Home Wisdom teeth There was no Kievan Rus or what historians are hiding audiobook. Alexey Kungurov - there was no Kievan Rus

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There was no Kievan Rus or what historians are hiding audiobook. Alexey Kungurov - there was no Kievan Rus

The law of conservation of information really exists! It is thanks to him that the truth about the great past of the Rus comes to people. And gradually it becomes known about the unprecedented fraud carried out by the Zionists to this day...

We present to your attention a very interesting book by a supporter of the “non-traditional” version of history Alexei Kungurov “There was no Kievan Rus or what historians are hiding”. As can be seen from the very title of this book, the author promises to overthrow the most seemingly undeniable myths of traditional history. Despite his youth - - he collected and summarized a huge amount of factual material on the history of modern Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania and traced how those living in these territories were deliberately distorted, and how from Russian people did Ukrainians, Belarusians And Lithuanians. And this did not always happen voluntarily and bloodlessly. So more than 20 thousand Rusyns living in Galicia, who did not want to be Ukrainized, went through a concentration camp, of which three thousand died. Several thousand Rusyns were held in the Terezin concentration camp. Many more could have died if the Russian army had not occupied most of Galicia in 1914. When she left these lands in 1915, most of the Rusyns left with her, fearing persecution by the Austrians and Ukrainians.

The author angrily denounces both past and present, who served and are serving the enemies of Russia, influencing the consciousness of people, distorting and erasing the historical memory of the Russian people, distorting the essence of historical phenomena, creating a kind of virtual history interspersed with some elements of real events, and also thoroughly reveals the methods and methods of their actions, for example, falsification of documents, both historical and statistical. In the matter of distorting the past, the publication of school history textbooks, which have an overt anti-Russian orientation, stands apart.

“...20 years is a second by historical standards. Russia has one second to live. What will happen in a couple of decades? NATO intervention? Too much honor! No one will come to conquer us. Degraded Russians will destroy each other themselves. The same end awaits us as Yugoslavia, which is dying painfully in an endless series of ethnic conflicts and political crises. The Soviet people ceased to exist. All that remains is to crush the remaining piece - an amorphous formation called “Russians” - and the job is done. But just in case, the current masters of the world are also preparing a military option for the “final solution to the Russian question.”

Who thinks we're getting off topic? After all, we were talking about history. Yes, that's what we're talking about. Story– this is a weapon. The Russian state can hypothetically be revived even in the most unfavorable conditions if the people, the bearer of the national idea and political will, survive. But national ideology and political will are based on historical consciousness. A people is a community, first of all, historical, and only secondarily linguistic, cultural, social, etc. That's why Now there is a war to destroy the Russian people as a single historical community…

For 20 years now, the methodical poisoning of the historical consciousness of Russians has been ongoing with the purulent poison of self-loathing. ...The task of our enemies is to force the Russians to abandon the national idea. Like, why do you, Russians, need your own state, especially an imperial state? Better integrate into the global community tailored to North Atlantic standards. You give us oil, gas, metals, prostitutes, children for adoption and organs for transplantation, and we give you cheap consumer goods and glamorous spiritual food of the Hollywood format. And there is no need to strain to protect your land. Native land is a sacred concept for barbarians, but for civilized people it is just a commodity that can be sold at a profit. Accordingly, whether to give the islands to the Japanese is not a question of principle, but a question of price. And in general, one should live not for the sake of some stupid chimerical ideas like building the kingdom of God on earth, but for the sake of profit.

But the Russians are prevented from succumbing to these sweet speeches by their historical memory, the memory of the recent golden age. Therefore, the main blow in the war to destroy Russia is not struck by the enemies at airfields and submarine bases, but against our memory. Strategically, the emphasis is on sterilizing the historical consciousness of the people, deforming the cultural matrix of the nation. Tactically, the main manipulations are based on the method of creating virtual history based on actual events and gradually displacing reliable ideas about the past from consciousness. This is the third method of manipulating historical consciousness...

...Can a lackey, accustomed to groveling and fawning, become a warrior? Here is the answer to the question whether Russians re-educated by historians will fight for the Kuril Islands. At the right moment, the media will explain to the cattle that the sale of Alaska, which is very expensive to develop, was very beneficial to Russia, and therefore four worthless rocky islands should be ceded to the Japanese, because it is very expensive to import fuel oil for boiler houses there. And the Russians will not fight for the Arctic. I remember how in school atlases during my childhood, two dotted lines stretched from the Kola Peninsula and Chukotka to the North Pole, marking the boundaries of the polar possessions of the USSR. When dividing the Soviet inheritance, they should have gone to the Russian Federation. But to hell with you! As soon as talk began about gigantic hydrocarbon deposits on the ocean floor, it immediately became clear: everything further than 200 nautical miles from the coast is no one’s land. And these no-one’s wealth will certainly not be divided in Moscow.

Therefore, I am not at all sure that Japan will have to use its helicopter carriers and landing boats to capture the South Kuril Islands. Perhaps they will receive them on a platter with a golden border and a bow from the waist. After this, the Russians will have to part with Kaliningrad, which, of course, will return its historical name of Koenigsberg. The project for a Baltic Republic within the EU already exists. Implementing it in practice will take several years. It will be popularly explained to the rest of the population that releasing the Kaliningrad region to Europe is a good thing for the Russian Federation, because thereby it will get closer to the civilized world.

Next, a turning point will come, both literally and figuratively - the remnants of Russia will be broken along the line of the Ural Mountains into two parts - Muscovy and the Siberian Khanate. In 2003–2004, this idea was already being discussed in the press, but public opinion reacted negatively to it, so the campaign was curtailed (it was precisely a planned campaign, and not a manifestation of freedom of speech). The main arguments in favor of the partition were as follows. Beyond the Urals, where 80% of the Russian Federation’s natural resources are concentrated, 30% of the country’s population lives. Once Siberia gains sovereignty, the natives will live happily ever after, just like in Kuwait. And European Russia, having lost its hydrocarbon freebie, will be able to develop high technologies and gradually integrate into the European Union. And the lost oil revenues will be compensated by collecting fees from the Siberian Khanate for the transit of raw materials to Europe and intermediary trade.

Do you think this is unrealistic? This means that you completely do not understand the essence of historical processes. Plans for the division of the USSR, discussed in the West in the early 80s, also seemed fantastic. And it was even more difficult to imagine that Transnistria or Nagorno-Karabakh would become sovereign bantustans. Academician Sakharov’s project about the collapse of the Union into 50 appanage principalities called the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia, even in the late 80s, seemed like the delirium of an old senile person. But this is just a declaration of the goal pursued by our enemy. A goal that is already half achieved.

And how easily achieved! All that needs to be done is to spoil Russian history and hammer it into the heads of the local population in this edited form. As a result, carpet bombing was not needed to defeat the USSR, which is undesirable because, together with the extra Russians, they destroy useful material assets. History is not only a cheap, but also a very humane weapon, because it can turn an invincible enemy into a weak-willed slave without the use of physical violence or damage to the environment...

Can a lie be for the good? Maybe - for the benefit of our enemies!

Let's compare some facts. The myth of Kievan Rus, inextricably linked with the legend of the Mongol invasion as the reason for its extinction, began to be purposefully introduced in the 17th century. In time, this coincides with Nikon’s church reform and the wars of the Muscovite kingdom and the Russian empire for the Ukrainian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, inhabited predominantly by Russian people professing Greek Orthodox Christianity. Therefore, the kings needed the legend about the supposed Kievan origin of Rus' to support their claims to Little Russia, although formally the rights to these territories, the settlement of which occurred in the direction from west to east, belonged to Poland. Thus, we need to talk not about the reunification of Rus' in 1654, but about the annexation of Little Rus' (a historical region, but not a state!) to Russia. This date is very arbitrary, and from it we must begin the process of gathering Western Russian lands under the rule of Moscow, then St. Petersburg and again Moscow, which stretched for almost 300 years. Subcarpathian Rus' was incorporated into the USSR in 1945.

Pre-revolutionary historians, by the way, preferred to call the Pereyaslav events an annexation rather than a reunification. And the Pereyaslav manifesto itself does not even hint at any historical ties between Little Russia and Muscovy through Ancient Rus', although the religious community of the Cherkasy people and the subjects of the Moscow Tsar is volubly noted. The very act of entering into Russian citizenship is motivated by the failure of King John Casimir to fulfill his oath to end the oppression of the Orthodox faith.

Russian history is largely built on myths, of which the most harmful myths are pro-Western, degrading our self-perception. The Norman theory, which claims that the Slavs could not even create a state by inviting overseas princes for this purpose, was generally brought to the point of absurdity. It is absurd, if only because there were several centers of statehood on the territory of Rus'. What this pro-Western mythologization of historical consciousness leads to can be clearly seen in the example of our intelligentsia, which is the most poisoned by pro-Western discourse - it suffers from a terrible inferiority complex in relation to the “cultural West”, tries to cleanse itself of everything Russian and fervently serve “universal human values.” This is not only about the wretched Soviet intelligentsia, who hate “this country” and fetishize the crafts of foreign consumer goods. The monkey-like Westernizing domestic intelligentsia has always been like this, let us recall at least the textbook Pekarsky, joyfully exclaiming “we were defeated!” regarding the defeat of Russian troops in the Crimean War. Fortunately, it was impossible to turn the entire people into intellectuals, and therefore bakeries were a foreign body in peasant Russia of the 19th century.

Yes, the ancient history of Russia is built on myths, but every myth carries at least some grains of truth that can be restored. The history of Ukraine is discourse in its purest form. My analysis shows that such a state as Kievan Rus did not exist and even hypothetically could not exist, and Kiev acquired at least some visible significance only in the era of the grain boom and the rapid plowing of virgin lands towards the end of the 16th century, as a regional economic and, mainly , religious center. At the same time, agricultural development of the lands south of Kyiv, which now constitutes 80% of the territory of Ukraine, begins. Today we can only speculate about the earlier period of Kyiv’s existence.

There was no ancient Kievan Rus, and Rus itself, as a single state, did not exist in ancient times. The core of the empire was formed in the Volga region, which over the course of centuries drew into its orbit all the territories inhabited by Russians, and along the way many other peoples. This process was completed only in the middle of the last century. Purely armchair doctrines about the separate existence of “two Russian nationalities” appeared only in the middle of the 19th century. among liberal professors and were not of a scientific, but of a political nature. But there was and still is no unity in views on the issue of dividing a single Slavic people into two Russian branches.

Historian Mikhail Pogodin, following Nikolai Karamzin, propagated the idea that Kievan Rus was created by the Great Russians, who all went to the Upper Volga after the Tatar pogrom, and the depopulated Dnieper region was populated two centuries later by people from Volyn and the Carpathian region, who became Little Russians (one wonders who they were previously?). His colleague and contemporary Konstantin Kavelin argued that Kievan Rus was created by the Little Russians, and the Great Russians appeared on the historical stage no earlier than the 11th century, and they owe their origin to the Little Russians who Russified the Finnish tribes dominating the Volga region. Well, then, thanks to the generous grants of the Habsburgs, Mikhail Grushevsky appears on the scene and, following in line with Dukhinsky’s doctrine, announces that Ukrainians have nothing in common with Russians, either anthropologically or historically.

