Rus', which supposedly existed in this region. Of course, it is completely impossible to imagine that the Russian Gospel and Psalter were the result of the baptism of the Rus after the campaign of 860, since very little time passed between the attack of the Rus and Constantine’s trip, and to believe that some mission to the Rus was so ahead of Constantine that managed to translate church books into Russian (which Konstantin had no idea about), is absolutely impossible. Meanwhile, there are no traces of ancient Slavic (or Russian) writing in the south of Eastern Europe before the activities of Cyril and Methodius. Therefore, there was a version that in general the entire story about “Russian writings” was a late insertion into the text of the Life. However, science has hypothesized that the word “Russians” is actually a mistake, and we are talking about “Sur”, that is, Syrian writing. It is significant that Konstantin was able to distinguish “vowel and consonant letters” in this letter. The Syriac letter is one of the consonantal writing systems, that is, those where only consonant sounds are indicated by letters. Meanwhile, it had a system of icons to indicate vowel sounds. Therefore, the distinction between consonants and vowels in this letter was essential. Thus, according to the most common version, Cyril in Chersonesos became acquainted with the Syriac language and Syriac writing, and not some “Russian” one.

So, by the 860s, apparently, a sufficiently strong state entity already existed in the Middle Dnieper region, which was able to carry out an attack on Constantinople. The name “Rus” at this time became known in Western Europe. And to some extent thanks to the same Cyril and Methodius mission. The second half of the 9th century dates back to the text of the so-called “Bavarian Geographer” (“Description of cities and regions north of the Danube”), which, apparently, was written in the Swabian monastery of Reichenau in the upper reaches of the Rhine and is called “Bavarian” only conditionally, as a tribute old historiographical tradition. Among the peoples listed in it are the peoples of Eastern Europe, including the Khazars and Hungarians (who at that time still inhabited the steppes of the Northern Black Sea region). Next to the Khazars (Caziri), the “Bavarian Geographer” also names the Rus (Ruzzi). It is believed that this information could have appeared in it thanks to Constantine-Cyril’s brother Methodius, who in the early 870s, apparently, was in exile in the Reichenau monastery. Judging by the place they occupy in the text, the “Rus” of the “Bavarian Geographer” should probably be understood as the population of the Middle Dnieper region, where, according to chronicle data, the glades lived.

By the 860s, the Rus were known in the German lands as traders. In the charter of Louis the German to the Altaich monastery (in eastern Bavaria, on the Danube), which confirms the land acquisitions of the monastery on the territory of the Bavarian East March, a certain “Ruzaramarcha” is mentioned, in which they see a trading post located on the trade route along the right southern bank of the Danube - a trading settlement where Russian merchants sailing from the east along the Danube stopped. Since Louis's charter dates back to 862–863, one might think that this trading post had already existed for some time. The presence of trade routes of Russian merchants to Bavaria is confirmed by the Raffelstetten Customs Charter, which was drawn up between 904 and 906 by order of the last East Frankish Carolingian, Louis IV the Child. This source speaks of Slavic merchants setting out “from the Rugs or from the Bohemians” to trade along the Danube. By “rugs” here we mean Rus' - this name of an ancient and by that time long-vanished tribe was repeatedly used in relation to Rus' in Western European sources written in Latin. The connection between the Rus and the Bohemians (Czechs) is due to the fact that the trade route to Bavaria came from Prague, from where Slavic merchants came. Thus, already in the early 860s there was a trade route connecting Kyiv with Western Europe, first along the Danube, and later through the Czech lands. These merchants traded in wax, slaves and horses. It is significant, however, that the forms of the name “Rus” mentioned in these monuments were borrowed by South German dialects no later than the first half of the 9th century, and they have a fundamentally long “u” sound and, therefore, reflect the original name precisely in the form “Rus”, which was already the self-name of the Rus at that time.

The ruler of Dnieper Rus' probably continued to use the title “Kagan”. This is evidenced by the message of the Frankish emperor and Italian king Louis II (son of Emperor Lothair I, nephew of Louis the German and grandson of Louis the Pious) to the Byzantine emperor Basil the Macedonian, dated 871 (it came down to us as part of the “Salerno Chronicle” of the 10th century). In this document, Louis reports that “we call the sovereign (praelatus) of the Avar, and not the Khazars (Gazani) or the Normans (Nortmanni) khagan (chaganus).” At that time, no Avar kagan existed anymore - the Avar Kaganate was defeated by Charlemagne, and its last ruler was baptized. So, as applied to the Avar ruler, this title was a pure memory. Meanwhile, the Frankish Empire did not recognize the title of Kagan for the head of the Khazar state and for the “sovereign of the Normans,” which means the ruler of Rus'. From the text of the letter one can, it seems, conclude that Byzantium recognizes these titles. This means that the ruler of Rus' was titled kagan not only in 839, but also in 871. The title “Khakan” in relation to the ruler of Rus' is also mentioned by Arab authors in the story about the “island of the Rus”. It is significant that ancient Russian sources also record the title “Kagan” in relation to the Kyiv princes - Vladimir the Holy and Yaroslav the Wise. In the 10th century, there is no mention of the title “Kagan” in relation to Russian rulers. Such a title of the Russian “sovereign” could indicate, on the one hand, his high status as a ruler to whom other rulers were subordinate, and on the other, his claims to a position independent of Khazaria.

The already mentioned story about the “island of the Rus” appeared in Arab-Persian literature at the beginning of the 10th century. It is contained in the works of many authors of the X-XVII centuries and is believed to go back to a certain common source, conventionally called the “Anonymous Note on the Peoples of Eastern Europe.” The time of compilation of the “Anonymous Note” dates back to approximately 870-890, since the text mentions the ruler of Great Moravia, Prince Svatopluk. The first author whose work that has come down to us contains a story about the “island of the Rus” is Abu Ali Ahmad ibn Umar ibn Ruste, a Persian by origin, who lived in the Iranian city of Isfahan at the turn of the 9th–10th centuries. He owns a lot of work encyclopedic in nature - “The Book of Dear Values” (“Kitab ala “lak al-nafisa”), written in Arabic in 903–925. Only the seventh volume of this work, dedicated to astronomy and geography, has survived. In his work, Ibn Ruste describes different countries and peoples, including the Rus:

