History of Russia: Periodization of the history of Russia. Kievan Rus - Muscovy

East Slavs - the descendants of the ancient agricultural and pastoral tribes that lived in the south of Eastern Europe BC. At the beginning of our era, the Eastern Slavs occupied a vast territory from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, from the Carpathian Mountains to the upper reaches of the Oka and Volga rivers. By the middle of the IX century. the Eastern Slavs formed the prerequisites for the creation of a state - Kievan Rus. Many Western historians still claim that it was created by the Normans who came from Scandinavia. Russian scientists have long refuted this so-called "Norman theory". They proved that the Old Russian state arose as a result of a long independent development of the East Slavic tribes, long before the arrival of the Normans. The oldest written information about the Slavs belongs to the ancient Greek scientists Hesiod, who reported on the "Antes" and "Veneds" living from the Carpathians to the Baltic Sea. From the 6th century n. e. the concept of "Slavs" appears in the sources. The most complete data on the Eastern Slavs were left to us by historians of the 6th century. Jordan and Procopius of Caesarea. It is believed that the ancestral home of the Slavs was Central and Eastern Europe. In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. e. among the Slavs, iron begins to spread, and a gradual decomposition of the tribal system occurs. At the same time, a single Slavic community is divided into two branches - eastern (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians) and western (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Lusatians). Later, in 1000 n. e., the third branch is also isolated - the southern branch of the Slavs (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Bosnians). The total number of Slavic peoples at the beginning of the 20th century. amounted to about 150 million people, including Russians - over 65 million, Ukrainians - about 31 million, Belarusians - about 7 million, Poles - over 19 million, Czechs - more

7 million, Slovaks - more than 2.5 million, Serbs and Croats - more than 9 million, Bulgarians - 5.5 million, Slovenes - 1.5 million. The bulk of the Slavic population lived in Russia - 107.5 million people, in Austria-Hungary - about 25 million, in Germany - over 4 million, in the countries of America - over 3 million. In 1970, the total number of the Slavic people was about 260 million, of them: Russians - over 130 million, Ukrainians - 41.5 million, Belarusians - 9.2 million, Poles - about 37 million, Czechs - about 10 million. In the first centuries of our era, eastern the Slavs maintained the communal system. Each tribe consisted of several tribal communities. The Slavs were engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture. With the improvement of tools, slash-and-burn agriculture was replaced by arable farming with a two-field system. There is no need to live in groups. Separate families began to stand out from tribal communities. Each family had its own house, plot of land, its own tools. But places of hunting, fishing, pastures were in common use. With the advent of family property, property inequality appears among the Eastern Slavs. Some families get richer, others get poorer. There is a class of large landowners - the boyars.

In the VI-VIII centuries. the Slavs are undergoing an intensive process of decomposition of the tribal system and the formation of large tribal unions. Feudal relations are emerging, economic and socio-political prerequisites for the formation of statehood are being created.

The names of the Slavic tribal unions are mostly associated not with the unity of origin, but with the area of ​​\u200b\u200bsettlement. This indicates that at that time, among the Slavs, territorial ties already prevailed over tribal ones. So, the meadow lived on the Dnieper near Kyiv; Dregovichi - between Pripyat and the Western Dvina; Krivichi - around the city of Smolensk; Vyatichi - in the Oka River basin, etc.

At the head of each tribe was a prince who had his own "prince". It was not yet a principality in the later, feudal sense of the word. Tribal princes created armed detachments - squads. They usually lived in separate villages, around which artisans settled: blacksmiths, gunsmiths, shoemakers, carpenters, etc. They produced weapons, clothes, and shoes for the squad. The princely settlement was surrounded by a deep moat with water, a high earthen rampart with a log wall. So the Slavs had cities.

There is a legend about how the prince of the Slavic tribe of Polyans Kiy and his brothers Shchek and Khoriv built a city on the high bank of the Dnieper. In honor of their older brother, they named it Kyiv. The descendants of Kiy were the first princes of the Kievan state.

For many centuries, the Eastern Slavs fought against the nomads who came from Asia. In the IV century. the Slavs were attacked by the Huns, then the Avars and Khazars, then the Pechenegs and Polovtsians. “Asia does not cease to send out predatory hordes who want to live off the settled population; it is clear that in the history of the latter, one of the main phenomena will be the constant struggle with the steppe barbarians,” wrote the famous Russian historian S.M. Solovyov. The Slavs themselves often undertook military campaigns on the banks of the Danube and on Byzantium. To conduct defensive and offensive wars, they united in alliances.

So, large tribal unions were the immediate predecessors of the state.

The initial stage of the existence of the state among many peoples is associated with the rise (due to certain circumstances) of one of the noble families. Subsequently, having established its power in certain lands, this clan turned into a ruling dynasty. Approximately the same thing happened in Russia, where the Rurik and Romanov dynasties are distinguished.

It should be noted that Kyiv had its own traditions of East Slavic statehood. It is believed that around the VI-VII centuries. the founder of the city, the Slavic prince Kiy, and then his relatives ruled here. However, in 882, the rulers were the Parisian knights Askold and Dir, who were brutally and treacherously dealt with by the Novgorod prince Oleg.

Kyiv attracted Prince Oleg primarily because it was located on the famous route "from the Varangians to the Greeks." Large cities arose along the great trade route - Kyiv, Smolensk, Novgorod, etc. It became, as it were, the core of the Old Russian state, its main street. At that time, the rivers were the most convenient roads. It is no coincidence that all ancient cities stand along the banks of rivers, usually on a high cape at the confluence of a small river into a large one.

What are the prerequisites for the formation of the Old Russian state - Kievan Rus?

Firstly, These are the economic prerequisites:

a) a higher level of development of productive forces among the Eastern Slavs compared to other peoples. The main branch of the economy of the Slavs was agriculture using iron tools: plowshares, plows, tips, plows, etc. This allowed the Slavs to develop new lands and move from slash to more productive plow agriculture. The Slavs sowed rye, wheat, barley, oats, flax and other crops.

They were actively engaged in cattle breeding. Initially, cattle were bred for meat and for use in work. As people began to use milk for food and acquired the skills to make various products from it (butter, cheese, etc.), the importance of dairy cattle increased. In addition, cattle breeding allowed the development of leather production;

b) the development of crafts. The separation of craft from agriculture among the Eastern Slavs occurs in the VI-VIII centuries. Archaeological data testify to the existence of blacksmiths, casters, gunsmiths, gold and silver craftsmen, potters, etc. during this period. Only from iron and steel, Slavic craftsmen produced more than 150 types of various products;

c) highly productive agriculture and a variety of crafts led to the active development of trade. This is confirmed by the finds during the excavations of Roman and other coins, Byzantine jewelry, and items made in various regions, mainly within the boundaries of the three main trade routes. The first is "the great road from the Varangians to the Greeks." It led from the Gulf of Finland to the Neva River, to Lake Ladoga, to the Volkhov River, to Lake Ilmen, to the Lovat River, from Lovat, using small rivers and portages, they passed to the Western Dvina, and from there to the upper reaches of the Dnieper and the Dnieper to the Black Sea to "Greeks", that is, to Byzantium. This important route was used by both the Slavs themselves and the Vikings. The second equally important route went along the Volga, to the land of the Volga Bulgarians and to the Khazar kingdom, to the Caspian Sea. To get to the Volga, the Slavs used its tributaries (Mologa, Sheksna) and the Metoya River, which flows into Lake Ilmen. The third route also led to the Khazar kingdom from the middle Dnieper by small rivers to the Donets River and from the Donets to the Don, from there it was possible to get to the Azov and Caspian Seas. The Slavs traveled along these routes to trade with the Greeks, Bulgarians, and Khazars.

Secondly, These are socio-political prerequisites:

a) in the VI century. Slavic tribal unions begin to take shape, which became the prototype of future statehood. Tribal unions were initially created only for military purposes. Among them, the largest should be singled out: meadows - in the Kyiv region; dulebs - in the Carpathians; Volyans, northerners, etc. V.O. Klyuchevsky directly pointed out that these unions were the beginning of the statehood of the Slavs. Here is how he writes about dulebs: “This military alliance is a fact that can be put at the very beginning of our history: it began in the 6th century. on the very edge, in the southwestern corner of our plains, on the northeastern slopes and foothills of the Carpathians”;

b) in the VI-VIII centuries. the Eastern Slavs had a good, for their time, military organization, which also testified to the presence in their system of elements of statehood. An interesting confirmation of the military-state organization was given by the Kyiv mathematician A. Bugay, who studied more than 700 km of the so-called. "Serpent Shafts", located south of Kyiv. On the basis of radiocarbon analysis, he concluded that in order to protect the Slavic tribes from the invasion of nomads from the south in the 6th - 8th centuries. a four-row system of protective structures was created. One of the shafts stretches for 120 km from Fastov to Zhytomyr. Its cubic capacity suggests that more than 100 thousand people participated in the construction. Such a scale of work was possible only in an organized society;

c) the lack of slavery among the Slavs. More precisely, it existed in a patriarchal form and did not develop into a slave-owning mode of production.