The basic law of logic states that if the premises are true and the reasoning is correct, then the conclusions must be correct. The fact that historians’ conclusions are so contradictory only indicates that they pull their concepts out of thin air without lifting their butts from the chair. You become even more convinced of this when you discover an amazing fact: in the 19th century. Historians talk about two Russian nationalities, and in Soviet times, out of nowhere, a third appears, ancient and equal to the previous two - the Belarusians, whom for some reason they had not noticed at all before. The genealogies of Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians are completely artificially derived by “scientists” from the common ancient Russian nationality that founded Kievan Rus. But if there was no Kievan Rus, then it turns out that the three fraternal peoples also did not have a common root. Where did they come from then? The fact of the matter is that even the Little Russians and Belarusians themselves (meaning the masses) back at the beginning of the 20th century. considered themselves Russians and had no idea about their historical “separateness.” But Soviet Ukrainization thoroughly straightened the minds of the Little Russians, convincing them that they had been Ukrainians from time immemorial.

There was no state called Ukraine (options: Kiev State, Cossack Republic) until the very end of the 20th century. Even the first Ukrainian President Kravchuk has no doubt about this, who clearly stated: “We did not have a state until 1991”! And even the history of the so-called Ukrainian people (and the Ukrainian people) begins only at the end of the 19th century in Austria-Hungary, where, in full agreement with the Jesuit thesis of Kalinka, it was possible to create Grits, not Polish, but not Russian either. The mutant turned out exactly as its creators expected - the main factor in the ethnic self-identification of the Ukrainian was hatred of Russians, and such hatred that sought the most active expression. In 1914, Ukrainians passed the exam on Russophobia with an A.

That is why I cannot agree with the arguments of our leavened patriots who advocate the propaganda of the myth of Kievan Rus, as supposedly the foundation of the ideology of Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood. Any pro-Ukrainian discourse, including the myth of Kievan Rus, is a blow against all-Russian unity. There can be no Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood. Any Russian who “renounced the Russian nationality” and adopted the doctrine of Ukrainianism may not be a better brother to me than Cain.

Only clearing history of propaganda garbage will give the people of Russia and Ukraine an awareness of our unity - national, cultural and civilizational. Only this will allow not only the Russians to survive as an ethnic group and an all-Russian state, but will also make it possible for our culture to successfully resist the destructive dictates of the North Atlantic world system.

Russian writer (Little Russian by origin) Vsevolod Krestovsky said: “The direct word of truth can never undermine and destroy what is lawful and true. And if it causes harm and damage, then only to evil and lawlessness.” A direct word of historical truth can save Russia and Ukraine. Lying about the past will inevitably lead to war. It is not for nothing that the discourse about the three-hundred-year Muscovite yoke, about the Russian-Ukrainian wars, which were started, they say, by Andrei Bogolyubsky, “the first actual Muscovite prince,” is drummed into the heads of Ukrainians. It’s not just that the image of the Russian enemy is formed. If you shoot at the past with a gun, it will respond with a shot from a cannon. Anyone who does not understand this simple truth is doomed to the role of cannon fodder.

Will we become witnesses, participants and victims of the Russian-Ukrainian massacre? I really hope that the bloody horrors of Talerhof and Bandera will not be repeated. That's why I'm trying to dispel the toxic fog over Russian history. Not because I am seduced by the laurels of the overthrower of the idols of official historical “science”. No, brothers, I just want to live..."

Source

Weakened by endless wars and environmental disasters, humanity has become easy prey for the dark princes invading from outer space. Navigator Gleb Tanaev, who died and was reborn on distant Elan, is the only one who is able to save the ancestral homeland of people. He will have to overcome the fierce resistance of the new rulers of the Earth, and then master the path leading to the gates of another world in order to regain the legendary Sword of Prometheus and free his home planet from evil spirits. The famous trilogy of the patriarch of the Russian science fiction action film Evgeniy Gulyakovsky is collected under one cover for the first time! Contents: Impact Zone (novel) Fire of Prometheus (novel) Visit to Prometheus (novel)

Evgeny Gulyakovsky
Impact area

Gray hills dusted with dull dust floated across the screen. There's too much dust here. Not a single sprout, not a single green speck. There is nothing to catch your eye on. And the stones are somehow strange, loose, as if eaten away by old age and saturated with the same ubiquitous dust. For the second week the spaceship stood motionless among these dead hills. The navigator on duty, Gleb Tanaev, sighed heavily and glanced at his watch - there were fifteen minutes left until the end of the watch. How many such lifeless worlds had he already encountered on his way over the many years spent in the long-range reconnaissance service? Ten? Fifteen? You can’t immediately remember the exact number, but is that really the point? Not a single living planet was discovered in the entire space accessible to Earth ships. Stone, lack of water, lack of life - these are the usual entries in the logbooks, as if someone deliberately decided to destroy the beautiful fairy tale about brothers in mind. Of course, people struggled with a dead stone. They created an atmosphere from it, turned lifeless planets into blooming gardens.

But all this was too far from those who arrived first. And that’s probably why their work lost its tangible, visible meaning. Calculating reserves of mineral raw materials suitable for creating the future atmosphere, samples, samples, columns of endless numbers, checking and adjusting countless mechanisms over many years of flight from star to star - that was all that was left to them.

This planet was called Elana. The third group, absence of a biosphere, forty parsecs from the base, is safe for humans. Gleb slammed the pilot and turned on the surveillance locator. He did not understand why they needed to be on duty here at the main control panel of the ship. The next paragraph of some instruction provided for duty on any alien planet, and no one cared that the duty officer had to languish from idleness and boredom for four whole hours. The coordinator was a big fan of instructions. Gleb would not be surprised to learn that Rent knows all three volumes of cosmic regulations by heart.

Feeling dull irritation growing, Tanaev remembered the decision he had made and calmed down a little. This is his last expedition, it’s high time to find a more worthy occupation. What was he actually waiting for? What were they all looking for millions of kilometers from their home planet? New living spaces? Stocks of raw materials? Space has already provided all this to the earthly colonies with interest. It will take centuries to master the discovered wealth. Who needs long-range reconnaissance service now? What do they actually find? A little different stones, a little different air. Different gravity, different time cycles. And all this no longer surprised, did not excite the imagination. There was something they never found among the stars. Something important, something without which the meaning of this entire gigantic space enterprise undertaken by humanity would be lost. In any case, for himself personally, he no longer found anything attractive in monotonous research flights. Years of life taken away by suspended animation, a nagging feeling of excitement before the next landing and disappointment, as if he had been deceived once again... And then long weeks and months filled with monotonous, boring work. So that's it. Time to go home. There's something to suit everyone's tastes.

“What a mossy word - “report,” - Gleb thought, still unable to cope with irritation. However, the habit of discipline did not allow him to betray his dissatisfaction even in the tone of the answer. He listed the numbers of the groups and the number of people who left the ship two hours ago, and monotonously, in order to somehow annoy the coordinator, he began to list the squares of work, separately for each group.

Listen, Tanaev, you will tell me these figures sometime at your leisure, and now call all the group leaders to the ship.

The coordinator disconnected.

What kind of news is this? - Gleb asked the blinking pupil of the communication machine.

The machine, as expected, did not respond. Calling team leaders in the middle of work is not such a simple and ordinary matter. It is unlikely that they will agree to leave the work sites without additional explanations. Gleb reached for the intercom to call the coordinator. But at this time, somewhere in the deep bowels of the ship, a bass sound arose, floating beyond the limits of hearing, from which the bulkheads shook slightly. In the engine room, purging of the main reactor began. After that, Gleb lost all desire to hesitate and ask the coordinator additional questions. Something extraordinary happened, because the launch of the main reactor on the planets was not foreseen at all. Tanaev typed the signal codes of all the groups involved on the planet onto the encryption board. It’s better if the call is sent by an automatic machine on the emergency wave - you can’t argue with it.

As always, a few minutes before the end of the shift, co-pilot Lerov entered the control room. There had never been a time when he was even a minute late. This means that you can make it in time for the beginning of the council. At the sight of Lerov’s good-natured, smiling face, Gleb experienced a familiar warm feeling. It’s not for nothing that long-range reconnaissance pilots were carefully tested for psychological compatibility.

Something happened at Klenov’s with the drilling machines.

But only? Because of this, they announced a general gathering and started the main reactor?

They say it's not an ordinary breakdown. It looks like their central units are out of tune.

Do you mean "lost"?

The fact of the matter is that she herself could not go astray. Cybernetics are running around like mad, it seems they are going to test all automatic devices using autonomous programs.

Great space! That's all we needed. Everything else was already there. A whole year won’t be enough for them to... Wait, what about the reactor? Why was the main reactor needed?

This is what the instructions say: “If an external influence is detected on any planet - immediate evacuation, spacewalk, conservation of all work until the arrival of special scientific teams. And zero readiness for protection.”

After listening to this quote from the charter, Gleb shook his head negatively:

I know Rent too well. He is, of course, a pedant, but within reasonable limits. Curtail an expedition because of a couple of malfunctioning machine guns? Something is wrong here... And then, what is the impact? We have been exploring this part of the Galaxy for forty years and have seen nothing but dead stone. From time to time something goes wrong, something breaks down. Sometimes there is something that is not entirely clear. In the end, our scientists find an explanation for everything, and no one curtails their work because of such nonsense. I'll have to visit the council. Take the shift.

Vadim nodded:

Still, he was a little late. The council has already begun. Apparently, the chief cyberneticist Kirilin had just been given the floor, and he, as usual, hesitated, not knowing where to start. This is always the case with him if he had to speak in front of a large audience. Everyone knew this weakness of his and waited patiently. Kirilin’s long arms ran restlessly around the table, as if they were looking for something, and his large, kind eyes, distorted by thick glasses, seemed sad and slightly surprised.

There are a lot of non-specialists here, and I apparently have to explain in detail... - Kirilin coughed and wiped his head, shiny as a ball. He seemed to feel some kind of personal guilt for what had happened. - It's all about the crystal condas. They set a program for any machine. You had to deal with them more than once when, during work, you replaced one crystal cond with another in order to give the kib a new task. Crystalcondas, as you know, are an extremely complex and hard crystalline structure. It cannot be changed. It can be broken and replaced with a new one, but it cannot be partially changed. This is the crux of the whole problem. The crystalline structure of conds is set once and for all during casting at earthly factories in special matrices...

Finally someone couldn't stand it anymore:

Maybe you can explain what actually happened?!