“As for the Rus (ar-Rusiya), they are on an island surrounded by a lake. The island on which they live, a three-day journey, is covered with forests and swamps, unhealthy and so damp that as soon as a person steps on the ground, it shakes due to the abundance of moisture in it. They have a king called Khakan-Rus. They attack the Slavs, approach them on ships, disembark and take them captive, take them to Khazaran (Itil - the capital of the Khazar Kaganate) and Bulkar (Bulgar - the capital of Volga Bulgaria) and sell them there. They have no arable land, and they live only on what they bring from the land of the Slavs. When their son is born, he (Rus) gives the newborn a naked sword, places it in front of him and says: “I will not leave you any property as an inheritance, and you have nothing except what you acquire with this sword.” They have no real estate, no villages, no arable land. Their only occupation is trading in sables, squirrels and other furs, which they sell to those who wish. They receive payment in money and tie it into their belts. They are neat in their clothes, and their men wear gold bracelets. Slaves are treated well, their clothing is taken care of, because [they] are traded. They have many cities and live freely. Guests are given honor and foreigners who seek their protection are treated well, as well as those who often visit them, not allowing any of their own to offend or oppress such people... Their swords are Sulaiman's (Frankish work). If any of their clans rises up [against someone], then they all stand up... They have healers, some of whom command the king, as if they were their (Russian) leaders. It happens that they order to sacrifice to their Creator whatever they wish: women, men, horses... They are brave and courageous and if they attack another people, they do not lag behind until they destroy it completely. The vanquished are exterminated and enslaved. They are tall, stately and bold in attacks. But they do not show courage on horseback and carry out all their raids and campaigns on ships. [Russians] wear wide trousers, each of which contains one hundred cubits of material. When putting on such trousers, they gather them together at the knees, to which they then tie them... They all constantly carry swords, since they trust each other little, and deceit is common among them...”

There is a story about the “island of the Rus” by other authors who wrote later to Ibn Rust, who add some details to this description. Thus, al-Muqaddasi (966) calls the number of Rus at 100 thousand people. The Persian historian Gardizi (mid-11th century) mentions that the king of the Rus charges 1/10 of trade. And in the anonymous Persian-language work “Mujmal at-tawarikh” (“Collected stories”) (1126) it is said that Rus was the brother of the Khazar and went to the island because he had no place in the country where the Khazar lived. There was also a later tradition of placing the Rus on the islands in the Northern Black Sea region, dating back to the 10th–11th centuries (at the end of the 10th century, as we remember, Rus' actually reached the shores of the Azov and Black Seas, where the Tmutorokan principality arose).

So, Arab authors differentiate between the Rus and the Slavs and place the Rus on an “island” that they have repeatedly and unsuccessfully tried to “find” in the vast expanses of Eastern and even Western Europe, from the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea to Taman, Crimea and the Caspian Sea. It seems that attempts to accurately localize the “Russian island” are unproductive. And the point here is both in the Arabic text itself and in the peculiarities of the perception of the Rus by the Arabs. The fact is that to designate the habitat of the Rus, Arab authors use the word “jazira”, and it can be understood as “island”, and as “peninsula”, and generally as “a large area of ​​land surrounded by water”, for example interfluve (al -Jazira - the interfluve of the Tigris and Euphrates), and the water space surrounding the “island” is called “bahr”, which can be understood not only as “sea”, but also as “big river”. Since the Arabs mainly encountered the Rus who sailed to their lands by water, they developed an idea of ​​the Rus as an “island” people for whom swimming was a main way movement. It is not for nothing that the term “island” itself, as the Arabs accumulated knowledge about Rus' already in the 10th century, gradually leaves the current geographical descriptions.

From the second half of the 9th century, peaceful Rus-merchants for the Arabs and Persians were replaced by Rus-warriors. The first information appears about the Rus' raids on the Caspian lands. The first such message belongs to the historian Ibn Isfendiyar, who in 1216–1217 wrote in Persian the “History of Tabaristan” - a region on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. Ibn Isfendiyar talks about the Rus' campaign to the Caspian in 297 AH (909–910): “This year 16 ships belonging to the Rus appeared in the sea, and they went to Abaskun, as in the time of Hasan [ibn] Zayd Alid, when the Rus arrived in Abaskun and waged war, and Hasan ibn Zayd sent an army and killed them all.” Abaskun is a port on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea in the Djurdzhan (Gurgan) region. Since Hasan ibn Zayd ruled in Tabaristan in 864–883, the first campaign of the Rus to the Caspian Sea can be dated to this time. Since this event is not mentioned by any other authors, doubts have been expressed about its reliability. However, the campaign itself could be associated with a threat to Russian trade from the mountaineers of Tabaristan, and therefore its reality is probable. If this is so, then most likely it took place in the second half of the 870s - early 880s.

So, apparently, even before Rurik (if we, of course, accept the chronicle dating of his arrival in Rus' in 862), the state formation of the Rus existed on the territory of Eastern Europe and even, moreover, Rus' gained fame in the international arena. This early formation in historical science is usually conventionally called the “Russian Kaganate” (although the sources do not mention the Kaganate itself, but talk about the Kagan (Khakan) of the Rus). By the end of the 830s, apparently, this state formation covered the lands of the north of Rus' - the Ladoga region, and also possibly the Ilmen region and the Upper Volga region (Rostov region), where it came into contact with the zone of Khazar influence. Probably, under the influence of the Khazar titulature, the ruler of the Ros began to use the title “Kagan” (Khakan). The leading role in this unification probably (but by no means necessarily) belonged to the Varangians. By the 840s, the Rus had mastered the trade route along the Volga to the Caspian Sea and along the Don to the Azov and then the Black Seas, connecting the Baltic with Byzantium and the countries of the East. One of the first advances of the Rus along the future path “from the Varangians to the Greeks” - along the Dnieper to Byzantium - the embassy of 839 dates back to the same time. Then this path is mastered more and more, and the center of the “khaganate” moves to the Middle Dnieper - perhaps already in the early 850s (information from al-Ya'kubi about the ruler of the Slavs), and by 860 quite definitely. Perhaps the leaders of this advance were the Varangians Askold and Dir, who became princes in the land of the Polyans. This state formation organized the campaign of 860 against Constantinople, after which it entered into an alliance with Byzantium, and some of the Rus were baptized. It also traded with the German lands along the Danube. may have organized an attack on Abaskun in the 870s. In 871, the title of Kagan in relation to the ruler of the Rus, as one might think, still existed (this is confirmed by the Arab story about the “island of the Rus”). The consolidation of the Varangians in the Dnieper region weakened the ties of the “Kaganate.” with the north of Rus'. Here the Varangians were expelled by local tribes “over the sea”, after which after some time they were “called” again as the New Prince of the North Russian Slavic and Finno-Ugric tribes and Rurik became.

Of course, the picture drawn is hypothetical, but information from various sources allows us to outline its main features with sufficient confidence. This leads us to the conclusion that Rurik did not build his power from scratch - in the country where he came, there were already the beginnings of statehood. Now it’s worth looking - of course, taking into account the little data available to us - what the Varangian prince did to establish in his new possessions the “outfit” that the Tale of Bygone Years spoke about.