Thirdly, These are the external prerequisites:

a) the need to expand land holdings, which only the state could carry out on a large scale;

b) the constant threat of attack by the Normans from the northwest, Byzantium from the southwest, Khazars from the southeast, Pechenegs from the south. All this dictated the need for a powerful military organization and its centralized management. Thus, based on the above signs, we can conclude that the creation in the middle of IX and. of the early feudal Old Russian state with the center in the land of the tribal union of the glades - the city of Kyiv - was a natural result of the internal development of the Slavic ethnos.

Kievan Rus was characterized by a multiform economy. What was the economic basis of the Old Russian state?

Firstly , feudal ownership of land. This was a fundamental difference from Western European to a number of other countries in which the process of state formation was associated with the dominance of slave labor. Feudal ownership of land existed in two forms:

a) estates- the land of a large feudal lord, boyar, which was inherited. It consisted of a feudal estate and peasant villages;

b) estates- the land that the prince granted to his warriors in conditional possession for service. The right to own land took place only during the period of service. This land was not inherited.

Secondly , the improvement of agricultural tools led to the emergence of two-field and three-field farming systems in Ancient Russia. This, in turn, made it possible to increase the area of ​​land and their productivity.

Thirdly , the rapid development of crafts. About 150 different handicraft specialties were known in Kievan Rus. The development of crafts, along with other reasons, led to the growth of cities. Based on the annals, historians have calculated that in the IX-X centuries. in Russia there were 24 cities, in the XI century. -- 64, in the XII century. - 135, and by the XIII century. - already 224. The largest were Kyiv, Novgorod, Smolensk, Chernigov. In Scandinavia, Russia was then called Gradarika - the country of cities. The descriptions of Kyiv made by a German chronicler in the 10th century testify to the size of the cities. He noted the presence in the city of 400 churches and 8 large shopping areas, as well as 100 thousand inhabitants.

Fourth , deepening the social division of labor, increasing the productivity of agriculture, the development of crafts led to an increase in trade exchange between town and country, trade between various regions of Kievan Rus and itself with many countries: Persia, Arabia, France, Scandinavia. Byzantium was the largest trading partner of Russia.

The establishment of a private form of land ownership led to the creation of a clear social structure of society and marked the beginning of the formation of serfdom among the peasants.

At the top of the social pyramid was the great prince of Kyiv. He was the largest owner of the land, collected tribute from subject tribal princes and other land owners. He also complained for the service of the estate in conditional possession. CM. Solovyov wrote that every year in November, the Russian princes left Kyiv with their retinue and went to the lands of the Slavic tribes subject to them, where they collected tribute, decided legal cases and resolved other issues.

The next step was occupied by large landowners - the boyars and local princes. They paid tribute to the great prince of Kyiv and had the right to collect tribute from their subordinates and their lands. The same place was occupied by the higher clergy. Free peasants lived on free lands, paid tribute to various feudal lords and fulfilled their duties.

Dependent peasants paid dues to feudal lords or worked out corvee. During the formation of Kievan Rus, the majority of the population consisted of free peasants - community members. However, as private ownership of land was established, dependence on feudal lords increased, peasants ruined as a result of crop failures, wars, natural disasters, and for other reasons, and forced them to voluntarily go into bondage to the feudal lord. Thus, the economic coercion of the peasants was carried out.

The dependent population was subject to feudal rent, which existed in Russia in two forms of corvée and quitrent in kind.

a) Corvee - this is the gratuitous forced labor of a peasant working with his own inventory in the feudal lord's household. Widespread in

European Russia in the second half of the 16th - the second half of the 19th centuries. After the abolition of serfdom in 1861, it was preserved for temporarily obliged peasants as sharecropping. Legally abolished in 1882, in fact, it existed until the October Revolution of 1917 in the form of working off.

b) Natural quitrent - the annual collection of money and products from the serfs. The food quitrent was abolished on February 19, 1861, the cash quitrent was retained for temporarily obliged peasants until 1883.

The following groups of dependent peasants formed in Kievan Rus:

a) purchase - a peasant who took a kupa from a feudal lord (debt in cash or in kind);

b) ryadovich - a peasant who, for various reasons, could not independently manage the economy and concluded a series with the feudal lord - an agreement. He voluntarily admitted his dependence and received in return a large plot of land, tools, grain for crops, etc.;

c) an outcast - a peasant who has lost contact with the community and is hired by the feudal lord;

d) otvodnik - a slave, set free, found himself without means of subsistence and going into bondage to the feudal lord;

e) serf - a person who was mainly in the composition of the yard people of the feudal lords and was actually in the position of a slave.

Kievan Rus was an early feudal monarchy headed by a Grand Duke. Grand ducal power was unlimited and hereditary.

The prince also exercised judicial power. An important element of the political system of the Old Russian state was the council under the Grand Duke of the local princes and the highest stratum of combatants - the boyars. Local power was exercised by tribal princes, as well as posadniks appointed by the Grand Duke, thousand and sotsky.

The completion of the formation of the state structure and the development of feudal relations made it necessary to modify Russian law. The code of laws of Kievan Rus was called "Russian Truth". In the XI century. the so-called "Short Edition" of Russkaya Pravda is being folded. It consisted of two main parts - "The Most Ancient Truth" (or "The Truth of Yaroslav") and "The Truth of the Yaroslavichs". In addition to the princely civil legislation during this period, church legal documents were also in force in Russia, which were aimed at strengthening the political positions of the Russian Church.

As already noted in the preface to the entire VIII Volume, its first section is devoted to the ancient period in the history of the country, which is designated by the concept of "Ancient Russia". But where is the starting point from which the history of Russia begins? This point, or rather the frontier, is at least 2.5 million years away from us, when a branch of humanoids emerged from the animal world on Earth, which laid the foundation for the Human race. This milestone refers, as indicated in Volume I of the History of Mankind, to all Mankind, and hence to the inhabitants of the territory of Russia, although the first traces of humanoid creatures lead us to the territories of West Africa, India, the islands of Indonesia, and later, already as far as further human evolution are also found in other regions of the world, including the East European Plain, the Caucasus, and Siberia.

At the same time, the authors of the "History of Mankind" in the words of one of the initiators and authors of the publication, Charles Morase, emphasize that "it is better to avoid excessive allocation of your ancestors among our distant common ancestors", since this violates the scientific basis of the history of Mankind and causes unreasonable national passions and ambitions. We will follow this advice and, in turn, pay attention to the fact that in volumes I and II of the History of Mankind, the authors (including many prominent Russian archaeologists and anthropologists), covering the topic of the appearance and settlement of people on the territory of Russia, also talk about common human ancestors in the regions they study, but by no means about the ancestors of this or that people. In this edition, relying on the data of previous volumes and only briefly repeating their conclusions, we mainly define the milestone for a more detailed presentation of the history of Russia, starting from the time of the appearance of the Indo-Europeans in the Eurasian spaces and their interaction with the ancestors of the Finno-Ugric peoples who had already emerged in the same region. and Turkic peoples, since a significant part of the peoples of Russia in one way or another goes back to these historical communities of people.

In this regard, we should touch upon the question posed in the History of Mankind about the relationship between prehistory and the history of Mankind. The first longest period of people's life is defined as their prehistory and covers the time from 2.5 million years ago to the appearance of writing, i.e. until about 5 thousand years BC, from which Mankind enters its already written history. Acceptable for the most civilizationally advanced regions of the planet at that time, i.e. for the so-called "key cultural regions" - North Africa (Ancient Egypt), the Middle East (Sumerian civilization), India, China, this approach is completely unthinkable for the territory of Western, Central, and Eastern Europe and a significant part of Asia, which turned out to be further the territory of Russia, since by the 5th millennium BC. these regions were a remote and sparsely populated periphery of the "key cultural regions" of that time and continued to remain at the level of the prehistory of Mankind. Concerning the history of Russia of this time and further millennia and centuries, we found ourselves in trains of an asynchronous approach to the history of Russia, in which historical categories related to "key cultural regions" turn out to be absurd when applied to other regions of the world, in particular, to Eastern Europe. and Eurasia.