So I say that crystal condas are a complex structure, defined once and for all during manufacturing. Nevertheless, the crystallocondas of two automata in Klenov’s group turned out to be changed, some shifts occurred in their structure, and instead of standard sampling, the kibas left the work square, independently moved to the energy reserve group, and there...

We present to your attention a very interesting book by a supporter of the “non-traditional” version of history Alexei Kungurov “There was no Kievan Rus or what historians are hiding”. As can be seen from the very title of this book, the author promises to overthrow the most seemingly undeniable myths of traditional history. Despite his youth - Alexey is 33 years old - he collected and summarized a huge amount of factual material on the history of modern Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania and traced how those living in these territories were deliberately distorted, and how from Russian people did Ukrainians, Belarusians And Lithuanians. And this did not always happen voluntarily and bloodlessly. So more than 20 thousand Rusyns living in Galicia, who did not want to be Ukrainized, went through a concentration camp, of which three thousand died. Several thousand Rusyns were held in the Terezin concentration camp. Many more could have died if the Russian army had not occupied most of Galicia in 1914. When she left these lands in 1915, most of the Rusyns left with her, fearing persecution by the Austrians and Ukrainians.

“...20 years is a second by historical standards. Russia has one second to live. What will happen in a couple of decades? NATO intervention? Too much honor! No one will come to conquer us. Degraded Russians will destroy each other themselves. The same end awaits us as Russia, which is dying painfully in an endless series of ethnic conflicts and political crises. The Soviet people ceased to exist. All that remains is to crush the remaining piece - an amorphous formation called “Russians” - and the job is done. But just in case, the current masters of the world are also preparing a military option for the “final solution to the Russian question.”

Who thinks we're getting off topic? After all, we were talking about history. Yes, that's what we're talking about. Story– this is a weapon. The Russian state can hypothetically be revived even in the most unfavorable conditions, if the people – the bearer of political will – remain. But national ideology and political will are based on historical consciousness. A people is a community, first of all, historical, and only secondarily linguistic, cultural, social, etc. That's why Now there is a war to destroy the Russian people as a single historical community…

For 20 years now, the methodical poisoning of the historical consciousness of Russians has been ongoing with the purulent poison of self-loathing. ...The task of our enemies is to force the Russians to abandon the national idea. Like, why do you, Russians, need your own state, especially an imperial state? Better integrate into something tailored to North Atlantic standards. You give us oil, gas, metals, prostitutes, children for adoption and organs for transplantation, and we give you cheap consumer goods and glamorous spiritual food of the Hollywood format. And there is no need to strain to protect your land. Native land is a sacred concept for barbarians, but for civilized people it is just a commodity that can be sold at a profit. Accordingly, whether to give the islands to the Japanese is not a question of principle, but a question of price. And in general, one should live not for the sake of some stupid chimerical ideas like building the kingdom of God on earth, but for the sake of profit.

But the Russians are prevented from succumbing to these sweet speeches by their historical memory, the memory of the recent golden age. Therefore, the enemies deliver the main blow in the war to destroy Russia not at airfields and bases, but at our memory. Strategically, the emphasis is on sterilizing the historical consciousness of the people, deforming the cultural matrix of the nation. Tactically, the main manipulations are based on the method of creating virtual history based on actual events and gradually displacing reliable ideas about the past from consciousness. This is the third method of manipulating historical consciousness...

...Can a lackey, accustomed to groveling and fawning, become a warrior? Here is the answer to the question whether Russians re-educated by historians will fight for the Kuril Islands. At the right moment, the media will explain to the cattle that the sale of Alaska, which is very expensive to develop, was very beneficial to Russia, and therefore four worthless rocky islands should be ceded to the Japanese, because it is very expensive to import fuel oil for boiler houses there. And the Russians will not fight for the Arctic. I remember how in school atlases during my childhood, two dotted lines stretched from Chukotka to the North Pole, marking the boundaries of the polar possessions of the USSR. When dividing the Soviet inheritance, they should have gone to the Russian Federation. But to hell with you! As soon as talk began about gigantic hydrocarbon deposits on the ocean floor, it immediately became clear: everything further than 200 nautical miles from the coast is no one’s land. And these no-one’s wealth will certainly not be divided in Moscow.

Therefore, I am not at all sure that we will have to use our helicopter carriers and landing boats to capture the Southern Kuril Islands. Perhaps they will receive them on a platter with a golden border and a bow from the waist. After this, the Russians will have to part with Kaliningrad, which, of course, will return its historical name of Koenigsberg. The project for a Baltic Republic within the EU already exists. Implementing it in practice will take several years. It will be popularly explained to the rest of the population that letting them go to Europe is good for the Russian Federation, because thereby it will get closer to the civilized world.

Next, a turning point will come, both literally and figuratively - the remnants of Russia will be broken along the line of the Ural Mountains into two parts - Muscovy and the Siberian Khanate. In 2003–2004, this idea was already being discussed in the press, but public opinion reacted negatively to it, so the campaign was curtailed (it was precisely a planned campaign, and not a manifestation of freedom of speech). The main arguments in favor of the partition were as follows. Beyond the Urals, where 80% of the Russian Federation’s natural resources are concentrated, 30% of the country’s population lives. Once Siberia gains sovereignty, the natives will live happily ever after, just like in Kuwait. And European Russia, having lost its hydrocarbon freebies, will be able to develop high technologies and gradually integrate into. And the lost oil revenues will be compensated by collecting fees from the Siberian Khanate for the transit of raw materials to Europe and intermediary trade.

Do you think this is unrealistic? This means that you completely do not understand the essence of historical processes. Plans for the division of the USSR, discussed in the West in the early 80s, also seemed fantastic. And it was even more difficult to imagine that Transnistria or Nagorno-Karabakh would become sovereign bantustans. Academician Sakharov’s project about the collapse of the Union into 50 appanage principalities called the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe, even in the late 80s, seemed like the delirium of an old senile person. But this is just a declaration of the goal pursued by our enemy. A goal that is already half achieved.

Can a lie be for the good? Maybe - for the benefit of our enemies!

Let's compare some facts. The myth of Kievan Rus, inextricably linked with the legend of the Mongol invasion as the reason for its extinction, began to be purposefully introduced in the 17th century. In time, this coincides with Nikon’s church reform and the wars of the Muscovite kingdom and for the Ukrainian lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, populated mainly by Russian people professing Greek Orthodox Christianity. Therefore, the kings needed the legend about the supposed Kievan origin of Rus' to support their claims to Little Russia, although formally the rights to these territories, the settlement of which occurred in the direction from west to east, belonged to Poland. Thus, we need to talk not about the reunification of Rus' in 1654, but about the annexation (of the historical region, but not the state!) to Russia. This date is very arbitrary, and from it we must begin the process of gathering Western Russian lands under the rule of Moscow, then St. Petersburg and again Moscow, which stretched for almost 300 years. Subcarpathian Rus' was incorporated into the USSR in 1945.

Pre-revolutionary historians, by the way, preferred to call the Pereyaslav events an annexation rather than a reunification. And the Pereyaslav manifesto itself does not even hint at any historical ties with Muscovy through Ancient Rus', although the religious community of the Cherkasy people and the subjects of the Moscow Tsar is volubly noted. The very act of entering into Russian citizenship is motivated by the failure of King John Casimir to fulfill his oath to end the oppression of the Orthodox faith.

Russian history is largely built on myths, of which the most harmful myths are pro-Western, degrading our self-perception. The Norman theory, which claims that the Slavs could not even create a state by inviting overseas princes for this purpose, was generally brought to the point of absurdity. It is absurd, if only because there were several centers of statehood on the territory. What this pro-Western mythologization of historical consciousness leads to can be clearly seen in the example of our intelligentsia, which is the most poisoned by pro-Western discourse - it suffers from a terrible inferiority complex in relation to the “cultural West”, tries to cleanse itself of everything Russian and fervently serve “universal human values.” This is not only about the wretched Soviet intelligentsia, who hate “this country” and fetishize the crafts of foreign consumer goods. The monkey-like Westernizing domestic intelligentsia has always been like this, let us recall at least the textbook Pekarsky, joyfully exclaiming “we were defeated!” regarding the defeat of Russian troops in the Crimean War. Fortunately, it was impossible to turn the entire people into intellectuals, and therefore bakeries were a foreign body in peasant Russia of the 19th century.

Yes, the ancient history of Russia is built on myths, but every myth carries at least some grains of truth that can be restored. The history of Ukraine is discourse in its purest form. My analysis shows that such a state did not exist and even hypothetically could not exist, and Kiev acquired at least some visible significance only in the era of the grain boom and the rapid plowing of virgin lands towards the end of the 16th century, as a regional economic and, mainly, religious center. At the same time, agricultural development of the lands south of Kyiv, which now constitutes 80% of the territory of Ukraine, begins. Today we can only speculate about an earlier period of existence.

Historian Mikhail Pogodin then propagated the idea that Kievan Rus was created by the Great Russians, who all went to the Upper Volga after the Tatar pogrom, and the depopulated Dnieper region was populated two centuries later by people from Volyn and the Carpathian region, who became Little Russians (the question is, who were they before? ). His colleague and contemporary Konstantin Kavelin argued that Kievan Rus was created by the Little Russians, and the Great Russians appeared on the historical stage no earlier than the 11th century, and they owe their origin to the Little Russians who Russified the Finnish tribes dominating the Volga region. Well, then, thanks to the generous grants of the Habsburgs, he appears on the scene and, following in line with Dukhinsky’s doctrine, announces that Ukrainians have nothing in common with Russians, either anthropologically or historically.

The basic law of logic states that if the premises are true and the reasoning is correct, then the conclusions must be correct. The fact that historians’ conclusions are so contradictory only indicates that they pull their concepts out of thin air without lifting their butts from the chair. You become even more convinced of this when you discover an amazing fact: in the 19th century. Historians talk about two Russian nationalities, and in Soviet times, out of nowhere, a third appears, ancient and equal to the previous two - the Belarusians, whom for some reason they had not noticed at all before. The genealogies of Great Russians, Little Russians and Belarusians are completely artificially derived by “scientists” from the common ancient Russian nationality that founded Kievan Rus. But if there wasn’t, then it turns out that the three fraternal peoples didn’t have a common root either. Where did they come from then? The fact of the matter is that even the Little Russians and Belarusians themselves (meaning the masses) back at the beginning of the 20th century. considered themselves Russians and had no idea about their historical “separateness.” But Soviet Ukrainization thoroughly straightened the minds of the Little Russians, convincing them that they had been Ukrainians from time immemorial.

There was no state called Ukraine (options: Kiev State, Cossack Republic) until the very end of the 20th century. Even the first Ukrainian president has no doubt about this, who clearly stated: “We did not have a state until 1991”! And even the history of the so-called Ukrainian people (and the Ukrainian people) begins only at the end of the 19th century in Austria-Hungary, where, in full agreement with the Jesuit thesis of Kalinka, it was possible to create Grits, not Polish, but not Russian either. The mutant turned out exactly as its creators expected - the main factor in the ethnic self-identification of the Ukrainian was hatred of Russians, and such hatred that sought the most active expression. In 1914, Ukrainians passed the exam on Russophobia with an A.