Egor Klassen's theory

Before Catherine the Second, Russia was well aware of the history of Ancient Rus' before the time of Rurik.
Even Lomonosov recognized the deep antiquity of Russian history. But Lomonosov did not write a thorough work on this topic.
But during the time of Catherine II. Russian historical science was headed by three people - Miller, Bayer, Schlözer (Germans), who did not like ancient Russian history, which was older than German. They began to destroy all facts about the history of Ancient Rus' before the time of Rurik, and it was they who imposed a modern understanding of Russian history on Russian historians.
But a state councilor and trustee of the Moscow Academy. Klassen, unlike his brilliant predecessor, managed to write a special scientific work “New materials for the ancient history of the Slavic-Russians.” And he wrote this in 1854.
Klassen showed: the Novgorodians really invited the Varangian princes to reign, but this was an internal affair of the Russians themselves, for in the north of Western Europe, right up to the Elbe-Laba, there was a highly developed Slavic civilization and it was called Pomeranian Russia. “The Varangian-Russians are related to the Russians of the Novgorod region,” writes Klassen. The Varangians are sea warriors, “who, for the purpose of varanging (sailing) the seas, were called Varangians,” guarded our trade routes from sea robbers. The invited Varangian princes were from Pomeranian Rus', and not from Scandinavia. But it was also in Scandinavia small area Rus', as can be seen from Klassen’s book and what followed from the research of the travel scientist Thor Heyerdahl, who, after conducting excavations near the city of Azov in 2001, told the press: “...according to ancient sources, there is evidence that the Vikings served as mercenaries in the troops of the Russian principality, which included part of the southern territories from Azov to Sochi.” His working hypothesis is that, fearing the Romans, the Vikings left for Scandinavia.
Heyerdahl also suggested that “the Vikini were the ancestors of the Cossacks.”
But here the opposite conclusion has the same right to exist: the Cossacks were the ancestors of the Vikings. Part of the Cossacks in the YI-YII centuries. went to Scandinavia, where they became the Norman Vikings. The Cossacks destroyed the “bases” of the local sea robbers and conquered a springboard for the fight against pirates and Vatican Christianizers. This explains the logic of the behavior of the Normans in medieval Europe.
The name Russov, known from time immemorial as Slavic, not only to all Asian tribes, but also to the Israelites from the time of their coming to the Promised Land. And among them the Russians are at the head of not only the Romans, but also the ancient Greeks - like their ancestors.
Indeed, the Slavic-Russians, as a people formed earlier by the Romans and Greeks, left behind in all parts of the old world many monuments testifying to their presence there and to their ancient writing, arts and enlightenment. The monuments will remain forever as indisputable evidence; they tell us about the actions of our ancestors in a language that is native to us, constituting the prototype of all Slavic dialects, merging in it as their common source.

Let's take the Icelandic sagas as an example. We find in them the names Valland (Gaul), Danmork (Denmark), Gotthiod (Gotland), Rin (Rhine), Attii (Attila), Holmgardr (XonMoropbi), Vana (Vends). These are all names that undoubtedly belong to history. Many of their words will also be explained in which they add the letter g at the end, like aesir, diar, iatnar or iotar, thursar or thussar, vanir, vanaheimr, Skalogrimr, etc. Subtract the final letter g, it will be: aesi, dia, iatna or iota , thursa or thussa, vani, vanaheim, skalogrim (Azas or demigods, spirits or gods, Jutes or Getae, Furs or priests, Vans or Venets, Venetia or the land of the Venets, Skalogrom - a Slav who moved from the Baltic coast to Norway under the Norwegian king Ha -ralda, and from there he moved with his neighbors to Iceland and formed its first population). These names are all taken from real life. The most ancient writers, such as Ethelward, Albericus, Snorro, Torpheus, and Saxo Grammaticus, also claim that all the names found in ancient Scandinavian legends were taken from historical persons and peoples, but transferred to deities and supernatural beings.
The name Slavs has existed since ancient times. The main tribe of Mysia and Macedonia consisted of Slavs. Their country was called Slavinia. The very first settlers of this country were the Pelasgians, who, according to the undoubted arguments of Mr. Chertkov, in the study of the Pelasgian-Thracian tribes, also turned out to be Slavs.
Let the following serve as further confirmation that the Macedonians were indeed Slavs: after the fall of the Macedonian kingdom, part of the Macedonians, around 320 BC, moved to the Baltic Sea and founded their new dwellings called Bodrichi, which retained the coat of arms of Alexander until their fall Macedonian, depicting bucephalus and a vulture. And soon after that, one part of them moved again to Ilmen and Lovat