This also applies to the history of the most ancient period in the history of Russia, covering the time from the 9th century. AD, i.e. from the turn of the formation of the Old Russian state until 1230. - to the point beyond which its political integrity ceases and a period of political fragmentation begins. The political state sign acts here, as in the future, as the beginning, concentrating and determining the main civilizational processes. However, as the history of Russia changes, primarily its most ancient and ancient period, we will have to consider not only this civilizational sign that appears on the historical surface, at first glance, is poorly compatible with the progress in the quality of life of people and the improvement of the personality of a person, although such a connection between the development and improvement of political principles and the progress of the Human race is historically correct. We will also talk about other global historical phenomena that determined the civilizational development of the region against the backdrop of pan-European development and, in connection with it, led to the mastery of writing, the adoption of Christianity, participation in European and Eurasian politics, etc.

It is especially necessary to determine the state-territorial area of ​​Ancient Russia. Initially, its constituent parts were the Old Russian North, headed by Novgorod, the Old Russian South, headed by Kyiv, which already in the 10th century. were multinational conglomerates. In the future, this territory, which was under the state control of a single center - Kyiv, "the mother of Russian cities", as the Chronicle says, and covering vast expanses from the Carpathians to the Middle Volga, from the shores of the Baltic and the White Sea to the Northern Black Sea region, the Taman Peninsula, Kerch Strait and the foothills of the Caucasus, was Russia, the ancient Russian state. Such a state continued to exist as the center of Old Russian statehood moved to the northeast, between the Oka, Volga and Klyazma rivers, and also as the title of Grand Duke moved from Kyiv to Chernigov, and then to the northeast, to Vladimir on the Klyazma. The life of this state, like this period itself, ended as its political and economic unity collapsed, as its individual parts turned out to be part of other state formations, and new state formations and new phenomena in the economy, social relations, culture dominated paved their way into the future.

The ancient homeland of the Slavs is Central Europe, where the Danube, Elbe and Vistula take their sources. From here, the Slavs moved further to the east, to the banks of the Dnieper, Pripyat, Desna. These were the tribes of glades, drevlyans, northerners. Another stream of settlers moved northwest to the banks of the Volkhov and Lake Ilmen. These tribes were called Ilmen Slovenes. Part of the settlers (Krivichi) settled on a hill, from where the Dnieper, the Moscow River, the Oka flow. This migration took place not earlier than the 7th century. In the course of the development of new lands, the Slavs ousted and subjugated the Finno-Ugric tribes, who were the same as the Slavs, pagans.

Foundation of the Russian state

In the center of the possessions of the glades on the Dnieper in the 9th century. a city was built, which received the name of the leader Kiy, who ruled in it with the brothers Shchek and Khoriv. Kyiv stood in a very convenient place at the intersection of roads and quickly grew as a shopping center. In 864, two Scandinavian Varangians Askold and Dir captured Kyiv and began to rule there. They went on a raid on Byzantium, but returned, badly battered by the Greeks. It was no coincidence that the Varangians ended up on the Dnieper - it was part of a single waterway from the Baltic to the Black Sea (“from the Varangians to the Greeks”). In some places the waterway was interrupted by hills. There the Varangians dragged their light boats on their backs or dragged.

According to legend, civil strife began in the land of the Ilmen Slovenes and the Finno-Ugric peoples (Chud, Merya) - “family against clan arose”. Tired of the strife, the local leaders decided to invite King Rurik and his brothers, Sineus and Truvor, from Denmark. Rurik readily responded to the tempting offer of the ambassadors. The custom of inviting a ruler from across the sea was generally adopted in Europe. People hoped that such a prince would rise above the unfriendly local leaders and thereby ensure peace and tranquility in the country. Having built Ladoga (now Staraya Ladoga), Rurik then went up the Volkhov to Ilmen and settled there at a place called "Rurik's settlement". Then Rurik built the city of Novgorod nearby and took possession of all the surrounding lands. Sineus settled in Beloozero, and Truvor - in Izborsk. Then the younger brothers died, and Rurik began to rule alone. Together with Rurik and the Vikings, the word "Rus" came to the Slavs. That was the name of the warrior-rower on the Scandinavian boat. Then Rus was called the Viking warriors who served with the princes, then the name "Rus" was transferred to all the Eastern Slavs, their land, state.

The ease with which the Varangians took power in the lands of the Slavs is explained not only by the invitation, but also by the similarity of faith - both the Slavs and the Varangians were pagan polytheists. They revered the spirits of water, forests, brownies, goblin, had extensive pantheons of "major" and minor gods and goddesses. One of the most revered Slavic gods, the lord of thunder and lightning Perun, resembled the Scandinavian supreme god Thor, whose symbols - hammers of archaeologists are also found in Slavic burials. The Slavs worshiped Svarog - the master of the universe, the god of the sun Dazhbog and the god of the earth Svarozhich. They respected the god of cattle - Veles and the goddess of needlework - Mokosh. The sculptural images of the gods were placed on the hills, the sacred temples were surrounded by a high fence. The gods of the Slavs were very severe, even ferocious. They demanded reverence from people, frequent offerings. Upstairs, to the gods, gifts rose in the form of smoke from the burnt sacrifices: food, dead animals and even people.

The first princes - Rurikovich

After the death of Rurik, power in Novgorod passed not to his young son Igor, but to Rurik's relative Oleg, who had previously lived in Ladoga. In 882, Oleg approached Kyiv with his retinue. Under the guise of a Varangian merchant, he appeared before Askold and Dir. Suddenly, Oleg's warriors jumped out of the boats and killed the Kyiv rulers. Kyiv obeyed Oleg. So for the first time the lands of the Eastern Slavs from Ladoga to Kyiv were united under the rule of one prince.

Prince Oleg largely followed the policy of Rurik and annexed more and more new lands to the new state, called Kievan Rus by historians. In all the lands, Oleg immediately “began to set up cities” - wooden fortresses. The famous act of Oleg was the 907 campaign against Tsargrad (Constantinople). His large squad of Varangians and Slavs on light ships suddenly appeared at the walls of the city. The Greeks were not ready for defense. Seeing how the barbarians who came from the north were robbing and burning in the vicinity of the city, they went to negotiate with Oleg, made peace and paid tribute to him. In 911 Oleg's ambassadors Karl, Farlof, Velmud and others signed a new treaty with the Greeks. Before leaving Constantinople, Oleg, as a sign of victory, hung his shield on the gates of the city. At home, in Kyiv, people were amazed at the rich booty with which Oleg returned, and gave the prince the nickname "Prophetic", that is, a wizard, a magician.

Oleg's successor Igor (Ingvar), nicknamed "Old", the son of Rurik, ruled for 33 years. He lived in Kyiv, which became his home. Little is known about Igor's personality. It was a warrior, a stern Varangian, who almost continuously conquered the tribes of the Slavs, imposed tribute on them. Like Oleg, Igor raided Byzantium. In those days, in an agreement with Byzantium, the name of the country of the Rus appeared - "Russian Land". At home, Igor was forced to repel the raids of the nomads - the Pechenegs. Since that time, the danger of nomadic attacks has never weakened. Russia was a loose, unstable state, stretching for a thousand miles from north to south. The strength of a single princely power - that's what kept the lands distant from each other.

Every winter, as soon as the rivers and swamps froze, the prince went to the polyudye - he traveled around his lands, judged, sorted out disputes, collected tribute (“lesson”) and punished the tribes “deposited” over the summer. During the polyudya of 945 in the land of the Drevlyans, it seemed to Igor that the tribute of the Drevlyans was small, and he returned for more. The Drevlyans were indignant at this lawlessness, seized the prince, tied him by the legs to two bent mighty trees and let them go. So ingloriously died Igor.

The unexpected death of Igor forced his wife Olga to take power into her own hands - after all, their son Svyatoslav was only 4 years old. According to legend, Olga (Helga) herself was a Scandinavian. The terrible death of her husband became the cause of Olga's no less terrible revenge, who brutally dealt with the Drevlyans. The chronicler tells us exactly how Olga deceived the Drevlyansk ambassadors. She suggested that they take a bath before starting negotiations. While the ambassadors were enjoying the steam room, Olga ordered her soldiers to close the doors of the bathhouse and set it on fire. There, the enemies burned down. This is not the first mention of the bath in the Russian chronicle. In the Nikon chronicle there is a legend about the visit of the Holy Apostle Andrew to Russia. Then, returning to Rome, he spoke with surprise about a strange action in Russian land: “I saw wooden baths, and they would heat them up strongly, and they would undress and be naked, and pour leather kvass on themselves, and the young would lift up the rods and beat themselves, and they will finish themselves to such an extent that they will barely get out, barely alive, and will douse themselves with icy water, and only in this way will they come to life. And they do this all the time, they are not tormented by anyone, but they torment themselves, and then they make ablution for themselves, and not torment. After that, the sensational theme of an unusual Russian bath with a birch broom for many centuries will become an indispensable attribute of many travel notes of foreigners from medieval times to the present day.