Only clearing history of propaganda garbage will give people an awareness of our unity - national, cultural and civilizational. Only this will allow not only the Russians to survive as an ethnic group and an all-Russian state, but will also make it possible for our culture to successfully resist the destructive dictates of the North Atlantic world system.

Russian writer (Little Russian by origin) Vsevolod Krestovsky said: “The direct word of truth can never undermine and destroy what is lawful and true. And if it causes harm and damage, then only to evil and.” A direct word of historical truth can save Russia and Ukraine. Lying about the past will inevitably lead to war. It is not for nothing that the discourse about the three-hundred-year Muscovite yoke, about the Russian-Ukrainian wars, which were started, they say, by Andrei Bogolyubsky, “the first actual Muscovite prince,” is drummed into the heads of Ukrainians. It’s not just that the image of the Russian enemy is formed. If you shoot at the past with a gun, it will respond with a shot from a cannon. Anyone who does not understand this simple truth is doomed to the role of cannon fodder.

Will we become witnesses, participants and victims of the Russian-Ukrainian massacre? I really hope that the bloody horrors and Bandera crimes will not be repeated. That's why I'm trying to dispel the toxic fog over Russian history. Not because I am seduced by the laurels of the overthrower of the idols of official historical “science”. No, brothers, I just want to live..."

Recently, the famous Ukrainian journalist Alexei Zubov conducted an extensive interview with me, which all publications to which he offered it categorically refused to publish. Shouldn't good things go to waste? I’m posting it here, since the “free” Ukrainian press is so timid.

- Your new book “Kievan Rus did not exist, or What historians are hiding” was published not so long ago. Most of this book is devoted to the history of Ukraine. Why does a historian, writer and journalist from the Far Eastern region of Russia have such a keen interest in Ukraine?
- I was born in the USSR, and I don’t consider Ukraine a foreign country, especially since the people there speak the same language as me. And vice versa, natives of Ukraine do not feel like foreigners in Russia. In the North we even joke that the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug should be correctly called Khokhlo-Mansiysk, because 2% of Khanty live here, and almost every fourth is Ukrainian. So interest in Ukraine is interest in my big homeland (my small homeland is Siberia).

Now let's talk about the substance of the issue. Your new book looks to a large extent sensational, and this is not surprising - after all, it casts doubt on historical events that for many years were considered by everyone to be reliable and undoubted. Let's try to objectively and impartially give more clarity to this issue and dot all the i's. All the most famous and authoritative historians of the Russian Empire and the USSR, such as Tatishchev, Karamzin, Solovyov, Shakhmatov, Klyuchevsky, Academician Rybakov, Vernadsky and others, never questioned the ancient history of Rus'. Is such a massive, collective, centuries-old delusion possible and how can it be explained?
- It is worth separating ancient and modern historians. Until the 19th century, such a concept as “historical consciousness” did not exist; at least in Russia it began to take shape during the time of Pushkin. But even then, only the ruling class, roughly speaking, 1% of the population, were the bearers of historical consciousness. That is, the first historians literally CREATED history, and this work had a specific customer. For example, a beautiful legend about Peter I was commissioned by Catherine II, who personally edited it and even built architectural remakes, declaring them witnesses of Peter’s era. Actually, St. Petersburg is not the city of Peter, but the city of Catherine; not a single building has survived from the “founder” (which is not surprising, because they were all wooden). But this is true, by the way.
You mentioned Karamzin. Actually, how did he become a historian? He was a writer, wrote a work of art “Martha the Posadnitsa”, which the sovereign liked, and he appointed him court historiographer. For the rest of his life, Karamzin, abandoning poetry, journalism, translations and literature, composed history. Of course, he approached the work precisely as a writer, that is, for him, what was more important was an exciting plot, liveliness of language and beauty of style, and not at all the restoration of some “historical truth.” We must understand that history was not considered a science at that time.
And this is how Pushkin assessed the result of Karamzin’s works: “Everyone, even secular women, rushed to read the history of their fatherland, hitherto unknown to them. It was a new discovery for them. Ancient Russia, it seemed, was found by Karamzin, like America by Columbus.” That is, the main achievement of Nikolai Mikhailovich was the formation of the FOUNDATION of Russian historical consciousness.

Why couldn’t the now canonized historians - Gisel, Lyzlov, Tatishchev, Shletser, Lomonosov, Shcherbatov - form it?
- For only one reason - Karamzin, unlike his predecessors, wrote a fascinating read, and it, as they say, went to the masses. The reliability of his writings is neither higher nor lower than that of his predecessors.

But Karamzin himself didn’t suck history out of thin air; he relied on some sources, right? Otherwise, each historian would write his own unique and inimitable history of mankind.
- The technology literally looked like this: first, after the invention of “Arabic” numerals and place value, chronological tables were created. The canon took shape in Western Europe around the 17th century, but was modified for another 200 years until it solidified in the 19th century. Since Russia, since the times of Peter the Great, blindly adopted everything European (and even before, Western trends dominated), when the need arose to compose history, it was formed on the basis of chronological tables accepted in Europe. Historians have already added meat to this skeleton, filling their works with sometimes the most insane nonsense. The main thing is that the outline of their description is based on data from generally accepted chronological tables. So Karamzin had something to build on. That is why his historical fantasies did not contradict the fantasies of his predecessors and fit into the outline of global Eurocentric historiography.
So, returning to your question about the possibility of a centuries-old mass delusion - there was none. The first historians were aware that they were producing, at the request of the ruling families, a current version of ideas about the past; they were not scientists, but propagandists. But subsequent generations of historians (when history began to be called science) no longer understood at all that when reading the works of the “founders,” they were dealing with a multi-layered stratification of fantasies, seasoned with interpretations in line with the current political situation.

- Who created these chronological tables in Europe?
- The global chronology used today was created at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries by French scientists Joseph Sakliger and Dionysius Petavius. The latter proposed the countdown of years until the birth of Christ, which is accepted today. The methodology of medieval chronologists was based on numerology, that is, the belief in a mystical connection between numbers, physical phenomena and human destiny. Since everything that existed was explained by the manifestation of the divine will, that is, God was a kind of main subject of the historical process, the principle of divine numbers was applied in chronology. The number of God is 9. Accordingly, chronologists tried to bring any date or period to this divine denominator. The basic method is to reduce numbers to digits: all the decimal places of the number are added, if the number 10 or more is formed, the process is continued until the elementary number from 1 to 9 is obtained. Mathematically, this procedure is equivalent to replacing the original number with its remainder from an integer division by 9 Let's say I was born in 1977. The numerological module of this number is 1+9+7+7=24; 2+4=6.
If we analyze from the point of view of numerology all the key dates of ancient history known to us or the duration of periods, for example, the time of reigns, then in the vast majority of cases we will come to the divine module 9, although we should receive approximately an equal number of numbers from 1 to 9. This pattern finally disappears only in XVI-XVIII for different countries. In this way we can approximately calculate the period when history passes from an occult discipline into the quality of documented chronology. Numerological analysis of dynasties (obtaining a numerological chain of reign periods) allows us to identify virtual twin dynasties. That is, eras and names change, but the numerological skeleton remains unchanged. This issue was covered in detail by Vyacheslav Alekseevich Lopatin in the book “The Scaliger Matrix”.

- How does numerology help you understand ancient Russian history?
- Lopatin gives the following table:

Ivan IV the Terrible 459 Vladimir Monomakh
Fedor Ivanovich 459 Mstislav I
Vladimirovich Boris Godunov 459 Vsevolod II Olgovich
Fedor Godunov 459 Igor Olgovich
False Dmitry I 459 Izyaslav II
False Dmitry II 450 Izyaslav III
Vladislav 459 Vyacheslav Vladimirovich
Mikhail Fedorovich 459 Rostislav Mstislavich
Fedor-Filaret 450 Mstislav II
Izyaslavich Mikhail Fedorovich 459 Svyatoslav II Vsevolodovich
Fedor Alekseevich 441 Yaroslav II Vsevolodovich
Peter I 450 Alexander Nevsky

The middle column shows the difference in the beginning of the reign dates between the indicated characters. Firstly, we clearly see in two thirds of the cases a shift of 459 years, and secondly, in all cases the numerological module of this shift is equal to 9. If we analyze the biographies of numerological “doubles”, then even more frank parallels are found there, up to an exact coincidence names of wives, children and major milestones of the reign.
If official historians want to defend their dogma, they will have to try very hard to somehow explain the “accident” of almost mirror coincidences between entire dynasties separated by hundreds of years. But since they have absolutely nothing to cover, they simply remain silent. After all, it will be very funny if they have to admit that their “academic science” is based on the foundation created by numerologists, astrologers and other palmists.

It turns out that the ancient chronologists cheated, blindly transferring dynasties from one era to another without changing the numerological skeleton. If they wanted to deceive posterity, they should have made some amendments. Well, let’s say, even a poor student knows that when copying an essay from an excellent student, you cannot copy it verbatim, otherwise the teacher will understand everything from the very first phrases, but you need to rewrite it in your own words, and then, at least formally, it will be difficult to prove plagiarism.
- The chronologists did not try to deceive their descendants at all. Why did they need this in principle? Any historical myths appear only when a utilitarian need arises for them. They were made with contemporaries in mind, and only contemporaries. This is the solution. Even 300-400 years ago, the consciousness of people (I mean the educated layer) was very different from ours, it was scholastic, mystical, occult. For example, they perceived time not linearly (from a starting point to infinity), but cyclically, that is, in their minds everything in the world moves in a circle, everything repeats itself, as the seasons repeat, as day follows night, as biological, climatic and astronomical factors repeat. cycles. Accordingly, historical eras also MUST REPEAT. If chronologists had composed a non-cyclical history, contemporaries who lived in the 16th-18th centuries would not have believed it.

But modern historians perceive time linearly and, in theory, should be critical of fictional cycles.
- Professional historians are mentally disabled people. They have no ability for abstract thinking. These are not scientists in any, even in the medieval sense of the word, these are priests who worship dogma and impose their delusions on others. And since they receive money for this “work,” they react to any attempt to doubt the truth of their dogma in the same way as the medieval church reacted to heretics. They just can’t burn me, but they are demanding with all their might that criminal liability be introduced for “falsifying history.” And in some “civilized” countries, for example, in Germany, Austria, France, a prison sentence threatens those who question the myth that the Nazis exterminated 6 million Jews in gas chambers. You can doubt that they starved 2.5 million captured Red Army soldiers as much as you like, but you can’t even think about the Jews! In the same way, in Ukraine there are voices to punish those who dare to publicly doubt that the damned Stalin killed 9 million Ukrainians with famine.