And that the Slavs had literacy not only before the general introduction of Christianity among them, but also long before the birth of Christ, is evidenced by the acts that elevate the literacy of the Slavic-Russians from the tenth century ago - to ancient times, through all the dark periods of history, in of which, occasionally here and there, the element of the Slavic-Russian people with its characteristic type is clearly visible.
Let's start with our arguments:
1) Chernorizets Brave / who lived in the 10th century, says: The Slavs are trash (i.e., idolaters) with features and cuts honoring and gatahu.
2) Constantine Porphyrogenitus says that the Croats, immediately after accepting Christianity, therefore, before they could learn to read and write, confirmed with their own signatures their oath to the Pope not to fight with other nations.
3) Thitmar, describing the temple of Rethra, says that there were idols inside it and his name was written on each of them. - Subsequently, photographs from these inscriptions were published many times in print.
4) Massudi, when describing the Slavic temple in the golden meadows, says that there were signs inscribed on the stones that indicated future affairs, i.e. predicted events.
5) In Igor’s agreement with the Greeks it is said: “The burden was ate seals of evil, and rocTie of silver: now your Prince has commanded to send a letter to our kingdom: as we are sending to this country, as if we have sent a small ship...”
6) A place in Oleg’s agreement with the Greeks, where it is said: “about those working in Greece of Rus' for the Christian king: if anyone dies without organizing his estate, he will not have his own, but return the estate to his small neighbors in Rus'. If you open the order, then take it in order; to whom it is written, you will inherit the property, and you will inherit it.”
In the 6th century, the Byzantines already spoke of the northern Slavs as an educated people who had their own letters, called initial letters. The root of this word has been preserved to this day in the words: letter, primer, literally, and even in the second letter of the alphabet (buki).
The Scythian king challenged Darius to battle with an abusive letter back in 513 BC. That the ancient Russians actually wrote on wooden tablets is confirmed to us by Ibn-El-Nedim, who attached to his work a photograph from a letter from the Russians, which he found embedded in a white tree among a Caucasian resident.
From everything deduced here, it is clear that the Slavs had literacy not only before all the western peoples of Europe, but also before the Romans and even the Greeks themselves, and that the outcome of enlightenment was from the Russians to the west, and not from there to them.
Let us now consider which Slavic tribe the Trojans belonged to.
In the Trojan possessions there was a river Rsa or Rasa. Everywhere where the Russians sat, we find a river of this name. The present Arake is the ancient Rsa; according to the geography of that time, they mean the people of Ros and the country of the same name, later called Scythians. Arak was called El-Ras by the Arabs, Orsai and Raskha by the Mongols, and Ras and Oros by the Greeks. The Volga was also called Rsoyu when the Russes and Unnas moved towards it from across the Caspian Sea; the same name was preserved by the river Rusa or Porusye in the Novogorod province, where the ancient Alauan Rus sat; the Ros River, which flows into the Dnieper, where the Dnieper Rus or Porosyans sat; The Russian Sea or the Black Sea, where Black Rus' was; the Rusa River in Moravia, where the Rusnyaks now live; the river Rusa, constituting the right branch of Memel or Neman, called, as legend says, by this name from its very source, along which sat, along its entire course, Alauan Rus', which moved from the old dwelling to a new place, finally reaching the seaside and spreading along it to the left to Rusnya, which is now Frisch-Gaf, and to the right, probably up the entire bay, where it was called Pomorskaya.
The author of Igoriad recognizes Ilion not only as Slavic, but even Russian as a truth that has long been known and undoubted. That Troy and Rus' were occupied not only by the same people, but also by the same tribe; therefore, the Russians were Trojans or the Trojans were Russians. But as a huge tribe of Russians, everything could not be combined in Troy, and part of the Russians could build Ilion, moreover, the nicknames: Trojans, Dardanes, Teucrians, Thracians and Pelasgians are not proper names of the people, but only common nouns, as we saw above, therefore, The Russians are the tribal name of the people who inhabited Troy.
Iornand writes about Novgorod back in the 6th century. He also says that in 350 Novgorod was conquered by the Gotami. This city has existed for 500 years before the calling of the Varangians. Procopius and Iornand say that the Slavs built strong wooden houses and fortified cities; the former tied them to the ground, and the latter served as defense against enemies.
Tacitus in 60 A.D. says that the Germans do not yet know cities; The Slavs build strong wooden houses and fortified cities for defense against enemies.
Herodotus also describes the significant city of the Slavs - Budinov - Gelon, and this was almost 500 years BC. If at that time the city of Gelon was already glorious, then its construction should probably date back to at least the same time as Rome, if not earlier.
What people lived at that time in what is now northern Russia, when the Scandinavians called it Gaardarikr, i.e. a state consisting of cities? We know that Gaard means city, Gaarda means cities, rikr means kingdom. The Scandinavians themselves answer that this is Ryszaland, i.e. land of the Russians. What surprised the Scandinavians when they visited Risaland? Many cities and fortifications, i.e. what they themselves did not have, or lacked; for if they had the same number of cities as in Risaland, then there would be no need to give it the epithet name Gaarderikr. Consequently, when Scandinavia did not yet have cities, or even had very few, Russia abounded in them beyond measure, so that in their eyes it earned the name of a kingdom consisting of cities.
More than twenty Slavs were elevated to the throne of Rome;
Let us mention the names of at least a few: Justin I, Claudius, Caesar-Severus and Valentius - Illyrians; Justinian, Justin II, Probus, Maximian and Valentinian are Pannonians; Diocletian - Dalmatian; Konstantin-Khlor-Rusin. The Slavic origin of these emperors is recognized by all, and according to the testimony of Gamza, both Gennesius and Emperor Vasily were also Slavs. In a word, the greatest Roman emperors of recent times were the Slavs, and the legions of their fatherland played the main role in Rome and Byzantium, constituting the best army. After this, it is very clear that Tsar John Vasilyevich could have a reason to infer his kinship with the Roman emperors. How many kings of Slavic origin were there in Denmark, Sweden and Norway?

In 216 BC, the inhabitants of the Baltic Sea Veneta-Slavs, strongly pressed by the Goths, had to cede to them their amber mines and most of their dwellings and, willy-nilly, move somewhere.
Although later, namely in the year 166 according to RX., the Russians (Roxolani, Roxalani), who came to the amber shores, drove the Goths from the seaside (Ptolemaios), but the settlers on Ilmen and Lovat for almost four centuries had already adopted it on their places, did not look for their former homes, but remained where, probably, trade had already rewarded them with many benefits. The Ilmen settlers built a city, the name of which is Novgrad (which makes us involuntarily look for Stargrad), we learn only in the 4th century, when it was destroyed by the Goths, under their ataman Erman (251, who in turn were again forced out and moved into Russia.
Ptolemy called the Alans Scythians, Marcian called them Sarmatians, and in Georgian history they called them Russians. Ammianus describes them as Russov. But in addition, we note that the river now called Somme, which once irrigated the fields of ancient Alania, which existed there, was called Samara at that time, and the city built on both its banks, the current Amiens, bore the name Samarobregi (banks of Samara). - These two names are enough to affirmatively say that the Alans were Slavs; for just as Samara is a Slavic name, so Bregi is a Slavic word.

1) The Scythians of Anna Komnenoy, Leo the Deacon and Kinnam spoke Russian.
2) The Tauro-Scythians of Constantine Porphyrogenitus spoke Russian.
3) The Great Scythians of the Greek writers, according to Nestor, spoke Russian.
4) Sarmatians (Russians) Chalcocondyles spoke Russian.
5) Alana (Rossi) in Georgian history - of course, Russian.
6) The Sarmatians of Pope Sylvester II spoke the Wendish language, and the Wendish language is a dialect of Slavic.
7) Sarmatians (Yatsigs and Pannonians) Am. Marz. and blessed Jerome was spoken in Slavic language.
8) The Sarmatians (Antas), recognized by everyone as Slavs, spoke, of course, the Slavic language.
9) Sarmatians (Serbs) of Pliny and Anton still speak the Slavic language.
10) Sarmatians (Vends) Peutinger. table Procopius and Ptolemy, as they occupied the same place with the Sarmatians of Pope Sylvester, spoke, of course, the same language as the latter, therefore Slavic.
11) Sarmatians (Slavs) of different historians - Slavic.
12) All Sarmatians in general are Slavic.
13) Alan (Anty) - Slavic.
14) Alan (Slavs) - Slavic.
15) Alan in northern France - Slavic.
Consequently, all the Scythians, Sarmatians and Alans cited here spoke, if in different dialects, then still Slavic.
The main feature of the mythology of these peoples:
According to Herodotus, the Scythians worshiped the sword in the form of the god of war.
According to Clementius of Alexandria, the Sarmatians worshiped the sword in the form of the god of war.
According to Nestor, the Russians worshiped the sword in the form of the god of war.
According to Ammianus, Alana worshiped a sword in the form of the god of war - Water.
According to Helmold, the Slavs worshiped a sword in the form of the god of war - Water - for whom a special temple was built in Retra.
Of course, we find some differences among them in other idols; but when there are schisms between Christians in one common truth, given to us by the revelation of God, then how could there not be schisms among idolaters, who created idols for themselves according to their own will and gave them names and attributed to them actions according to their imagination.
Need I say that according to this conclusion, all the above-mentioned peoples should be of the same tribe?
But when the Hindus speak of God as the Incomprehensible, as the Spirit that is without beginning, infinite and eternal, then he is called Vishnu (the Supreme, the Most High), i.e. The highest spirit, incomprehensible to creatures! - Vishnu and the Most High constitute the same word for the Hindus and the Slavs according to the subject implied by them.
So exactly we read from the most ancient Greek writers that
in upper Italy sat the Geta-Russians, whom later historians remade first into the Getrusci, and then into the Etruscans. Stephen of Byzantium speaks in his geographical
“It is a shame for us Russians that we do not care about tracing all the chronicles ourselves, in order to be able to completely amaze and discard the false Russian history compiled by the Germans, written without references to sources, solely for the glorification of the Germans, and thereby wean these world historians from habit of getting into the wrong sleigh!” This is how Yegor Klassen concludes his work.