Princess Olga rode through her possessions and set clear lesson sizes there. In the legends, Olga became famous for her wisdom, cunning, and energy. It is known about Olga that she was the first of the Russian rulers to receive foreign ambassadors from the German emperor Otto I in Kyiv. Twice Olga was in Constantinople. The second time, in 957, Olga was received by Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. And after that, she decided to be baptized, and the emperor himself became her godfather.

By this time, Svyatoslav had grown up and began to rule Russia. He fought almost continuously, raiding his neighbors with his retinue, and very distant ones - the Vyatichi, Volga Bulgars, defeated the Khazar Khaganate. Contemporaries compared these campaigns of Svyatoslav with the jumps of a leopard, swift, silent and powerful.

Svyatoslav was a blue-eyed, lush mustache man of medium height, he cut his head bald, leaving a long tuft at the top of his head. In his ear hung an earring with precious stones. Dense, strong, he was tireless in campaigns, his army did not have a wagon train, and the prince made do with the food of nomads - dried meat. All his life he remained a pagan and a polygamist. At the end of the 960s. Svyatoslav moved to the Balkans. His army was hired by Byzantium to conquer the Bulgarians. Svyatoslav defeated the Bulgarians, and then settled in Pereslavets on the Danube and did not want to leave these lands. Byzantium started a war against a disobedient mercenary. At first, the prince defeated the Byzantines, but then his army became very thin, and Svyatoslav agreed to leave Bulgaria forever.

Without joy, the prince sailed on boats up the Dnieper. Even earlier, he told his mother: “I don’t like Kyiv, I want to live in Pereyaslavets on the Danube - there is the middle of my land.” He had a small squad with him - the rest of the Varangians went to rob neighboring countries. On the Dnieper rapids, the squad was ambushed by the Pechenegs, and Svyatoslav died in a battle with the nomads at the threshold of Nenasytninsky. From his skull, the enemies made a goblet decorated with gold for wine.

Even before going to Bulgaria, Svyatoslav distributed the lands (destinies) between his sons. He left the elder Yaropolk in Kyiv, sent the middle one Oleg to the land of the Drevlyans, and planted the younger one Vladimir in Novgorod. After the death of Svyatoslav, Yaropolk attacked Oleg, and he died in battle. Vladimir, learning about this, fled to Scandinavia. He was the son of Svyatoslav and a concubine - a slave Malusha, Olga's housekeeper. This made him not equal to his brothers - after all, they came from noble mothers. The consciousness of his inferiority aroused in the young man the desire to establish himself in the eyes of people with strength, intelligence, deeds that would be remembered by everyone.

Two years later, with a detachment of the Varangians, he returned to Novgorod and moved through Polotsk to Kyiv. Yaropolk, not having much strength, locked himself in the fortress. Vladimir managed to persuade Yaropolk's close adviser Blud to treason, and as a result of the conspiracy, Yaropolk was killed. So Vladimir captured Kyiv. Since then, the history of fratricides in Russia begins, when the thirst for power and ambition drowned out the voice of native blood and mercy.

The fight against the Pechenegs became a headache for the new Kyiv prince. These wild nomads, who were called "the most cruel of all pagans", aroused general fear. There is a story about a confrontation with them on the Trubezh River in 992, when for two days Vladimir could not find a fighter among his troops who would go out to duel with the Pechenegs. The honor of the Russians was saved by the mighty Nikita Kozhemyak, who simply lifted into the air and strangled his opponent. The city of Pereyaslavl was placed on the site of Nikita's victory. Fighting the nomads, making campaigns against different tribes, Vladimir himself did not differ in daring and militancy, like his ancestors. It is known that during one of the battles with the Pechenegs, Vladimir fled from the battlefield and, saving his life, climbed under the bridge. It is difficult to imagine in such a humiliating form his grandfather, the conqueror of Constantinople, Prince Igor, or his father, Svyatoslav-Bars. In the construction of cities in key places, the prince saw a means of protection against nomads. Here he invited daredevils from the north like the legendary Ilya Muromets, who were interested in the dangerous life on the border.

Vladimir understood the need for change in matters of faith. He tried to unite all pagan cults, to make Perun the only god. But the reform failed. Here it is appropriate to tell the legend about the birdie. At first, faith in Christ and his atoning sacrifice made its way with difficulty into the harsh world of the Slavs and Scandinavians who came to rule them. How could it be otherwise: hearing the peals of thunder, could there be any doubt that this terrible god of 6 din on a black horse, surrounded by valkyries - magical horsewomen, is galloping to hunt for people! And how happy a warrior dying in battle, knowing that he will immediately fall into Valhalla - a giant chamber for the chosen heroes. Here, in the paradise of the Vikings, he will be blissful, his terrible wounds will instantly heal, and the wine that the beautiful Valkyries will bring to him will be fine ... But the Vikings were sharpened by one thought: there will be no feast in Valhalla forever, the terrible day of Ragnarok will come - the end of the world, when the bdin's army fights the giants and monsters of the abyss. And all of them will die - heroes, wizards, gods with Odin at the head in an unequal battle with the gigantic serpent Jörmungand... Listening to the saga about the inevitable death of the world, the king-king was sad. Outside the wall of his long, low house, a blizzard howled, shaking the hide-covered entrance. And then the old Viking raised his head, who had converted to Christianity during the campaign against Byzantium. He said to the king: “Look at the entrance, you see: when the wind lifts the skin, a small bird flies in to us, and that brief moment, until the skin closes the entrance again, the bird hangs in the air, it enjoys our warmth and comfort, so that in the next moment jump out again into the wind and cold. After all, we live in this world only one moment between two eternities of cold and fear. And Christ gives hope for the salvation of our souls from eternal death. Let's follow him!" And the king agreed...

The great world religions convinced the pagans that there is eternal life and even eternal bliss in heaven, you just need to accept their faith. According to legend, Vladimir listened to various priests: Jews, Catholics, Orthodox Greeks, Muslims. In the end, he chose Orthodoxy, but he was in no hurry to be baptized. He did this in 988 in the Crimea - and not without political benefits - in exchange for the support of Byzantium and consent to marriage with the sister of the Byzantine emperor Anna. Returning to Kyiv with his wife and Metropolitan Michael appointed from Constantinople, Vladimir first baptized his sons, relatives and servants. Then he took on the people. All the idols were thrown from the temples, burned, chopped. The prince issued an order for all pagans to come to the river bank for baptism. There, the people of Kiev were driven into the water and baptized en masse. To justify their weakness, people said that the prince and the boyars would hardly have accepted a worthless faith - after all, they would never wish anything bad for themselves! However, later an uprising broke out in the city dissatisfied with the new faith.

On the site of the ruined temples, churches immediately began to be built. The church of St. Basil was erected on the sanctuary of Perun. All churches were wooden, only the main temple - the Cathedral of the Assumption (Church of the Tithes) was built by the Greeks from stone. Baptism in other cities and lands was also not voluntary. A rebellion even began in Novgorod, but the threat of those sent from Vladimir to burn the city made the Novgorodians change their minds, and they climbed into the Volkhov to be baptized. The stubborn ones were dragged into the water by force and then checked to see if they were wearing crosses. Stone Perun was drowned in Volkhov, but faith in the power of the old gods was not destroyed by that. They secretly prayed to them even many centuries later after the Kyiv "baptists": getting into the boat, the Novgorodian threw a coin into the water - a sacrifice to Perun, so that he would not drown for an hour.

But gradually Christianity was established in Russia. This was largely facilitated by the Bulgarians - the Slavs who had previously converted to Christianity. Bulgarian priests and scribes came to Russia and carried with them Christianity in an understandable Slavic language. Bulgaria has become a kind of bridge between Greek, Byzantine and Russian-Slavic cultures.
Despite the harsh measures of Vladimir's rule, the people loved him, called him the Red Sun. He was generous, unforgiving, complaisant, ruled not cruelly, skillfully defended the country from enemies. The prince also loved his squad, advice (thought) with which he introduced it into custom at frequent and plentiful feasts. Vladimir died in 1015, and, having learned about this, the crowds rushed to the church to weep and pray for him as their intercessor. People were alarmed - after Vladimir there were 12 of his sons, and the struggle between them seemed inevitable.