In your book you write that the beginning of the legend about Kievan Rus was laid by the “Synopsis” published in 1674 - the first educational book on Russian history known to us now, and that all Russian historians, starting from the time of Catherine, wrote their works in line with of this publication: “The main stereotypes of ancient Russian history (the founding of Kiev by three brothers, the calling of the Varangians, the legend of the baptism of Rus' by Vladimir, etc.) are arranged in an orderly row in the Synopsis and are precisely dated.” But besides the “Synopsis”, there are several older, ancient sources, to which researchers of ancient Rus', including the Karamzin you mentioned, refer in their works.
- These sources do not exist and did not exist (I mean written ones). First they composed a story, then they concocted sources in order to somehow support the formed canon. If we talk about ancient Russian history (the so-called pre-Mongol period), then it relies on only one source - “The Tale of Bygone Years,” known in several lists. Without it, there would be pitch darkness. But PVL has been at the disposal of Russian historians since the second half of the 18th century, and Gisel already knew everything almost a century earlier. What did he rely on? No matter what! In the first half of the 17th century, Kiev was visited by a significant scientist for his time (in the usual sense of the word) and simply a very inquisitive person, Guillaume le Vasseur de Beauplan, a French engineer in the service of the Polish king, who wrote a book about his travels through the Ukrainian lands of the Polish kingdom (it was he who, with the second edition of his book, introduced the toponym “Ukraine” into European use). So, while in Kyiv, Boplan communicated with the local, as we would say, intellectual elite, was interested in ancient books, and asked about the past of this region. No one could satisfy his curiosity. He did not find any written sources, but from conversations with local “local historians” he found out that, according to rumors, there used to be a sea on the site of Kyiv, and all the ancient manuscripts had long since burned.
It turns out that the Frenchman Boplan failed to find out anything about the past of Rus', because there were NO sources, and the German Gisel, a quarter of a century later, produces a fundamental work (without any references to sources, of course), the main part of which is occupied by... a chronological table in the spirit of the then European Maud. And a few decades later, the same chronological table appears in the Tale of Bygone Years, not as an integral part of the work, but as a sheet pasted right in the middle of the text. You don't have to be a genius of the deductive method to come to the conclusion that the matter here is not pure.

Well, in your opinion, Rurik, Prince Igor, the prophetic Oleg and the rest were invented by Gisel and never lived on the territory of modern Ukraine, and other historians only rewrote and supplemented the events and heroes invented by him? Who lived there then? And where did he get all these Ruriks and Olegs?
- Where the heroes of ancient history come from can be clearly seen in the example of “The Tale of Bygone Years.” Its compiler took… Scandinavian folk songs - sagas as the basis for the plot about the calling of the Varangians, but the original language was unknown to him or very poorly known. Therefore the words "Rurik honey sine hus ok true ver" he translated as “Rurik, Sineus and Truvor,” appointing the latter two to reign in Belozer and Izborsk, while literally this phrase in Old Norse means “Rurik with his household and faithful retinue.” That is, Rurik in Russian history appeared from folklore (not Russian at all), and his brothers are generally the result of the illiteracy of the compiler of the PVL. Since historians are usually ignorant of linguistics, they have made no attempt to doubt the dogma. This incident was discovered by a philologist who is interested in history, Vladimir Borisovich Egorov.
Ancient history is 99% mythology, artistic creativity. As for the PVL, this is a remake, and not an ancient source at all. The only question is on what basis the “Tale”, stylized as antiquity, was compiled. Some echoes of reality should remain in it.

Is it possible that the entire history of ancient Rus' known to us was invented by one person and no one for many years in Tsarist Russia and the USSR discovered this forgery? And what to do with the “Russian Truth”, the teachings of Monomakh, the Ipatiev and other chronicles, and the notes of Constantine Porphyrogenitus?
- Why just one? This is the result of collective work. And doubting the canon is generally not accepted in the “academic environment”. As for written sources, they all have a very late origin. The PVL according to the Radzivilovsky list has been known since the first half of the 18th century, and the Laurentian and Ipatiev Chronicles have been known since 1809 (both were put into circulation by Karamzin). At the same time, it is quite obvious that they have a later origin than the first list, because they reproduce errors in the Radziwill Chronicle, including even such specific ones as incorrect page numbering, which occurred due to the fault of the bookbinder. Thus, it cannot be ruled out that “The Teachings of Vladimir Monomakh” (a component of the Laurentian Codex) is a remake, as is “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” especially since both of these works come from the collection of Musin-Pushkin, who is suspected of falsifying ancient manuscripts. Secondly, even if this is not the case, one can only guess what we are dealing with - an original text, an artistic and journalistic work compiled on behalf of a certain historical character, when it was written, how much the text was later distorted by copyists and etc.
But if we evaluate the reliability of the “Instruction” strictly mathematically, renouncing reverence for old antiquity, then it is more likely that we are looking at a remake, because it is known in only one copy. In theory, the more ancient the work, the more known lists there should be, and over time, more and more discrepancies should accumulate in them. In reality, we usually see the opposite: the more ancient the work, the more unique it is, which is completely illogical.
As for Porphyrogenitus, historians, claiming that he, as a contemporary, described the chronicle “path from the Varangians to the Greeks,” categorically avoid quoting him. However, before the advent of the Internet, the works of this Roman basileus were inaccessible to the common reader. Today, any inquisitive person can find his treatise “On the Administration of an Empire” in a minute and make sure that there is not a word in it about the Varangians and trade, but describes the passage of the Dnieper rapids on the dugout boats of the Russian robbers, who spend the winter in the forests, and in the spring they descend to plunder the rich trading cities of the Black Sea region. It is on such cheap forgeries that the history of Kievan Rus is built. Citizens, do not believe the lying historians, read the primary sources yourself!

- Why should Musin-Pushkin fake antiquity?
- Why did Macpherson falsify the cycle of poems by Ossian? Perhaps only for the sake of satisfying vanity and money. And “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” was written in defiance - they say, the Russians are not bad either, we had our own Ossians in ancient times. By the way, many passages in the Lay are borrowed from Ossian’s poems, which clearly reveals a falsification. Today, no one doubts that Macpherson himself composed the “ancient” poems. In general, counterfeiting antiquities is a more profitable business than counterfeiting banknotes, but it is also completely safe from the point of view of criminal law. Museums are simply filled with fakes masquerading as antiquities. The situation is the same in the literature. As soon as there was a rush of demand for antiquity, ancient parchments began to fall as if from a cornucopia, each more unique than the other. The worst thing is that often the falsifiers destroyed truly ancient texts, but of little interest from their point of view, scraping them off the parchments in order to use the old parchment to create a commercially promising remake.

And what can be said definitely about such a well-known episode as the baptism of Rus' by Vladimir? Can it really be called into question?
- If Vladimir’s baptism had actually taken place, it would have become an event of enormous foreign policy significance for Rome (Byzantium) and it could not have gone unnoticed by imperial and church chroniclers. However, the Byzantine chronicles are silent about the Kiev baptism. The explanation is simple - the legend of Vladimir the Baptist arose after Romea left the historical stage. It is officially believed that the baptist prince was glorified in the 14th century (the question is, why did they wait 400 years?), however, as they say, “that’s how it is generally believed.” If we rely on facts, and not on established opinions, then the veneration of St. Vladimir begins in the 17th century. The discovery of the relics of the holy prince by Kyiv Metropolitan Peter Mogila dates back to 1635. Well, soon Gisel will tell everyone how great Vladimir really was.

But what about the founders of Kyiv and the epic heroes - Ilya Muromets, for example, whose relics rest in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra? Do you also doubt their existence?
- As for the founding of Kyiv, I am inclined to assume that the name of the city came from the Kyiv perevoz (pontoon bridge held by cues), and not from the mythical cue. The legend of the three founding brothers is a common literary cliche, known in hundreds of works (let’s remember the same PVL - Rurik and his two brothers). I see no reason to identify myth with historical reality. In modern versions of epics, collected just a couple of centuries ago, there is always “the capital city of Kyiv”, “Kiev princes”, “Polovtsians, Pechenegs” and other popular popular characters. Ilya, although a Muromets, certainly goes to serve at the Kyiv court. The artificiality of this connection was well demonstrated in his work by folklore researcher Alexey Dmitrievich Galakhov. He cited the following statistics: known at the end of the 19th century. epics of the "Kyiv" cycle were collected: in the Moscow province - 3, in Nizhny Novgorod - 6, in Saratov - 10, in Simbirsk - 22, in Siberia - 29, in Arkhangelsk - 34, in Olonets - up to 300 - all together about 400. In Ukraine, not a single epic about Kievan Rus and heroes was found! None! Don't you find it suspicious that all the ancient Russian accordion storytellers fled to Siberia and Karelia?
I personally observed the relics of Elijah in the Lavra. But who does it belong to? The first written information about him is found in the 17th century in the book of the monk Afanasy Kalnofoysky "Teraturgima", describing the life of the saints of the Lavra, the author devotes several lines to Ilya, specifying that the hero lived 450 years before the book was written, that is, at the end of the 12th century . At the same time, it is strange that in the Kiev-Pechersk Patericon the life of St. Elijah is absent. It struck me that the fingers on the mummy’s hand were folded in the way it was customary to make the sign of the cross after Nikon’s reform. In general, if there is a mummy, then it is not difficult to declare it to belong to an ancient character - there are many characters, but there are few mummies.

Well, we agree that it is not so easy to reliably establish the chronology of events that took place in those ancient times. Let's talk about events that are not so far removed from our days and about which reliable documents and evidence have been preserved. In your book you write that our national hero, Bogdan Khmelnitsky, never called the place where he lived Ukraine, himself and his people - Ukrainians, did not know the Ukrainian language and wrote all documents in Russian. “In 1648, approaching Lvov, Bogdan Khmelnitsky wrote in his station wagon: “I come to you as the liberator of the Russian people, I come to the capital city of the Chervonorussian land to free you from Lyash captivity.” Who then wanted to reunite with Russia?

There was no talk of any REUNION. The Zaporozhye Cossack army asked to be accepted “under the arm” of the Russian Tsar of the same faith. Not a state, not a territory, not a people, but an army. The Cossacks perceived the transition to Russian citizenship as a change from one overlord to another, and they did not see anything strange in backing things down. However, such “flexibility” was not in fashion in Russia, so after a long series of hetman betrayals, Cossack autonomy was abolished under Catherine II.
As for the “second-class” population - peasants, city dwellers, no one asked their opinion on the subject of “reunification” at all. But speaking strictly on the merits, the territory of what is now left-bank Ukraine became part of the Russian state not as a result of the will of the Cossack army, but by the fact of Russia’s victory in the war with Poland, secured by the Treaty of Andrusov. The Cossacks in this war rushed from one side to the other. That is, Ukraine in no way was a subject of the historical process. Ukraine - the Ukrainian lands of the Kingdom of Poland - was only an arena for the struggle of two states with each other (well, the Turks got involved there, where would we be without them, and the Swedes also showed up). Reunification is a purely ideological cliche, introduced into mass historical consciousness already in Soviet times.
Attempts by current historians to present the Cossacks (or, even worse, the Cossack “republic”) as an independent player in the historical arena of the 17th century evoke nothing but sympathy for their fruitless efforts.