Klassen’s theory seems to me to be the true history of Ancient Ruri, if he considered the beginning of Russian history from the 3rd century BC, then the famous explorer and ethnographer Demin considered the beginning of the history of Ancient Rus' from 2300 BC, from the time of the construction of the ancient city of Slovensk
(this is on the site of modern Veliky Novgorod). While studying this theory, I found many interesting facts useful for my book. Although there are some points with which I do not entirely agree, but time will tell (maybe I’m wrong).

Manyagin V.G.History of the Russian people from the Flood to Rurik. - M.: Algorithm, Eksmo, 2009. - 382 p.

ISBN 978-5-699-30510-0

Where did the Russian land come from? What secrets does the history of the Russian people hide? What do the Slavs have to do with the Aryans? Is it true that Moscow was founded by the biblical Patriarch Mosoh? This is only a tiny fraction of the questions that can be answered in the pages of this book. The author, a supporter of the historical tradition that dates back to Lomonosov and Tatishchev, explores the formation and development of the Slavic-Russian tribes, tracing their history from the 2nd millennium BC.

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF THE SLAVIC-RUSSIANS AND THE PERIODIZATION OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Fragment from the book “The History of the Russian People from the Flood to Rurik”

“Where did the Russian land come from, and who began to reign in it first?” - the same immortal question in Rus' as “who is to blame?” and “what should I do?” For almost a thousand years, chroniclers and historians have been breaking their spears on this issue, but it seems that the further we move along the scale of historical time, the less hope we have of knowing the truth.
During our school years, we are once and for all implanted in our heads with a “sum of knowledge”, consisting mainly of the postulates of the dominant historical theory worked out according to the template. And it says that the Slavs entered the historical arena later than other peoples, and this predetermined their lag behind the “civilized world”, that the history of Russia began no earlier than the 8th-9th centuries, and before that savagery and barbarism reigned on the East European Plain and all we received good things - starting with the ABCs - from the West, which we are forever doomed to catch up without the slightest hope of success, because, as we know, “the student is not greater than the teacher” (Luke 6:40). In general, not people, but fertilizer for the growth of “historical nations”. This is exactly what Western teachers have tried to instill in us over the past three centuries, from Kant and Hegel to Marx and Reagan, who called the Slavs either an “unhistorical” or “reactionary” people, or even simply an “evil empire.”
Our “bearded ancestors,” as Karamzin called the Great Russians, until the 18th century had national pride, high self-esteem and did not suffer from the inferiority complexes that developed so much among the Russian intelligentsia in subsequent centuries. The self-name “Slavs” - “glorious”, “famous” - testifies to this. The Western tribes (primarily Germanic) who fought the Slavs remade it in their own way: sklavin (slave). So the ideological war did not begin yesterday, or even in the century before last. But after the Westernization of Russia under Peter the Great, it was transferred to Russian territory.
The German-Russian historian Schlozer, according to Karamzin, “a learned and glorious man,” said that Russia began in 862. And before that, “the great part of Europe and Asia, now called Russia, in its temperate climates was originally inhabited, but by wild peoples, plunged into the depths of ignorance, who did not mark their existence with any historical monuments of their own”; peoples who, as Mr. Karamzin believed - the “Russian Tacitus”, the official historiographer of the Russian state - “drank the blood of killed enemies, used their tanned skin instead of clothing, and skulls instead of vessels.”
It is on such stories about their ancestors that generation after generation of Russian intellectuals were brought up. As a result, servility towards the West developed in the educated Russian community, complicated by contempt for its own people. And it was no longer the Schlezers and Buyers, but the legions of scientists raised in their native land that began to destroy the “love for fatherly tombs” in the younger generation.
“From ... a brief overview of the external relations of Russian history, one can see that, taking this history from a purely chronological side, we must place it only in the second half of the Middle Ages and in modern times, and that it is permissible to speak about the world-historical significance of Russian history only according to in relation to the last two centuries of modern times,” wrote Russian historian N.I. Kareev, famous at the beginning of the twentieth century. - “Both in relation to the first beginnings of cultural life, and in relation to the beginning of Russia’s major historical role, we must equally point to the very late emergence of our fatherland on the path of a broader historical development. The fate of all those who come later is, in general, that they have to experience more influences than to influence themselves, to repeat what others have already experienced rather than to go ahead of others. ... Remoteness from the main historical scene, the purely physical conditions of the country, the constant struggle with Asian nomads, the Tatar yoke - all this, taken together, had an extremely adverse effect on Russian life. Having entered the great historical road later than other peoples and moving slower than others along it, the Russians had, of course, to lag far behind their Western neighbors, and this backwardness is one of the most striking general facts of Russian history. But another fact is equally striking, namely the very significant progress made by Russian life over the last two centuries and especially during the second half of XIX century."
This is said about a country that was originally the largest state in Europe, whose rulers from the 9th century were related to the royal houses of France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, England, etc. And how far was the “main historical stage” from Russia? What performances were staged there? Did the shield on the gates of Constantinople, the Battle of the Ice, the Battle of Kulikovo, the Battle of Grunwald, the Livonian War have less significance for history than the Battle of Poitiers, the Spanish Reconquista, the Hundred and Thirty Years' Wars? The very zero point of reference for the importance of historical events, located somewhere in Strasbourg, betrays those who determine this importance.
And current textbooks are compiled from the same Schletzer-Karamzin positions. “The Kyiv chroniclers believed that the tribes of the Eastern Slavs gathered in ancient times around Kyiv...”, write the authors of one of the modern school history textbooks, however, immediately specifying what kind of “old times” these were. - “The Novgorodians associated the emergence of the Russian state with the invitation of the Varangians and dated this to within one year - 862.”
In general, the authors attribute the entry of the Slavs into the historical arena to the 9th century: “Nestor decided to create a special introduction to his chronicle, which began with a description of the attack of the Russian flotilla on Constantinople in 860.” At best, there was some kind of forest-steppe rustling in the VI-VII centuries. Until that moment, the Slavs were even denied existence. The first three centuries A.D. (“Trojan Ages”) for the authors of the textbook - the times of the “Proto-Slavs”.
So, we can state that from the end of the 18th century to the present day Russian historiography there is an official point of view on Russian history, according to which the Slavs entered the historical arena only in the second half of the 9th century (that is, after the calling of the Varangians, who in this case are uniquely defined as Normans), and Russia acquired “world-historical significance” only from the 18th century, when representatives of that branch of the Romanovs, which, almost without exaggeration, can be called German (not to mention its individual representatives, for example, Catherine II), appeared on the Russian throne. Thus, the Germanic tribes twice pulled the Slavs out of the abyss of “savagery and ignorance”, created (in the 9th century) and reconstructed (in the 18th century) the Russian state, and without their participation there is no need to talk about any historical role of the Slavic-Russians.
This idea can be clearly traced from Schletser and Karamzin to modern writers of numerous “histories of the fatherland.” It is worth noting that these historians, both three hundred years ago and today, were in the pay either of non-Russian authorities or of organizations waging an ideological war against the Russian people (such as Freemasonry or the Soros Foundation).