Already during the life of Vladimir, the brothers, planted by their father on the main lands, lived unfriendly, and even during the life of Vladimir, his son Yaroslav, who was sitting in Novgorod, refused to carry the usual tribute to Kyiv. The father wanted to punish his son, but did not have time - he died. After his death, Svyatopolk, the eldest son of Vladimir, came to power in Kyiv. He received the nickname "Cursed", given to him for the murder of his brothers Gleb and Boris. The latter was especially loved in Kyiv, but, having sat on the Kyiv "golden table", Svyatopolk decided to get rid of his opponent. He sent assassins who stabbed Boris, and then killed another brother, Gleb. The struggle between Yaroslav and Svyatopolk was hard. Only in 1019 Yaroslav finally defeated Svyatopolk and fortified himself in Kyiv. Under Yaroslav, a code of laws (“Russian Truth”) was adopted, which limited blood feud, replaced it with a fine (vira). The judicial customs and traditions of Russia were also recorded there.

Yaroslav is known as "Wise", that is, a scientist, smart, educated. He, sickly by nature, loved and collected books. Yaroslav built a lot: he founded Yaroslavl on the Volga, Yuryev (now Tartu) in the Baltic states. But Yaroslav became especially famous for the construction of St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv. The cathedral was huge, had many domes and galleries, and was decorated with rich frescoes and mosaics. Among these magnificent Byzantine mosaics of St. Sophia Cathedral, in the altar of the temple, the famous mosaic “Indestructible Wall”, or “Oranta” - the Mother of God with raised hands has been preserved. This work will amaze everyone who sees it. It seems to believers that since the time of Yaroslav, for almost a thousand years now, the Mother of God, like a wall, has stood unbreakably to her full height in the golden radiance of the sky, raising her hands, praying and shielding Russia with herself. People were surprised by the mosaic floor with patterns, the marble altar. Byzantine artists, in addition to the image of the Virgin and other saints, created a mosaic on the wall depicting the family of Yaroslav.
In 1051 the Caves Monastery was founded. A little later, hermit monks, who lived in caves (pechers) dug in the sandy mountain near the Dnieper, united in a monastic community headed by Abbot Anthony.

With Christianity, the Slavic alphabet came to Russia, which was invented in the middle of the 9th century by brothers from the Byzantine city of Thessalonica Cyril and Methodius. They adapted the Greek alphabet to the Slavic sounds, creating the "Cyrillic alphabet", translated the Holy Scripture into the Slavic language. Here, in Russia, the first book was the Ostromir Gospel. It was created in 1057 on the instructions of the Novgorod posadnik Ostromir. The first Russian book was of extraordinary beauty with miniatures and color screensavers, as well as a postscript stating that the book was written in seven months and that the scribe asks the reader not to scold him for mistakes, but to correct them. Let us note in passing that in another similar work, the Arkhangelsk Gospel of 1092, a scribe named Mitka admits why he made so many mistakes: “voluptuousness, lust, slander, quarrels, drunkenness, simply speaking, everything evil!” Another ancient book - "Izbornik Svyatoslav" in 1073 - one of the first Russian encyclopedias, contained articles on various sciences. "Izbornik" is a copy from a Bulgarian book, rewritten for the prince's library. In Izbornik, praise is sung to knowledge, it is recommended to read each chapter of the book three times and remember that “beauty is a weapon for a warrior, and a sail for a ship, and tacos for a righteous man are book reverence.”

Chronicles began to be written in Kyiv as early as the time of Olga and Svyatoslav. Under Yaroslav in 1037-1039. St. Sophia Cathedral became the center of the work of chroniclers. They took old chronicles and reduced them to a new edition, which they supplemented with new entries. Then the monks of the Caves Monastery began to keep the chronicle. In 1072-1073. there was another edition of the annalistic code. Abbot of the monastery Nikon collected and included new sources in it, checked the chronology, corrected the style. Finally, in 1113, the chronicler Nestor, a monk of the same monastery, created the famous compendium The Tale of Bygone Years. It remains the main source on the history of Ancient Russia. The imperishable body of the great chronicler Nestor rests in the dungeon of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, and behind the glass of his coffin you can still see the fingers of his right hand folded on his chest - the same one that wrote for us the ancient history of Russia.

Yaroslav's Russia was open to Europe. It was connected with the Christian world by the family relations of the rulers. Yaroslav married Ingigerd, daughter of the Swedish king Olaf, son of Vsevolod, he married the daughter of Emperor Constantine Monomakh. Three of his daughters immediately became queens: Elizabeth - Norwegian, Anastasia - Hungarian, and daughter Anna became the French queen, having married Henry I.

Yaroslavichi. Strife and crucify

As the historian N. M. Karamzin wrote, “Ancient Russia buried its power and prosperity with Yaroslav.” After the death of Yaroslav, discord and strife reigned among his descendants. Three of his sons entered into a dispute for power, and the younger Yaroslavichi, the grandchildren of Yaroslav, also mired in strife. All this happened at a time when for the first time a new enemy came to Russia from the steppes - the Polovtsians (Turks), who expelled the Pechenegs and themselves began to often attack Russia. The princes, warring with each other, for the sake of power and rich destinies, entered into an agreement with the Polovtsians and brought their hordes to Russia.

Of the sons of Yaroslav, Rus was ruled the longest by his youngest son Vsevolod (1078-1093). He was reputed to be an educated man, but he ruled the country poorly, unable to cope either with the Polovtsy, or with hunger, or with the pestilence that devastated his lands. He also failed to reconcile the Yaroslavichs. His only hope was his son Vladimir, the future Monomakh.
Vsevolod was especially annoyed by the Chernigov prince Svyatoslav, who lived a life full of adventures and adventures. Among the Rurikovichs, he was a black sheep: he, who brought misfortune and grief to everyone, was called "Gorislavich". For a long time he did not want peace with his relatives, in 1096, in the struggle for destinies, he killed the son of Monomakh Izyaslav, but then he himself was defeated. After that, the rebellious prince agreed to come to the Lubech Congress of Princes.

This congress was organized by the then specific Prince Vladimir Monomakh, who understood better than others the disastrous strife for Russia. In 1097, close relatives met on the banks of the Dnieper - Russian princes, they divided the lands, kissed the cross as a sign of loyalty to this agreement: “Let the Russian land be a common ... fatherland, and whoever rises against his brother, we will all rise against him ". But immediately after Lyubech, one of the princes Vasilko was blinded by another prince - Svyatopolk. Distrust and anger reigned again in the family of princes.

The grandson of Yaroslav, and by his mother - the Byzantine emperor Konstantin Monomakh, he adopted the nickname of the Greek grandfather and became one of the few Russian princes who thought about the unity of Russia, the fight against the Polovtsians and peace among relatives. Monomakh entered the Kyiv gold table in 1113 after the death of the Grand Duke Svyatopolk and an uprising against wealthy usurers that began in the city. Monomakh was invited by the Kyiv elders with the approval of the people - "people". In the cities of pre-Mongol Russia, the influence of the city assembly - vecha - was significant. The prince, with all his might, was not an autocrat of a later era and, when making decisions, usually consulted with the veche or the boyars.

Monomakh was an educated man, had the mind of a philosopher, had the gift of a writer. He was a red-haired, curly-haired man of medium height. A strong, brave warrior, he made dozens of campaigns, more than once looked into the eyes of death in battle and hunting. Under him, peace was established in Russia. Where by authority, where by weapons he forced the appanage princes to quiet down. His victories over the Polovtsians averted the threat from the southern borders. Monomakh was also happy in his family life. His wife Gita, the daughter of the Anglo-Saxon King Harold, bore him several sons, among whom stood out Mstislav, who became Monomakh's successor.

Monomakh sought the glory of a warrior on the battlefield with the Polovtsians. He organized several campaigns of Russian princes against the Polovtsians. However, Monomakh was a flexible politician: suppressing the militant khans by force, he was friends with the peace-loving ones and even married his son Yuri (Dolgoruky) to the daughter of the allied Polovtsian khan.