But still, the reason for this war was the unification of the Zaporozhye army and Russia, because almost immediately after the reunification, Russia entered into a war with Poland. It turns out that, in addition to political ones, she also had military obligations to the Cossacks?
- What does this have to do with obligations to the Cossacks? They were the same subjects of the king, like everyone else. Poland began military operations against Russia, so Moscow responded with blow for blow. In addition, the main goal of this war was not to retain the Left Bank, but to return Smolensk and other territories lost during the Time of Troubles and the previous unsuccessful war.

And what kind of “Moscow-Ukrainian war of 1658-1659” was it? , which is mentioned in connection with the Battle of Konotop in the school textbook on the history of Ukraine for the 8th grade?
- There was no such war. In 1654-1667 there was a Russian-Polish war. Zaporozhye Cossacks fought on both sides. Hetman Vygovsky defected to the Poles and signed the Gadyach Treaty with them, according to which he wanted to see the Grand Duchy of Russia as part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, equal in rights with the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (as we see, the word “Ukraine” was also unknown to him). He himself, of course, aimed for the throne of the Grand Duke. However, the hetman’s betrayal met with powerful resistance from below; an uprising of Pushkar and Barabash broke out against Vyhovsky, as a result of which he was overthrown, fled to the Poles, who shot him for treason in connection with his real or imaginary involvement in the Sulimka uprising.
So, the Battle of Konotop is one of the battles of the Russian-Polish War, in which 30 thousand Crimeans and Nogais, 16 thousand Vygovsky Cossacks and about 2 thousand mercenaries are believed to have taken part on the Polish side. On the opposite side, under the command of Prince Trubetskoy, about 28 thousand people fought as part of Russian regiments and slightly less than 7 thousand Cossacks of Hetman Bespalov. The Russians were defeated, but were not defeated, but retreated to Putivl. The Crimean Tatars and Nogais left Vygovsky because Ataman Serko attacked the Nogai uluses, and Vygovsky was soon forced to flee. I don’t know where the historians saw the Russian-Ukrainian war in this episode, especially the victory in it. The most significant losses in the forces of Prince Trubetskoy fell precisely on the Cossacks of Bespalov, of whom every third died. I wonder if they fought with the Crimean Tatars and German mercenaries for Ukraine or against it?

- And in the tsar’s documents, regarding the Pereyaslovskaya Rada and reunification, does the word “Ukraine” appear?
No. The verdict of the Zemsky Sobor, assembled in Moscow specifically to decide on accepting the Zaporozhye Cossack army as citizenship, is known - the words “Ukraine” and “Ukrainians” are not found in it. Orthodox residents of the Left Bank are called Cherkasy. The subject of the agreement is the army, and in the motivational part there is not even a hint of a certain common historical past of the Russians and Cherkassy, the main reason for interference in the affairs of the Kingdom of Poland is called the failure to fulfill the oath of King John Casimir to the Cherkassy “in the Christian faith to guard and protect, and not to take any measures for faith.” oppress", that is, not to violate the rights of Orthodox subjects. The seal sent to Khmelnitsky from Moscow (one of the attributes of the hetman’s power) read: “Seal of the Tsar’s Majesty of Little Russia of the Zaporozhye army.”

Let's talk about Kyiv. Among Ukrainian, and most Russian historians, it is traditionally accepted that the date of the founding of Kyiv is one and a half thousand years distant from our days, and for about a thousand years it has been a large capital city. What do you think can be confidently stated based solely on material evidence: testimonies of foreigners about Kyiv, archaeological excavations, architectural monuments?
- It is only possible to establish for sure that Kyiv, as a small monastic settlement, already existed at the end of the 16th century. At the end of the 18th century, on the site of the modern city there were three separate settlements - the Kiev-Pechersk fortress with its suburbs; two miles from it was Upper Kyiv; Podol lay three miles away.
All ancient mentions of Kyiv have been made up out of thin air. For example, Roman (Byzantine) chroniclers could not help but notice a huge state with its center in Kyiv right next door. They write in detail about the Bulgarians, about the raids of robbers on cities in Asia Minor, about insignificant barbarian tribes, but remain silent about Kievan Rus as a state. Therefore, historians go out of their way to discover Kyiv where it does not and cannot exist. We found the fortress of Sambatos on Borysthenes mentioned by Constantine Porphyrogenitus in passing and immediately joyfully declared it the capital city of Kiev, met the mention of the Kneb diocese - and immediately declared that Knebo was Kyiv. And having discovered a certain Kuyab among the Arabs, they ordered everyone to believe that we were talking about Kyiv, and only Kiev. But if, for example, Abu Hamid al-Garnati writes that Maghreb Muslims who speak the Turkic language live in Kuyab, then this does not at all fit into the fables of historians about Kievan Rus. Either the people of Kiev professed Islam, or Kuyab was not Kyiv, but, for example, ancient Kulyab or Kuva (Cuba).
Kiev archeology looks frankly pale, even if we take into account the blatant falsifications. For example, the Gnezdovo burial mounds near Smolensk provide an order of magnitude more material, which archaeologists usually date back to the 10th-11th centuries. "Pre-Mongol" architecture of Kyiv is outright speculation. All “pre-Mongol” monuments were built in the Ukrainian Baroque style. There is no documentary evidence of their existence earlier than the 17th century. So the standard fables are used that the temple is, they say, very, very, very ancient, only rebuilt 300 years ago. Even when archaeologists were “lucky” to excavate the ruins of the Assumption Cathedral blown up by the Germans, they only uncovered cultural layers of the 17th century. The rest is dexterity of language when interpreting the results of excavations.

When did the term “Ukraine” first appear at the interstate level as the name of the geographical area from Kharkov to Uzhgorod? And when did the people living in this region begin to be called and, more importantly, consider themselves and call themselves “Ukrainians”? What did you manage to establish in this matter by studying the documents?
If you mean the territory from Kharkov specifically to Uzhgorod, then it became Ukraine in 1945 with the inclusion of the Transcarpathian region. True, the majority of residents of Transcarpathia did not consider themselves Ukrainians, and even now they persistently call themselves Rusyns, but these are trifles. With universal passporting, Ukrainians began to register everyone living on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, if there were no obvious obstacles to this.
The toponym “Ukraine” itself in Europe was put into circulation, as I already mentioned, by Boplan in 1660. But Boplan does not even suspect any Ukrainians, persistently calling the inhabitants of the “outskirts of the Kingdom of Poland, stretching from the borders of Muscovy, right up to the borders of Transylvania” Russians. And the very name “Ukraine” found its way into his work already in the second edition, probably due to someone’s mistake. Initially, Beauplan's book was called "Description des contrtes du Royaume de Pologne, contenues depuis les confins de la Moscowie, insques aux limites de la Transilvanie - "Description of the outskirts of the Kingdom of Poland, extending from the borders of Muscovy, right up to the borders of Transylvania", that is, the term "Ukrainian "here in the sense of "outskirts." And only the second edition of the book, published in Rouen in 1660, received the title Description d"Ukranie, qui sont plusieurs provinces du Royaume de Pologne. Contenues depuis les confins de la Moscovie, insques aux limites de la Transilvanie - “Description of Ukraine ...”, and on the title page of the book the word “Ukraine” is written incorrectly - D"UKRANIE instead of D"UKRAINE. Bogdan Khmelnytsky does not know any Ukrainians or Ukraine, in whose universals we do not find these words, although ukraina in the meaning of “outskirts, border land” is sometimes mentioned.
This is how he expressed himself in relation to the people subordinate to him and the territory on which these people lived, in his speech at the Pereyaslovskaya Rada: “That for six years now we have been living without a sovereign in our land in constant battles and bloodshed for persecutors and enemies of ours who want to uproot the Church of God, so that the Russian name is not remembered in our land... That great sovereign, the Christian Tsar, took pity on the unbearable bitterness of the Orthodox Church in our Little Russia..."
Ukrainians, as a people, were first identified by the Pole Jan Potocki in the book “Historical and Geographical Fragments about Scythia, Sarmatia and the Slavs,” published in Paris in French in 1795. Potocki considered the Poles to be the heirs of the Sarmatians, and the Ukrainians to be a branch of the Polish tribe. Another Pole, Tadeusz Czatsky, in 1801 wrote a pseudoscientific work “On the name “Ukraine” and the origins of the Cossacks,” in which he led the Ukrainians away from the horde of Ukrainians he had invented, allegedly migrating in the 7th century. because of the Volga.
To understand on what basis the first citizens who began to call themselves Ukrainians appeared, you need to know the political situation in the southwestern regions of Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. Thanks to the favorable disposition of Alexander I towards Poland, this region was literally flooded with all sorts of Polish figures, many of whom, to put it mildly, did not have any special sympathy for Russia. And there were especially many such figures in the education system of the South-Western region: such as Adam Czartoryski, trustee of the Vilna educational district (which included Kiev, Volyn and Podolsk provinces) who, during the Polish uprising of 1830-1831, headed the government of the rebels, mentioned above Tadeusz Chatsky - founder of the Kremenets Lyceum, trustee of Kharkov University - Severin Potocki and others. All these figures had obvious anti-Russian views, so it is not surprising that the marginal ideas of Ukrainianness of Pototsky and Chatsky eventually took root among the southern Russian intelligentsia. It is difficult to find a more fertile ground for innovative protest sentiments than students, which was taken advantage of by Polish nationalists who dreamed of restoring an independent Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and for this purpose began a policy of “splitting off” part of its people from Russia in order to have allies for themselves in the fight against Russia . And it was at the instigation of Polish teachers that such famous figures as graduates of Kharkov University Petr Gulak-Artemovsky, Dmitry Bogaley and Nikolai Kostomarov, Franciszek Dukhinsky, a graduate of the Uman Uniate School and others appeared, who became active propagandists of the Ukrainian national idea and laid the foundation for the process that was later declared "Ukrainian national liberation movement".