***
A completely different history of the Slavic-Russians appears before us if we turn to the works of those Russian patriotic historians who did not receive monetary compensation for their historical works, and if they were public service, then according to another (non-historical) department. At the same time, it is worth paying attention to the fact that the closer (counting from us) to the border of the 17th-18th centuries they lived (that is, the less their consciousness was clouded by the Schletzer-Karamzin fables and the more familiar they were with the chronicles and oral traditions of the Russian people) , the more peculiar, vibrant and ancient history of Rus'-Russia they describe.
And the first among them must be named Vasily Nikitich Tatishchev (1686-1750), soldier, scientist, politician, official, researcher. He took part in the Battle of Poltava, led metallurgical plants, developed the Southern Urals and Northern Kazakhstan, and founded Yekaterinburg. But throughout the centuries his name was glorified by the “Russian History” he wrote, three volumes of which brought to us the priceless treasures of Russian chronicles, which were then destroyed in the Moscow fire of 1812.
In the first volume of his “History” V.N. Tatishchev (referring to such ancient authors as Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus), points to the antiquity of the Slavs, who, in his words, “first lived in Syria and Phenicia,” then on the southern coast of the Black Sea, participated in the Trojan War, after which a significant part of them moved to Europe, occupying the northern and northwestern coast of the Adriatic (modern Albania, Serbia, Croatia and northern Italy).
According to Tatishchev, “in the time of Solon” ​​representatives of the Slavic aristocracy studied philosophy in Athens, and in the 6th century AD. had already “conquered all of Europe”, after which they came “to Northern Rus'”.
For such “incredible” information, Vasily Nikitich was defamed by historical officials as a liar, who almost wrote chronicles in his spare time. The Germans, led by Biron, Anna Ioanovna’s temporary worker, who surrounded the royal throne in the middle of the 18th century, accused the Russian historian of embezzlement and bribery, of participating in an anti-government conspiracy, and Tatishchev, deprived of awards and ranks, was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Spending the last years of his life in his native village of Boldino near Moscow, he predicted his death a day before and personally indicated where in the cemetery to build his grave. The great Russian historian died on July 26, 1750.
Another greatest Russian scientist, Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (1711-1765), who can only be compared with Leonardo da Vinci, also thought in agreement with Tatishchev. The son of a Pomor peasant from Kholmogory (one of the oldest northern centers of Slavic-Russian civilization), he became the founder of physical chemistry, developed the theory of the atomic-kinetic structure of matter, was an artist, chemist, astronomer (discovered the existence of an atmosphere on Venus), philologist, and poet. Lomonosov was also a historian, although they prefer not to dwell on this much.
This is understandable. Not only did this Russian genius completely reject the Norman theory and subject it to crushing criticism. He was one of the first to oppose the doctrine of the unhistorical nature of the Russian people, their “original savagery and ignorance.”
“We have a lot of evidence,” Lomonosov wrote in his “Ancient Russian History...”, “that in Russia there was not the great darkness of ignorance that many external writers imagine. “They will be forced to think differently, having demolished their and our ancestors and compared the origins, actions, customs and inclinations of peoples with each other.”
Unfortunately, this wish of the Russian scientist - to take an unbiased look at his ancestors and honestly assess the degree of their ignorance in comparison with the Slavs - was never fulfilled by “external” (foreign) writers. Which, however, is not so difficult to understand. Just as it is not difficult to understand those “internal”, Russian-speaking descriptors of our Fatherland who walked and are walking in the wake of the “external” ones.
Lomonosov believed that the Slavic “people and language extend into deep antiquity,” reasonably noting that since the “greatness and power” of the Slavic tribes has been the same for more than one and a half thousand years (that is, at least from the 2nd century AD) is great (“stands on the same measure”), it would be strange to think that the Slavs arose in the 1st century and in a hundred years multiplied “to such a great population.”
And just like Tatishchev, with reference to ancient authors, writes about the “ancient habitation of the Vendian Slavs in Asia,” participation in the Trojan War and settlement after it throughout Europe.
Another Russian historian, an opponent of the Norman theory, D.I. Ilovaisky dates the beginning of Russian history to at least the 1st and 2nd centuries BC. , leading the Slavic-Russians out of the Roxalans. For his patriotic beliefs, he was “punished” by silencing his works and merits in the field of historical science.
“Serious” historians of the 19th-20th centuries, “forgetting” the works of Tatishchev and Lomonosov, began to say that “the initial chronicle does not remember the time of the arrival of the Slavs from Asia to Europe” and that the beginning of Rus' dates back to the first millennium AD. , unanimously pointing to the creation of the Kyiv state as the original starting point of Russian history. Silence has become the main weapon of the anti-Russian party in historical science.

A LITTLE ABOUT FAITH, SCIENCE AND CHRONOLOGY

Disputes about the antiquity of the Slavs and the chronology of Russian history inevitably lead to the question of what periods can be distinguished in it?
If you do not take into account the peculiar and exotic periodizations of Russian history, for example, in the relationship between the forest and the steppe, then it is easy to notice that most historians delimit historical periods by political centers (Kievan Rus, Suzdal land, Muscovy, the St. Petersburg period) or political events ( Tatar-Mongol yoke, Time of Troubles, reforms of Peter the Great). However, in any case, they begin the chronological countdown from the calling of the Varangians and the creation of the Kyiv state.
It is not difficult to notice that in the works of V.N. Tatishchev and M.V. Lomonosov, Slavic-Russian history has an extensive chronological period preceding the Kyiv period. For example, the first part of “Ancient Russian History...” by Lomonosov is called “About Russia before Rurik” and contains chapters such as “On the distant antiquity of the Slavic people” and “On the resettlement and affairs of the Slavic people,” in which the history of the Slavic people is reported. Rus in the 2nd millennium BC. - I millennium AD
V.N. Tatishchev divides his “Russian History” into five parts (periods), in the first of which he wants to “announce the writers and describe the ancient ones relating to our fatherland, the three main peoples and the peoples descended from them, such as the Scythians, Sarmatians and Slavs, every dwelling, war, resettlement and name changes, as far as the ancients told us about them, and this until the beginning of detailed Russian history until 860 years after Christ.” Further, Tatishchev describes approximately the same historical period as Lomonosov in the first part of his work. Both historians consider this period to be completed with the calling of Rurik.
Taking into account the data available today, the history of the Slavic-Russians can be traced on the basis of written sources, at least until the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. In this regard, the author of this work, as a supporter of the creation theory of the development of the world and human society, proposes the following periodization of Russian history in relation to the Slavs towards the true God, since all history, in the deepest conviction of the author, is God’s providence for humanity:

I. Prologue (XX-XVIII centuries BC), or from the Flood to the Babylonian confusion of languages.
II. Biblical period (XVII century BC - 1st century BC), or from the Babylonian confusion of languages ​​to the Nativity of Christ;
III. Christian period (I-XVII centuries AD), or from the Baptism of Rus' by Apostle Andrew the First-Called to the Schism of 1666;
IV. Apostasy period (XVII-XX centuries AD), or from the Schism of 1666 to the coup d'etat of 1993.
V. Epilogue (late 20th - early 21st centuries AD), or from the coup d'etat of 1993 to the second coming of the Lord.