Monomakh thought a lot about the futility of human life: “What are we, sinful and thin people? - he wrote to Oleg Gorislavich, - today they are alive, and tomorrow they are dead, today in glory and honor, and tomorrow they are forgotten in the coffin. The prince took care that the experience of his long and difficult life was not wasted, that his sons and descendants would remember his good deeds. He wrote the "Instruction", which contains memories of past years, stories about the prince's eternal travels, about dangers in battle and hunting: of two moose, one trampled with his feet, the other gored with his horns; a boar tore off my sword on my hip, a bear bit my sweatshirt at my knee, a fierce beast jumped on my hips and overturned my horse with me. And God kept me safe. And he fell a lot from his horse, broke his head twice, and injured his arms and legs, ”But Monomakh’s advice: “What my boy should do, he did it himself - in war and hunting, night and day, in heat and cold without giving yourself rest. Not relying on the posadniks, nor on the privet, he himself did what was necessary. Only an experienced warrior can say this:

“When you go to war, do not be lazy, do not rely on the governor; indulge neither in drink nor in food, nor in sleep; dress up the watchmen yourself and at night, placing guards on all sides, lie down near the soldiers, and get up early; and do not take off your weapons in a hurry, without looking around out of laziness. And then follow the words, under which everyone will sign: "A man dies suddenly." But these words are addressed to many of us: “Learn, believer, to control the eyes, the language of abstinence, the mind to humility, the body to submit, anger to suppress, to have pure thoughts, prompting yourself to good deeds.”

Monomakh died in 1125, and the chronicler said of him: “Decorated with a good disposition, glorious with victories, he did not exalt himself, did not magnify himself.” Vladimir's son Mstislav sat on the Kiev golden table. Mstislav was married to the daughter of the Swedish king Christina, he enjoyed authority among the princes, he had a reflection of the great glory of Monomakh. However, he ruled Russia for only seven years, and after his death, as the chronicler wrote, "the whole Russian land was inflamed" - a long period of fragmentation began.

By this time, Kyiv had already ceased to be the capital of Russia. Power passed to the specific princes, many of whom did not even dream of a Kiev golden table, but lived in their small inheritance, judged subjects and feasted at the weddings of their sons.

Vladimir-Suzdal Rus

The first mention of Moscow dates back to the time of Yuri, where in 1147 Dolgoruky invited his ally Prince Svyatoslav: “Come to me, brother, to Moe-kov.” The very same city of Moscow on a hill among the forests, Yuri ordered to build in 1156, when he had already become the Grand Duke. For a long time he “pulled his hand” from his Zalesye to the Kyiv table, for which he received his nickname. In 1155 he captured Kyiv. But Yuri ruled there for only 2 years - he was poisoned at a feast. Chroniclers wrote about Yuri that he was a tall, fat man with small eyes, a crooked nose, "a great lover of wives, sweet food and drink."

The eldest son of Yuri, Andrei was a smart and powerful man. He wanted to live in Zalesye and even went against the will of his father - he arbitrarily left Kyiv for Suzdal. Leaving his father, Prince Andrei Yuryevich decided to secretly take with him from the monastery a miraculous icon of the Mother of God of the late 11th - early 12th centuries, painted by a Byzantine icon painter. According to legend, the Evangelist Luke wrote it. Andrei succeeded in stealing, but already on the way to Suzdal, miracles began: the Mother of God appeared to the prince in a dream and ordered that the image be taken to Vladimir. He obeyed, and on the spot where he saw a wonderful dream, he then built a church and founded the village of Bogolyubovo. Here, in a specially built stone castle adjoining the church, he lived quite often, which is why he got his nickname "Bogolyubsky". The icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir (it is also called “Our Lady of Tenderness” - the Virgin Mary gently presses her cheek to the baby Christ) - has become one of the shrines of Russia.

Andrei was a new type of politician. Like his fellow princes, he wanted to take possession of Kyiv, but at the same time he wanted to rule all of Russia from Vladimir, his new capital. This became the main goal of his campaigns against Kyiv, which he subjected to a terrible defeat. In general, Andrei was a stern and cruel prince, he did not tolerate objections and advice, he conducted affairs of his own free will - "autocratically." In those pre-Moscow times it was new, unusual.

Andrei immediately began to decorate his new capital, Vladimir, with temples of marvelous beauty. They were built of white stone. This soft stone served as a material for carvings on the walls of buildings. Andrei wanted to create a city that would surpass Kyiv in beauty and wealth. It had its own Golden Gates, Church of the Tithes, and the main temple - the Assumption Cathedral was higher than St. Sophia of Kyiv. Foreign craftsmen built it in just three years.

Prince Andrei was especially glorified by the Church of the Intercession built under him on the Nerl. This temple, still standing among the fields under the bottomless dome of the sky, causes admiration and joy for everyone who goes to him from afar along the path. It was this impression that the master sought, who in 1165 erected this slender, elegant white-stone church on an artificial hill above the quiet Nerl River, which immediately flows into the Klyazma. The hill itself was covered with white stone, and wide steps went from the water itself to the gates of the temple. During the flood - the time of intensive shipping - the church appeared on the island, served as a noticeable landmark and sign for those who sailed, crossing the border of the Suzdal land. Perhaps here the guests and ambassadors who came from the Oka, the Volga, from distant lands, got off the ships, climbed up the white stone stairs, prayed in the temple, rested on its gallery and then sailed on - to where the prince's palace shone with whiteness in Bogolyubovo, built in 1158-1165. And even further, on the high bank of the Klyazma, like heroic helmets, the golden domes of Vladimir's cathedrals sparkled in the sun.

In the palace in Bogolyubovo at night in 1174, conspirators from the prince's entourage killed Andrei. Then the crowd began to rob the palace - everyone hated the prince for his cruelty. The murderers drank to celebrate, and the naked, bloody corpse of the formidable prince lay for a long time in the garden.

The most famous successor of Andrei Bogolyubsky was his brother Vsevolod. In 1176, the people of Vladimir elected him to the princes. The 36-year reign of Vsevolod turned out to be a boon for Zalesye. Continuing Andrei's policy of raising Vladimir, Vsevolod avoided extremes, reckoned with the squad, ruled humanely, and was loved by the people.
Vsevolod was an experienced and successful military leader. Under him, the principality expanded to the north and northeast. The prince received the nickname "Big Nest". He had ten sons and managed to “attach” them to different destinies (small nests), where the number of Ruriks multiplied, from where whole dynasties subsequently went. So, from his eldest son Konstantin came the dynasty of the Suzdal princes, and from Yaroslav - the Moscow and Tver grand dukes.

Yes, and his own "nest" - Vladimir Vsevolod decorated the city, sparing no effort and money. The white-stone Dmitrovsky Cathedral built by him is decorated inside with frescoes by Byzantine artists, and on the outside with intricate stone carvings with figures of saints, lions, and floral ornaments. Ancient Russia did not know such beauty.

Galicia-Volyn and Chernihiv principalities

But the Chernigov-Seversky princes in Russia were not loved: neither Oleg Gorislavich, nor his sons and grandchildren - after all, they constantly brought the Polovtsy to Russia, with whom they were either friends or quarreled. In 1185, the grandson of Gorislavich, Igor Seversky, along with other princes on the Kayala River, was defeated by the Polovtsians. The story of the campaign of Igor and other Russian princes against the Polovtsy, the battle during an eclipse of the sun, a cruel defeat, the crying of Igor's wife Yaroslavna, the strife of princes and the weakness of disunited Russia - the plot of the Lay. The history of its emergence from oblivion at the beginning of the 19th century is shrouded in mystery. The original manuscript, found by Count A. I. Musin-Pushkin, disappeared during the fire of 1812, leaving only the publication in the journal, and a copy made for the Empress Catherine II. Some scholars are convinced that we are dealing with a talented forgery of later times ... Others believe that we have an Old Russian original. But all the same, every time you leave Russia, you involuntarily recall Igor's famous farewell words: “O Russian land! You are already behind the Shelomyan (you have already disappeared behind the hill - the author!) ”

Novgorod was "cut down" in the 9th century. on the border of forests inhabited by Finno-Ugric peoples, at the crossroads of trade routes. From here, Novgorodians penetrated to the northeast in search of furs, founding colonies with centers - graveyards. The power of Novgorod was determined by trade and crafts. Furs, honey, wax were eagerly bought in Western Europe, and from there they brought gold, wine, cloth, and weapons. A lot of wealth brought trade with the East. Novgorod boats reached the Crimea and Byzantium. The political weight of Novgorod, the second center of Russia, was also great. The close ties between Novgorod and Kyiv began to weaken in the 1130s, when strife began there. At this time, the power of the veche increased in Novgorod, which in 1136 expelled the prince, and from that time Novgorod turned into a republic. From now on, all the princes invited to Novgorod commanded only the army, and they were driven off the table at the slightest attempt to encroach on the power of the veche.

Veche was in many cities of Russia, but gradually faded. And only in Novgorod it, which consisted of free citizens, on the contrary, intensified. The veche resolved issues of peace and war, invited and expelled princes, tried criminals. At the veche, letters of lands were given, posadniks and archbishops were elected. The orators spoke from the dais, the veche level. The decision was taken only unanimously, although the disputes did not subside - disagreements were the essence of the political struggle at the veche.