- Well, it turns out that the Ukrainians were invented by the Poles?
- They, as they say, initiated a process that subsequently got out of their control, and after the restoration of Polish statehood, the Poles had many problems with Ukrainian nationalism. The Volyn massacre of 1943 can be considered the apogee of Polish-Ukrainian “friendship”.
By the middle of the 19th century, a Russian (ethnically) intelligentsia appeared, preaching the doctrine of Ukrainianness, but this was precisely a political doctrine, for which they urgently began to lay a cultural foundation. It was then that the tradition of writing literary works in the peasant dialect arose. The idea of Ukrainianness was in demand only in Austria, where it was used in Galicia to suppress the Russian cultural movement, since in Vienna they realized that it would soon develop into a national liberation struggle. Actually, it was then that the Ukrainian language was created (one of its main creators, Mikhail Grushevsky, received a salary from the Austrian treasury for his work) and the Ukrainian alphabet. At first, attempts were made to create it based on the Latin alphabet, but this idea turned out to be frankly crazy.
In 1906, the first attempt at Ukrainization was made in Russia (financed by Austria-Hungary) - the so-called language crusade. The crusaders began to publish literature and periodicals in the newly created Ukrainian language, but the epic ended in a resounding failure - the population was completely unwilling to read newspapers in the incomprehensible “Ukrainian language.” Moreover, the most fierce resistance to the crusaders came from local Ukrainophiles, who believed that the Ukrainian language was a folk dialect literaryized by Shevchenko, and they considered the Galician Volapuk imposed by the Austrians to be artificial and completely unsuitable.
Finally, already in Soviet times, in the 20s and 30s, the first mass and total Ukrainization took place, which, despite the rejection from the population, was a relative success. At least a unified language standard was formed, which was introduced through school education. In the second half of the 30s, Ukrainization began to decline, and after the war the process died out altogether. This was largely explained by the fact that the most active Ukrainizers willingly collaborated with the Germans during the years of occupation, and then either fled to the West or were repressed.
The longest and most active process of Ukrainization has been taking place before our eyes over the last 20 years. However, the task of creating a “Ukrainian nation” has not yet been completed.

- Why do you think so?
- Even in Kyiv, three quarters of the population continues to speak Russian. Even those who call themselves Ukrainians in most cases admit that they think in Russian. In general, Ukraine today is a unique country where signs and official papers are written in one language, but spoken in another. For the Ukrainian language to become a full-fledged language, it is not enough to mechanically replace Russian words with Polish ones and impose this lexicon from above; for this, giants are needed, which Lomonosov, Pushkin, Tolstoy became for the Russian language. As soon as the Ukrainian language becomes native to the citizens of Ukraine, only then will it be possible to talk about the formation of the Ukrainian people. In the meantime, three quarters of Ukrainian citizens are Ukrainians by passport, and not by identity.

I believe that it will be difficult for Ukrainian-speaking citizens to realize that they do not speak the ancient language of their ancestors, but a language artificially invented 150 years ago.
- Firstly, the Ukrainian language has not yet been invented, it is in an active phase of formation, it is not yet sufficiently separated from Russian. Secondly, in order to realize something, you just need to want it. For example, try to find some ancient written source in Ukrainian. But there are none; Ukrainian written sources appear only in the 19th century. But Ukrainians do not want to know the truth, just as historians do not want to know the truth. Ukrainian schoolchildren are told that the Church Slavonic language is the ancient Ukrainian language. Since children do not know Church Slavonic now, they can only trust the teacher for the rest of their lives. It is on such a shaky phantom foundation that Ukrainian national identity rests.
This, by the way, also explains the poverty of Ukrainian culture, because smart, educated, creatively thinking people cannot consider themselves Ukrainians, just as Gogol vehemently denied any Ukrainophilism and attempts to separate the Little Russian layer from Russian culture. What is considered Ukrainian culture is a poor surrogate. For example, the “classic of Ukrainian music” - Gulak-Artemovsky’s opera “Cossack beyond the Danube” is not only a translation from Russian, but the music is also stupidly stolen from Mozart from his opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio”, to which several folk melodies are added. Ukrainian literature, starting with Kotlyarevsky, is either free translations or the Ukrainization of other people’s works, which is what all the “classics” sinned with - both Shevchenko and Vovchok stole plots. “Borrowing” a plot is, of course, not uncommon; Lermontov borrowed from Byron, Pushkin from Zhukovsky and folklore, Alexei Tolstoy ripped off the famous “Pinocchio” from Carlo Collodi. But if the share of “borrowings” in Russian literature is, let’s say, 10%, then in Ukrainian it is 90%.
Russian art, one way or another, is the heritage of world artistic culture, and Ukrainian literature and music have not left the framework of regional culture, into which the Ukrainizers themselves drove it. Imagine what will happen if the Kiev Opera and Ballet Theater brings “Cossacks beyond the Danube” to Vienna. Yes, they will throw them rotten there! And some “Lord of Boristhenes” by Stankevich is a propaganda piece for the needs of the day, which is not even suitable for internal use.

Mikhail Bulgakov in “The White Guard” does not spare “black paint” when he writes about the Ukrainian rulers of 1917-19, through the mouth of his heroes he calls them nothing more than a gang of crooks and embezzlers. There are no reasons not to believe the writer, whose reputation as an honest person is beyond any doubt. Now we consider these statesmen to be the founders of independence and national heroes. You spent a lot of time studying that period: who, in your opinion, were Grushevsky, Skoropadsky, Petlyura and others really?
- In addition to language, an important, even the most important, component of national identity is historical consciousness. Since Ukraine did not have an independent history, just as Siberia, for example, did not have an independent history, now this history is being written at an accelerated pace. For those who do not believe in the possibility of ancient history being written 300 years ago, I recommend looking at how much school history textbooks have changed in 20 years. The past is unchanged, but ideas about it change dramatically. Therefore, when we talk about Skoropadsky, Petlyura, Grushevsky and others, we must separate real persons and the myth about these people. In reality, these were extras who did not create anything, and who were taken advantage of by real historical forces. The same Grushevsky managed to serve both the Viennese Emperor and the German Kaiser (it was he, if anyone has forgotten, who invited the Germans to occupy Ukraine in 1918), after which, realizing that there was nothing for him in emigration, he publicly renounced his past views and comrades and defected to the Bolsheviks. Contemporaries perceived all these “leaders of the nation” as clowns, heroes of jokes and ditties (about Petliura, the first thing that comes to mind is “The Directory is near the carriage, the territory is under the carriage”). So Bulgakov, as a witness of that era, expressed the dominant attitude in society.

But maybe these figures were naive, inept politicians, but sincere people who wanted to build a national state? Can we, based on the documents, find anything positive in their biography?
- Positive and negative are purely value judgments. Nationalists evaluate Hitler positively for the segregation of Jews, and it is not difficult to guess that the Jews themselves will give this figure a sharply negative assessment. I am far from assessing Grushevsky’s efforts to create the Ukrainian language as positive or negative. In general, the artificial creation of a literary language is quite common. For example, the Portuguese colonialists began to create the Indonesian language, which is used today by 200 million people, based on Malay. Here we should pay attention to something else: the Indonesian language served to unite thousands of multilingual tribes into a single nation, and the Ukrainian literary language was created to separate the united Russian people (Rusyns) in Galicia, and was later demanded by separatists with the aim of separating Little Russia from Greater Russia, Volyn, Novorossiya and Slobozhanshchina.
You say the nationalists wanted to build a nation state? Let's say, but for what? The people did not need this national state in 1918. Nobody began to defend him. It is quite obvious that the nationalists needed the state only in order to gain power over it. After all, Grushevsky called on the occupation troops to help him and groveled before Kaiser Wilhelm precisely in order to stay in power. The operetta power of Hetman Skoropadsky rested on German bayonets. Petlyura, for the sake of personal power under the Warsaw Pact, sold half of Ukraine to the Poles. And vice versa, Grushevsky instantly abandoned nationalist “delusions” when, in exchange for public repentance, the opportunity arose to take a warm place under the Bolsheviks. In this fuss of petty intriguers, I do not see a great state idea and great fighters for it.
But a historical myth is a completely different matter. In the state historical mythology, Grushevsky, Petliura, Skoropadsky, Vygovsky, Orlik, Bandera, Mazepa and others are knights without fear or reproach, powerful statesman minds. For now, of course, it is difficult to fashion heroes out of these figures, since their real portrait sticks out too clearly through the gloss of official propaganda, but propaganda is a powerful tool for shaping consciousness. 100 years ago, the publication in Russia of Grushevsky’s 10-volume “History of Ukraine-Rus” caused homeric laughter. Today, his dogma has already been officially canonized; if in the Russian Federation they talk about Kievan Rus, then in Ukraine the Newspeak label “Kievan Ukraine” is in use, as a designation for the never-existence of its ancient state in the Dnieper region. So if myth-making continues to develop in the same spirit, in another hundred years we will get a beautiful, but completely virtual history of Ukraine, which millions of Ukrainians will consider an immutable truth.

Today our knowledge of Ancient Rus' is similar to mythology. Free people, brave princes and heroes, milk rivers with jelly banks. The real story is less poetic, but no less interesting.

“Kievan Rus” was invented by historians

The name “Kievan Rus” appeared in the 19th century in the works of Mikhail Maksimovich and other historians in memory of the primacy of Kyiv. Already in the very first centuries of Rus', the state consisted of several isolated principalities, living their own lives and completely independently. With the lands nominally subjugated to Kyiv, Rus' was not united. Such a system was common in the early feudal states of Europe, where each feudal lord had the right of ownership of the lands and all the people on them.

The appearance of the Kyiv princes was not always truly “Slavic” as is commonly imagined. It's all about subtle Kyiv diplomacy, accompanied by dynastic marriages, both with European dynasties and with nomads - Alans, Yases, Polovtsians. The Polovtsian wives of the Russian princes Svyatopolk Izyaslavich and Vsevolod Vladimirovich are known. In some reconstructions, Russian princes have Mongoloid features.

Organs in ancient Russian churches

In Kievan Rus one could see organs and not see bells in churches. Although bells existed in large cathedrals, in small churches they were often replaced by flat bells. After the Mongol conquests, the organs were lost and forgotten, and the first bell makers came again from Western Europe. Musical culture researcher Tatyana Vladyshevskaya writes about organs in the ancient Russian era. One of the frescoes of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, “Buffoons,” depicts a scene with playing the organ.

Western origin

The language of the Old Russian population is considered East Slavic. However, archaeologists and linguists do not entirely agree with this. The ancestors of the Novgorod Slovenes and parts of the Krivichi (Polotsk) arrived not from the southern expanses from the Carpathians to the right bank of the Dnieper, but from the West. Researchers see a West Slavic “trace” in ceramic finds and birch bark records. The prominent historian-researcher Vladimir Sedov is also inclined towards this version. Household items and ritual features are similar among the Ilmen and Baltic Slavs.

How the Novgorodians understood the Kyivans

Novgorod and Pskov dialects differed from other dialects of Ancient Rus'. They contained features inherent in the languages of Polabs and Poles, and even completely archaic, proto-Slavic ones. Well-known parallels: kirky - “church”, hѣde - “gray-haired”. The remaining dialects were very similar to each other, although they were not such a single language as modern Russian. Despite the differences, ordinary Novgorodians and Kyivians could understand each other well: the words reflected the common life of all Slavs.