Perhaps this periodization will seem “unscientific” and too exotic to some, however, in the author’s opinion, it has no less right to exist than the scientific and no less exotic Eurasian periodizations of Russian history, or the stripped-down and falsified periodizations of the “Normanists” . The author believes that only having a Christian view of the world and society can one create a scientific theory into which all known historical facts are consistent, and which allows one to correctly evaluate them and know the truth.

Before moving on to the presentation of historical events directly, it is necessary to tell the reader a few words about creationism, the relationship between science and faith, the role of the Holy Scripture and Christianity in the knowledge of the world, and how biblical chronology relates to the real one.
Creationism is the doctrine of the divine beginning in the universe, the creation of the world and man by God, which rejects the theory of evolutionary development. Of course, creationism comes from a premise that lies outside of science (belief in God and that it was God who created the world). Therefore, undoubtedly, creationism requires faith in God as the force that caused the creation of the world.
On the other hand, opponents of creationism, who consider it an “unscientific” theory, need to be reminded that the evolutionary, “scientific” theory of the origin and development of the world also requires a certain belief in certain prerequisites underlying it, which evolutionary scientists themselves agree with :
“The first of the unprovable premises on which science is based is the belief that the world exists objectively and that the human mind is capable of understanding its true nature. The second and most well-known postulate underlying the structure of scientific knowledge is the law of cause and effect... The third basic scientific premise is the belief that nature is one.”
These very premises of science “define and limit the scientific way of thinking,” while “each of these postulates is either rooted in Christian theology or does not contradict it... Scientific thought separated from theology because it did not accept the postulate regarding any external force , or a force beyond the limits of measurable natural forces."
That is, the divergence between theology and science began from the moment when some scientists voluntarily rejected the Existing God and elevated nature to the divine rank. Professor Kapitsa once said wonderfully about this: “Saying that DNA arose in the process of evolution is the same as thinking that a television can arise from the process of shaking parts.”
Essentially, evolutionists have replaced belief in a personal God with pantheism, and their refusal to recognize the scientific nature of creationism is irrational, I would even say, religious in nature. The history of science shows that faith in Christ does not in the least hinder knowledge of the world. Thousands of scientists were Christians, including those who made the greatest discoveries: Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, William Herschel, Johannes Kepler, Mikhail Lomonosov, Louis Pasteur, Carl Linnaeus, Ivan Pavlov, Clerk Maxwell... the list goes on and on.
One of the outstanding mathematicians of the twentieth century, A. Koshin, said: “I am a Christian. This means that I believe in God and in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, just as outstanding scientists believed before me: Tycho de Brahe, Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, Pascal, Grimaldi, Euler, Gulden, Boskovic, Herschil and other great ones astronomers and mathematicians of yesteryear."
Max Planck (1856-1947), the famous professor of physics at the University of Berlin, founder of quantum theory, Nobel Prize laureate, in his reports, lectures and writings, conveys the idea: “Wherever we turn our gaze, whatever the subject of our observation, we nowhere do we find a contradiction between science and religion; we rather state their absolute harmony in the main points, especially in the field of natural science. Both religion and science ultimately seek the truth and come to the confession of God. Religion glorifies God at the beginning, science at the end of all thoughts. The first represents Him as the basis, the second - as the end of every phenomenal representation of the world."
No conscientious researcher would deny that modern science has its roots in the creationist worldview of biblical Christianity. And although the Bible “is not a scientific book, in the sense of a detailed technical and mathematical description natural phenomena... yet the Bible deals with a wide variety of natural phenomena and mentions a huge number of historical events... People have too quickly become convinced that the Bible is unscientific. However, reliable facts of observations and experiments do not contradict the biblical view of the world and history. Biblical cosmology has never been refuted; It’s just that under her influence people felt uncomfortable and rejected her...”
It is impossible for a Christian to believe in God and reject that part of the Holy Scriptures that touches on the most fundamental questions of science and the most important events of history. “How can a person believe that the Bible tells the truth about salvation, about heaven, about eternity—doctrines that he cannot test by experience—if he has been taught that those biblical facts that can be verified are false?”