Many monuments came from ancient Novgorod, but Sophia of Novgorod is especially famous - the main temple of Novgorod and two monasteries - Yuryev and Antoniev. According to legend, St. George's Monastery was founded by Yaroslav the Wise in 1030. In its center is the grandiose St. George's Cathedral, which was built by master Peter. The monastery was rich and influential. Novgorod princes and posadniks were buried in the tomb of St. George's Cathedral. But still, the Anthony Monastery was surrounded by special holiness. The legend of Anthony, the son of a wealthy Greek, who lived in the 12th century, is associated with him. in Rome. He became a hermit, settled on a stone, on the very shore of the sea. On September 5, 1106, a terrible storm began, and when it subsided, Antony, looking around, saw that, together with the stone, he found himself in an unknown northern country. It was Novgorod. God gave Anthony an understanding of Slavic speech, and church authorities helped the young man to found a monastery on the banks of the Volkhov with the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Virgin (1119). Princes and kings made rich contributions to this miraculously arose monastery. This shrine has seen a lot in its lifetime. Ivan the Terrible in 1571 staged a monstrous rout of the monastery, slaughtered all the monks. The post-revolutionary years of the 20th century turned out to be no less terrible. But the monastery survived, and scientists, examining the stone on which Saint Anthony was supposedly transported to the banks of the Volkhov, established that it was the ballast stone of an ancient ship, standing on the deck of which the righteous Roman youth could completely get from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to Novgorod.

On Mount Nereditsa, not far from Gorodishche - the site of the oldest settlement of the Slavs - stood the Church of the Savior-Nereditsa - the greatest monument of Russian culture. The single-domed, cubic-shaped church was built in one summer of 1198 and outwardly resembled many Novgorod churches of that era. But as soon as they entered it, people experienced an extraordinary feeling of delight and admiration, as if they were entering another beautiful world. The entire inner surface of the church from the floor to the dome was covered with magnificent frescoes. Scenes of the Last Judgment, images of saints, portraits of local princes - Novgorod masters made this work in just one year 1199 .., and for almost a millennium until the 20th century, the frescoes retained their brightness, liveliness and emotionality. However, during the war, in 1943, the church with all its frescoes perished, it was shot from cannons, and the divine frescoes disappeared forever. In terms of significance, among the most bitter irreplaceable losses of Russia in the 20th century, the death of the Savior-Nereditsa is on a par with Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo, destroyed during the war, demolished Moscow churches and monasteries.

In the middle of the XII century. Novgorod suddenly had a serious competitor in the northeast - the Vladimir-Suzdal land. Under Andrei Bogolyubsky, a war even began: the people of Vladimir unsuccessfully besieged the city. Since then, the struggle with Vladimir, and then with Moscow, has become the main problem of Novgorod. And in the end he lost this fight.
In the XII century. Pskov was considered a suburb (border point) of Novgorod and followed its policy in everything. But after 1136, the Veche of Pskov decided to secede from Novgorod. Novgorodians reluctantly agreed to this: Novgorod needed an ally in the fight against the Germans - after all, Pskov was the first to meet a blow from the west and thereby covered Novgorod. But there has never been friendship between the cities - in all internal Russian conflicts, Pskov turned out to be on the side of the enemies of Novgorod.

Mongol-Tatar invasion of Russia

In Russia, the appearance of the Mongol-Tatars, who sharply intensified under Genghis Khan, was learned in the early 1220s, when this new enemy broke into the Black Sea steppes and drove the Polovtsians out of them. They called for help from the Russian princes, who came out to meet the enemy. The arrival of conquerors from the unknown steppes, their life in yurts, strange customs, extraordinary cruelty - all this seemed to Christians the beginning of the end of the world. In the battle on the river Kalka On May 31, 1223, the Russians and Polovtsy were defeated. Russia did not yet know such an “evil battle”, a shameful flight and a cruel massacre - the Tatars, having executed the prisoners, moved to Kyiv and ruthlessly killed everyone who caught their eye. But then they turned back to the steppe. “Where they came from, we don’t know, and where they went, we don’t know,” the chronicler wrote.

The terrible lesson did not benefit Russia - the princes were still at enmity with each other. It's been 12 years. In 1236, the Mongol-Tatars of Khan Batu defeated the Volga Bulgaria, and in the spring of 1237 they defeated the Polovtsy. And then came the turn of Russia. On December 21, 1237, Batu's troops stormed Ryazan, then Kolomna, Moscow fell. On February 7, Vladimir was taken and burned, and then almost all the cities of the North-East were defeated. The princes failed to organize the defense of Russia, and each of them courageously died alone. In March 1238, in a battle on the river. Sit died and the last independent Grand Duke of Vladimir - Yuri. The enemies took his severed head with them. Then Batu moved, "slashing people like grass," to Novgorod. But not reaching a hundred miles, the Tatars suddenly turned south. It was a miracle that saved the republic - contemporaries believed that the "filthy" Batu was stopped by the vision of the cross in the sky.

In the spring of 1239, Batu rushed to southern Russia. When the detachments of the Tatars approached Kyiv, the beauty of the great city struck them, and they offered the Kyiv prince Michael to surrender without a fight. He sent a refusal, but he did not strengthen the city either, but on the contrary, he himself fled from Kyiv. When the Tatars came again in the autumn of 1240, there were no princes with retinues. But still the townspeople desperately resisted the enemy. Archaeologists have found traces of the tragedy and the feat of Kiev - the remains of a city dweller, literally studded with Tatar arrows, as well as another person who, covering himself with a child, died with him.

Those who fled from Russia carried terrible news to Europe about the horrors of the invasion. It was said that during the siege of cities, the Tatars throw the roofs of houses with the fat of the people they killed, and then start up Greek fire (oil), which burns better from this. In 1241, the Tatars rushed to Poland and Hungary, which were ravaged to the ground. After that, the Tatars suddenly left Europe. Batu decided to establish his own state in the lower reaches of the Volga. This is how the Golden Horde appeared.

From this terrible era, the “Word about the destruction of the Russian land” has remained for us. It was written in the middle of the 13th century, immediately after the Mongol-Tatar invasion of Russia. It seems that the author wrote it with his own tears and blood - he suffered so much from the thought of the misfortune of his homeland, he felt so sorry for the Russian people, Russia, who fell into a terrible "raid" of unknown enemies. The past, pre-Mongolian time seems to him sweet and kind, and the country is remembered only as flourishing and happy. The reader's heart should shrink from sadness and love at the words: “Oh, the Russian land is bright and beautifully decorated! And you are surprised by many beauties: many lakes, rivers and wells (sources - the author), steep mountains, high hills, clean oak forests, marvelous fields, various animals, countless birds, great cities, marvelous villages, vineyards (gardens - author) monastic, church houses, and formidable princes, honest boyars, many nobles. Thou art full of the Russian land, O orthodox Christian faith!

After the death of Prince Yuri, his younger brother Yaroslav, who was in Kyiv these days, moved to the devastated Vladimir and began to adjust to "living under the khan." He went to bow to the khan in Mongolia and in 1246 was poisoned there. The sons of Yaroslav - Alexander (Nevsky) and Yaroslav Tverskoy had to continue the heavy and humiliating work of their father.

Alexander at the age of 15 became the Prince of Novgorod and from an early age did not let go of the sword from his hands. In 1240, as a young man, he defeated the Swedes in the battle on the Neva, for which he received the nickname Nevsky. The prince was handsome, tall, his voice, according to the chronicler, "thundered before the people like a trumpet." In difficult times, this great prince of the North ruled Russia: a depopulated country, general decline and despondency, the heavy oppression of a foreign conqueror. But smart Alexander, having dealt with the Tatars for years and living in the Horde, comprehended the art of servile worship, he knew how to crawl on his knees in the khan's yurt, knew what gifts to give to influential khans and murzas, comprehended the skill of court intrigue. And all this in order to survive and save their table, the people, Russia, so that, using the power given by the “tsar” (as the Khan was called in Russia), to subjugate other princes, to suppress the freedom of the people's council.

Alexander's whole life was connected with Novgorod. Honorably defending the lands of Novgorod from the Swedes and Germans, he obediently carried out the will of Vatu Khan, his brother, and punished Novgorodians dissatisfied with the Tatar oppression. With them, Alexander, the prince who adopted the Tatar style of ruling, had a difficult relationship: he often quarreled with the veche and, offended, left for Zalesye - for Pereslavl.