"White spots" in the most visible place

We know almost nothing about the first Rurikovichs. The events described in The Tale of Bygone Years were already legendary at the time of writing, and the evidence from archaeologists and later chronicles is scarce and ambiguous. Written treaties mention certain Helga, Inger, Sfendoslav, but the dates of events differ in different sources. The role of the Kyiv “Varangian” Askold in the formation of Russian statehood is also not very clear. And this is not to mention the eternal controversy surrounding the personality of Rurik.

"Capital" was a border fortress

Kyiv was far from being in the center of Russian lands, but was the southern border fortress of Rus', while being located in the very north of modern Ukraine. Cities south of Kyiv and its environs, as a rule, served as centers of nomadic tribes: Torks, Alans, Polovtsians, or were primarily of defensive importance (for example, Pereyaslavl).

Rus' - a slave trading state

An important source of wealth in Ancient Rus' was the slave trade. They traded not only in captured foreigners, but also in Slavs. The latter were in great demand in eastern markets. Arab sources of the 10th-11th centuries vividly describe the path of slaves from Rus' to the countries of the Caliphate and the Mediterranean. The slave trade was beneficial to the princes; large cities on the Volga and Dnieper were centers of the slave trade. A huge number of people in Rus' were not free; for debts they could be sold into slavery to foreign merchants. One of the main slave traders were Radonite Jews.

In Kyiv, the Khazars “inherited”

During the reign of the Khazars (IX-X centuries), in addition to the Turkic tribute collectors, there was a large diaspora of Jews in Kyiv. Monuments of that era are still reflected in the “Kiev Letter,” containing correspondence in Hebrew between Kyiv Jews and other Jewish communities. The manuscript is kept in the Cambridge Library. One of the three main Kyiv gates was called Zhidovsky. In one of the early Byzantine documents, Kyiv is called Sambatas, which, according to one version, can be translated from Khazar as “upper fortress.”

Kyiv – Third Rome

Ancient Kyiv, before the Mongol yoke, occupied an area of about 300 hectares during its heyday, the number of churches numbered in the hundreds, and for the first time in the history of Rus', it used a block layout that made the streets orderly. The city was admired by Europeans, Arabs, and Byzantines and was called a rival to Constantinople. However, from all the abundance of that time, almost not a single building remains, not counting the St. Sophia Cathedral, a couple of rebuilt churches and the recreated Golden Gate. The first white-stone church (Desiatinnaya), where Kievans fled from the Mongol raids, was destroyed already in the 13th century

Russian fortresses are older than Rus'

One of the first stone fortresses of Rus' was the stone-earth fortress in Ladoga (Lyubshanskaya, 7th century), founded by the Slovenes. The Scandinavian fortress that stood on the other bank of the Volkhov was still wooden. Built in the era of the Prophetic Oleg, the new stone fortress was in no way inferior to similar fortresses in Europe. It was she who was called Aldegyuborg in the Scandinavian sagas. One of the first strongholds on the southern border was the fortress in Pereyaslavl-Yuzhny. Among Russian cities, only a few could boast of stone defensive architecture. These are Izborsk (XI century), Pskov (XII century) and later Koporye (XIII century). Kyiv in ancient Russian times was almost entirely made of wood. The oldest stone fortress was the castle of Andrei Bogolyubsky near Vladimir, although it is famous more for its decorative part.

The Cyrillic alphabet was almost never used

The Glagolitic alphabet, the first written alphabet of the Slavs, did not take root in Rus', although it was known and could be translated. Glagolitic letters were used only in some documents. It was she who in the first centuries of Rus' was associated with the preacher Kirill and was called the “Cyrillic alphabet”. Glagolitic script was often used as a cryptographic script. The first inscription in the actual Cyrillic alphabet was the strange inscription “goroukhsha” or “gorushna” on a clay vessel from the Gnezdovo mound. The inscription appeared shortly before the baptism of the Kievites. The origin and exact interpretation of this word is still controversial.

Old Russian universe

Lake Ladoga was called “Lake the Great Nevo” after the Neva River. The ending “-o” was common (for example: Onego, Nero, Volgo). The Baltic Sea was called the Varangian Sea, the Black Sea was called the Russian Sea, the Caspian Sea was called the Khvalis Sea, the Azov Sea was called the Surozh Sea, and the White Sea was called the Icy Sea. The Balkan Slavs, on the contrary, called the Aegean Sea the White Sea (Byalo Sea). The Great Don was not called the Don, but its right tributary, the Seversky Donets. In the old days the Ural Mountains were called Big Stone.

Heir to Great Moravia

With the decline of Great Moravia, the largest Slavic power of its time, the rise of Kyiv and the gradual Christianization of Rus' began. Thus, the chronicled White Croats came out from under the influence of the collapsing Moravia and fell under the attraction of Rus'. Their neighbors, the Volynians and Buzhanians, had long been involved in Byzantine trade along the Bug, which is why they were known as translators during Oleg’s campaigns. The role of the Moravian scribes, who with the collapse of the state began to be oppressed by the Latins, is unknown, but the largest number of translations of Great Moravian Christian books (about 39) were in Kievan Rus.

Without alcohol and sugar

There was no alcoholism as a phenomenon in Rus'. Wine spirit came to the country after the Tatar-Mongol yoke; even brewing in its classical form did not develop. The strength of drinks was usually not higher than 1-2%. They drank nutritious honey, as well as intoxicated or infused honey (low alcohol), digests, and kvass.

Ordinary people in Ancient Rus' did not eat butter, did not know spices like mustard and bay leaves, or sugar. They cooked turnips, the table was replete with porridges, dishes from berries and mushrooms. Instead of tea, they drank infusions of fireweed, which would later become known as “Koporo tea” or Ivan tea. Kissels were unsweetened and made from cereals. They also ate a lot of game: pigeons, hares, deer, boars. Traditional dairy dishes were sour cream and cottage cheese.

Two "Bulgarias" in the service of Rus'

These two most powerful neighbors of Rus' had a huge influence on it. After the decline of Moravia, both countries, which arose from the fragments of Great Bulgaria, experienced prosperity. The first country said goodbye to the “Bulgar” past, dissolved in the Slavic majority, converted to Orthodoxy and adopted Byzantine culture. The second, following the Arab world, became Islamic, but retained the Bulgarian language as the state language.

The center of Slavic literature moved to Bulgaria, at that time its territory expanded so much that it included part of the future Rus'. A variant of Old Bulgarian became the language of the Church. It was used in numerous lives and teachings. Bulgaria, in turn, sought to restore order in trade along the Volga, stopping the attacks of foreign bandits and robbers. The normalization of Volga trade provided the princely possessions with an abundance of eastern goods. Bulgaria influenced Rus' with culture and literature, and Bulgaria contributed to its wealth and prosperity.

Forgotten “megacities” of Rus'

Kyiv and Novgorod were not the only large cities of Rus'; it was not for nothing that in Scandinavia it was nicknamed “Gardarika” (country of cities). Before the rise of Kyiv, one of the largest settlements in all of Eastern and Northern Europe was Gnezdovo, the ancestor city of Smolensk. The name is conditional, since Smolensk itself is located to the side. But perhaps we know his name from the sagas - Surnes. The most populated were also Ladoga, symbolically considered the “first capital,” and the Timerevo settlement near Yaroslavl, which was built opposite the famous neighboring city.

Rus' was baptized by the 12th century

The chronicled baptism of Rus' in 988 (and according to some historians in 990) affected only a small part of the people, mainly limited to the people of Kiev and the population of the largest cities. Polotsk was baptized only at the beginning of the 11th century, and at the end of the century - Rostov and Murom, where there were still many Finno-Ugric peoples. Confirmation that the majority of the common population remained pagans was the regular uprisings of the Magi, supported by the Smerds (Suzdal in 1024, Rostov and Novgorod in 1071). Dual faith arises later, when Christianity becomes the truly dominant religion.

The Turks also had cities in Rus'

In Kievan Rus there were also completely “non-Slavic” cities. Such was Torchesk, where Prince Vladimir allowed the Torque nomads to settle, as well as Sakov, Berendichev (named after the Berendeys), Belaya Vezha, where the Khazars and Alans lived, Tmutarakan, inhabited by Greeks, Armenians, Khazars and Circassians. By the 11th-12th centuries, the Pechenegs were no longer a typically nomadic and pagan people; some of them were baptized and settled in the cities of the “black hood” union, subordinate to Rus'. In the old cities on the site or in the vicinity of Rostov, Murom, Beloozero, Yaroslavl, mainly Finno-Ugrians lived. In Murom - Muroma, in Rostov and near Yaroslavl - Merya, in Beloozero - all, in Yuryev - Chud. The names of many important cities are unknown to us - in the 9th–10th centuries there were almost no Slavs in them.

“Rus”, “Roksolania”, “Gardarika” and more

The Balts called the country “Krevia” after the neighboring Krivichi, the Latin “Rutenia”, less often “Roxolania”, took root in Europe, the Scandinavian sagas called Rus' “Gardarika” (country of cities), the Chud and Finns “Venemaa” or “Venaya” (from the Wends), the Arabs called the main population of the country “As-Sakaliba” (Slavs, Sklavins)

Slavs beyond borders

Traces of the Slavs could be found outside the borders of the Rurikovich state. Many cities along the middle Volga and Crimea were multinational and inhabited, among other things, by Slavs. Before the Polovtsian invasion, many Slavic towns existed on the Don. The Slavic names of many Byzantine Black Sea cities are known - Korchev, Korsun, Surozh, Gusliev. This indicates the constant presence of Russian traders. The Peipus cities of Estland (modern Estonia) - Kolyvan, Yuryev, Bear's Head, Klin - passed into the hands of the Slavs, the Germans, and local tribes with varying degrees of success. Along the Western Dvina, Krivichi settled interspersed with the Balts. In the zone of influence of Russian traders was Nevgin (Daugavpils), in Latgale - Rezhitsa and Ochela. Chronicles constantly mention the campaigns of Russian princes on the Danube and the capture of local cities. For example, the Galician prince Yaroslav Osmomysl “locked the door of the Danube with a key.”

And pirates and nomads

Fugitive people from various volosts of Rus' formed independent associations long before the Cossacks. There were known Berladians who inhabited the southern steppes, the main city of which was Berlady in the Carpathian region. They often attacked Russian cities, but at the same time they took part in joint campaigns with Russian princes. The chronicles also introduce us to the Brodniks, a mixed population of unknown origin who had much in common with the Berladniks.

Sea pirates from Rus' were ushkuiniki. Initially, these were Novgorodians who were engaged in raids and trade on the Volga, Kama, Bulgaria and the Baltic. They even took trips to the Urals - to Ugra. Later they separated from Novgorod and even found their own capital in the city of Khlynov on Vyatka. Perhaps it was the Ushkuiniki, together with the Karelians, who ravaged the ancient capital of Sweden, Sigtuna, in 1187.

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