Since this book puts forward a hypothesis according to which the entire history of mankind dates back no more than 6,000 years, the Ice Age ended in a time not at all as distant as official science suggests, and, in connection with this, geological catastrophes on a planetary scale shook the Earth and changed its face only three to four thousand years ago, the author considers it necessary to say a few words about the age of our planet and methods of dating certain archaeological finds.
If we talk about the age of the Earth, it should be noted that science can only do this based on the study of certain geophysical processes. However, this is done taking into account false assumptions that turn scientific analysis into subjective and voluntaristic. These false assumptions include the following:
1. The geophysical process used to determine the age of the Earth has always proceeded at the same speed as it does today;
2. The system in which this geophysical process takes place has been closed throughout the entire existence of the planet;
3. The quantitative composition of the elements of a given system is known at the moment when the process began to proceed at a constant speed.
In addition, both the system and the process must be universal, not local. Otherwise, the process will allow us to judge only the age of that part of the system in which it occurs.
It is clear that neither the first, nor the second, nor the third can be reliably known to modern science. In addition, in nature, in fact, there are neither completely closed systems nor processes that proceed at a constant speed all the time. It is impossible to determine the initial conditions of the process, so all that scientific analysts know is only the result of the process at the moment. Everything else is guesswork from applicants for scientific degrees and Nobel Prizes, such as the discovery of “terrestrial planets” in other star systems based on the fluctuations in the orbits of stars “visible” only through a radio telescope.
The unreliability of the officially recognized five- (six-? seven-? eight-?) billion-year period of the existence of our planet is well illustrated by an example of calculating this period based on changes in the Earth’s magnetic field. Magnetic field measurements began almost a century and a half ago and have been carried out regularly since then. Based on these measurements, the experimental dependence of the average induction of the Earth's magnetic field on time was calculated. It turned out that this dependence is described by an exponential function, the value of which decreases by approximately half every 1400 years. Thus, 1400 years ago the Earth's magnetic field was twice as strong as it is today, 2800 years ago - 4 times, 3200 years ago - 8 times, 4600 - 16 times. The geophysical process of weakening the Earth's magnetic field can be considered to occur at a constant speed, more than any other, since its changes are determined by deep processes in the earth's core.
Based on data obtained over a century and a half, Dr. Thomas Barnes, a professor of physics at the University of El Paso, determined that the maximum possible age of the Earth is 10,000 years, since further the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field will be unacceptably strong. This does not mean that the lifespan of the Earth cannot be less than 10,000 years, it just cannot exceed this period, but it may well be seven or six thousand years.
Just as the lifespan of our planet has been exaggerated many times over, the antiquity of civilizations known to historians has also been exaggerated. First of all, it should be pointed out that there is no reliable written evidence, even relating to the history of the most ancient states, such as Babylon, Sumer, Egypt, which would exceed the time limit of 2000 BC, that is, the border outlined by the biblical flood. This will be discussed in more detail below in a separate chapter.
Secondly, all dating of organic remains - wood, bones, etc. - based on modern “scientific” methods, for example, radiocarbon dating, are stunningly inaccurate and unreliable. The same radiocarbon analysis can be relatively accurate only for the period in the last 3000 years (for example, before the time of the biblical King Solomon (900 BC), but already for the time of the Trojan War (approximately 1200 BC). X.) or the New Hittite kingdom (second half of the second millennium BC), it already gives too much error).
And within three thousand years, the radiocarbon method gives half of the erroneous and dubious datings, that is, its reliability does not exceed 50%. Objective scientists believe: “Regardless of the degree of “usefulness” of the radiocarbon method, it must be admitted that it is not able to provide accurate and reliable results. The contradictions encountered within the framework of this method are enormous, the chronological data obtained are unsystematic and dependent on each other, and the dates considered correct are essentially taken from the air.”
In passing, it is worth noting that the very process of formation of radiocarbon (carbon-14) in the Earth’s atmosphere indicates that it is erroneous to estimate the age of the Earth at several billion years. The fact is that today the rate of decay of carbon-14 (1.63x104 per second per 1 square meter of the earth's surface) is less than the rate of its formation (2.5x104 per second per 1 square meter of the earth's surface). Accordingly, the rate of formation is approximately one and a half times higher than the rate of decay. Considering that the two processes - decay and formation - will reach equilibrium when all the carbon-14 atoms that were first formed from nitrogen again turn into nitrogen, which will require a time equal to five to six half-lives (for carbon-14, the half-life is 5730 years), that is, about 30,000 years, it can be argued that since such equilibrium has not yet occurred, then the age of the Earth does not exceed 30,000 years (and in reality - much less).
The conclusion that the Earth is very young, and its age does not exceed several thousand years, allows us to analyze a number of natural processes, such as the alpha decay of uranium and thorium, erosion of the earth’s crust and the removal of chemical elements by river waters into the ocean, etc. This means that all geological disasters, such as the ice age, the flood, the formation of modern continental coastlines and others, did not happen millions or hundreds of thousands of years ago, but at a time when the pyramids and the Tower of Babel already existed.
The patented “scientific world” goes to great lengths (this is evidenced by the story of the fake of the so-called “Archaeopteryx”, molded from several chicken feathers and lizard bones) to keep the laymen in blissful ignorance about the true history of the Earth and humanity, and , not least based on his atheistic views. Having abandoned God, atheist scientists also abandoned the Truth. And this must be taken into account by everyone who considers the words: “I think, means I exist!” to be their motto.
Of course, “it is impossible to give actual scientific proof of the creation of the world by the Creator to a non-believer and not seeking faith, since even if the dead are resurrected, according to the Savior, the non-believer will still not believe. But to a person who seeks the truth of God, who asks God for wisdom and understanding, God will reveal the wisdom that he has hidden from the wise of this world.”

You can buy the book by Manyagin V.G. From the flood to Rurik in the online store

According to the Joachim Chronicle, published in the 18th century by the Russian historian, geographer and statesman V.N. Tatishchev, “The Tale of Sloven and Rus” and the city of Slovensk» ( see on the website) and according to modern archeology, before the appearance of Rurik in Rus' there already existed a centralized state. Its founders, according to the Legend, were the sons of the prince Skifa– brothers Slovenian And Rus.
In 3099 from the “creation of the world” (2409 BC), the princes of Sloven and Rus with their families and subjects began to leave in search of new lands from the Black Sea coast and spent 14 years looking for land to settle. Finally, 2395 BC. The settlers came to the great lake, it was initially called Moisko, and then Ilmer - after the sister of the princes - Ilmer. The elder brother Sloven with his family and subjects settled near the river, which they called Mutnaya (Volkhov) and built the city of Slovensk (the future Novgorod the Great). From that moment on, the Scythians-Skolots began to be called Slovenians. The river flowing into Ilmer (Ilmen) was named after Sloven's wife - Shelon. Prince Rus founded the city of Rus - Staraya Russa. On behalf of their princes, the people inhabiting these lands began to be called Slovenes and Rus. Sloven, Rus and the princes who succeeded them ruled a vast territory that reached the Northern Arctic Ocean in the north and the Urals, the Ob River in the east. Mention is made of the Russian campaigns against Egypt, Greece and other countries.
One of Sloven's descendants was a prince Vandal(other pronunciation options for his name are Vend, Vened). It was under Prince Vandal that the Russian state was actually created, which was then taken over by the Rurikovichs. It included “Slovenian”, Russian tribes and Finno-Ugric peoples (Ves, Merya, Chud, Muroma, Mordovians). Vandal conquered significant areas in the west. Vandal had three sons: Izbor, Vladimir And The pillar is dedicated, each had its own city. The dynasty of the descendants of Sloven and Vandal ruled the North all the way to Rurik. Descendant Vladimir the Ancient(the middle son of Vandal - Vladimir, who lost the war in the 5th century to Attila) in the ninth generation Burivoy was the father of the prince Gostomysl.
Gostomysl was able to restore order in the North, defeated the Varangians and expelled them (his father was defeated on the banks of the Kumen River and was forced to retreat to the city of Byarma, perhaps Perm). The prince became famous not only as a great commander and brave warrior, but also as a wise and fair ruler who enjoyed the love of the people. However, none of his three (four?) sons and grandson Izbor (Sloven's son) lived to the end of Gostomysl's reign to inherit his power. A period of new Troubles was brewing. It was then that the wise Gostomysl told people about a dream where from his daughter’s belly Umily(she was married to the prince of Obodrit Godoluba, other pronunciations of the name are Godlav, Godolb) a huge tree grew, under whose branches an entire city could hide. The magician priests unraveled the meaning of the prophetic dream: the princess’s son would take power and create a great power. Later, the grandson of Gostomysl, the son of Umila and Godlav, was called to the throne of the northern power. Rurik.