Under Alexander (since 1240), the Golden Horde completely dominated (yoke) over Russia. The Grand Duke was recognized as a slave, tributary of the Khan and received from the hands of the Khan a golden label for a great reign. At the same time, the khans could at any time take it away from the Grand Duke and give it to another. The Tatars deliberately pitted the princes in the struggle for the golden label, trying to prevent the strengthening of Russia. From all Russian subjects, the khan's collectors (and then the grand dukes) charged a tenth of all income - the so-called "Horde exit". This tax was a heavy burden for Russia. Disobedience to the will of the Khan led to Horde raids on Russian cities, which were subjected to terrible defeat. In 1246, Batu summoned Alexander for the first time to the Golden Horde, from there, at the behest of the Khan, the prince went to Mongolia, to Karakorum. In 1252, he knelt before Khan Mongke, who handed him a label - a gilded plate with a hole that allowed him to hang it around his neck. This was a sign of power over Russia.

At the beginning of the XIII century. in the Eastern Baltic, the crusading movement of the German Teutonic Order and the Order of the Sword-bearers intensified. They attacked Russia from Pskov. In 1240 they even captured Pskov and threatened Novgorod. Alexander and his retinue liberated Pskov and on April 5, 1242, on the ice of Lake Pskov, in the so-called “Battle on the Ice”, he utterly defeated the knights. The attempts of the Crusaders and Rome standing behind them to find a common language with Alexander failed - as soft and compliant he was in relations with the Tatars, so severe and implacable he was towards the West and its influence.

Moscow Russia. The middle of the XIII - the middle of the XVI centuries.

After the death of Alexander Nevsky, strife broke out again in Russia. His heirs - brother Yaroslav and Alexander's own children - Dmitry and Andrei, never became worthy successors to Nevsky. They quarreled and, "running ... to the Horde", directed the Tatars to Russia. In 1293, Andrei brought "Dyudenev's army" to his brother Dmitry, which burned and plundered 14 Russian cities. The real masters of the country were the Baskaks, the tribute collectors who mercilessly robbed their subjects, the miserable heirs of Alexander.

The youngest son of Alexander, Daniel, tried to maneuver between the brothers-princes. Poverty was the reason. After all, he got the worst of the specific principalities - Moscow. Carefully and gradually, he expanded his principality, acted for sure. Thus began the rise of Moscow. Daniel died in 1303 and was buried in the Danilovsky Monastery founded by him, the first in Moscow.

The heir and eldest son of Daniel, Yuri, had to defend his inheritance in the fight against the princes of Tver, who had grown stronger by the end of the 13th century. Tver, which stood on the Volga, was a rich city at that time - for the first time in Russia after the arrival of Batu, a stone church was built in it. In Tver, a rare bell rang in those days. In 1304, Mikhail of Tverskoy managed to get a golden label for the reign of Vladimir from Khan Tokhta, although Yuri of Moscow tried to challenge this decision. Since then, Moscow and Tver have become sworn enemies, began a stubborn struggle. In the end, Yuri managed to get a label and discredit the prince of Tver in the eyes of the khan. Mikhail was summoned to the Horde, brutally beaten, and in the end, Yuri's henchmen cut out his heart. The prince courageously met a terrible death. Later he was declared a holy martyr. And Yuri, seeking the obedience of Tver, for a long time did not give the body of the martyr to his son Dmitry Terrible Eyes. In 1325, Dmitry and Yuri accidentally collided in the Horde, and in a quarrel Dmitry killed Yuri, for which he was executed there.

In a stubborn struggle with Tver, Yuri's brother, Ivan Kalita, managed to get a gold label. During the reign of the first princes, Moscow grew. Even after becoming grand dukes, the princes of Moscow did not move from Moscow. They preferred the convenience and security of their father's house on a fortified hill near the Moskva River to the glory and anxiety of metropolitan life in golden-domed Vladimir.

Having become the Grand Duke in 1332, Ivan managed, with the help of the Horde, not only to deal with Tver, but also to annex Suzdal and part of the Rostov Principality to Moscow. Ivan carefully paid tribute - "exit", and achieved in the Horde the right to collect tribute from the Russian lands on his own, without the Baskaks. Of course, part of the money "stuck" to the hands of the prince, who received the nickname "Kalita" - a belt pouch. Outside the walls of the wooden Moscow Kremlin, built of oak logs, Ivan founded several stone churches, including the Assumption and Archangel Cathedrals.

These cathedrals were built under Metropolitan Peter, who moved from Vladimir to Moscow. He went to this for a long time, constantly living there under the caring supervision of Kalita. So Moscow became the church center of Russia. Peter died in 1326 and became the first Moscow saint.

Ivan continued to fight with Tver. He managed to skillfully discredit in the eyes of the Khan of Tver, Prince Alexander and his son Fyodor. They were summoned to the Horde and brutally killed there - quartered. These atrocities cast a gloomy reflection on the initial rise of Moscow. For Tver, all this became a tragedy: the Tatars exterminated five generations of its princes! Then Ivan Kalita robbed Tver, evicted the boyars from the city, taking away the only bell from the Tverchi people - the symbol and pride of the city.

Ivan Kalita ruled Moscow for 12 years, his reign, his bright personality was remembered for a long time by his contemporaries and descendants. In the legendary history of Moscow, Kalita appears as the founder of a new dynasty, a kind of Moscow "forefather Adam", a wise sovereign, whose policy of "calming down" the ferocious Horde was so necessary for Russia, tormented by the enemy and strife.

Dying in 1340, Kalita handed over the throne to his son Semyon and was calm - Moscow was growing stronger. But in the mid-1350s. a terrible misfortune approached Russia. It was the plague, the Black Death. In the spring of 1353, two sons of Semyon died one after another, and then the Grand Duke himself, as well as his heir and brother Andrei. Of all the survivors, only brother Ivan survived, who went to the Horde, where he received a label from Khan Bedibek.

Under Ivan II the Red, "Christ-loving, and quiet, and merciful" (chronicle), the policy remained bloody as before. The prince brutally cracked down on people who were objectionable to him. Metropolitan Alexy had a great influence on Ivan. It was he who was entrusted by Ivan II, who died in 1359, to the nine-year-old son Dmitry, the future great commander.

The beginning of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery dates back to the time of Ivan II. It was founded by Sergius (in the world Bartholomew from the town of Radonezh) in a forest tract. Sergius introduced a new principle of communal life in monasticism - a poor brotherhood with common property. He was a true righteous man. Seeing that the monastery became rich, and the monks began to live in contentment, Sergius founded a new monastery in the forest. This, according to the chronicler, "the holy elder, wonderful, and kind, and quiet, meek, humble," was revered as a saint in Russia even before his death in 1392.

Dmitry Ivanovich received a golden label at the age of 10 - this has never happened in the history of Russia. It can be seen that the gold accumulated by his stingy ancestors, and the intrigues of loyal people in the Horde, helped. The reign of Dmitry turned out to be unusually difficult for Russia: wars, terrible fires, epidemics went on in a continuous series. The drought destroyed the seedlings in the fields of Russia, depopulated from the plague. But the descendants forgot Dmitry's failures: in the memory of the people, he remained, first of all, a great commander, who for the first time defeated not only the Mongol-Tatars, but also the fear of the previously invincible power of the Horde.

Metropolitan Alexy was the ruler under the young prince for a long time. A wise old man, he protected the young man from dangers, enjoyed the respect and support of the Moscow boyars. He was also respected in the Horde, where by that time unrest had begun, Moscow, taking advantage of this, stopped paying the exit, and then Dmitry generally refused to obey Emir Mamai, who had seized power in the Horde. In 1380, he decided to punish the rebel himself. Dmitry understood what a desperate task he undertook - to challenge the Horde, which had been invincible for 150 years! According to legend, Sergius of Radonezh blessed him for his feat. A huge army for Russia - 100 thousand people - set off on a campaign. On August 26, 1380, the news spread that the Russian army had crossed the Oka and “there was great sadness in the city of Moscow, and bitter weeping and cries and sobs arose in all parts of the city” - everyone knew that the crossing of the army across the Oka cut off her way back and made the battle and the death of loved ones is inevitable. On September 8, a duel between the monk Peresvet and the Tatar hero on the Kulikovo field began a battle that ended in victory for the Russians. The losses were horrendous, but this time God was really for us!

The victory was not celebrated for long. Khan Tokhtamysh overthrew Mamai and in 1382 he himself moved to Russia, seized Moscow by cunning and burned it down. On Russia imposed "there was a great heavy tribute throughout the Grand Duchy." Dmitry humiliatedly recognized the power of the Horde.

The great victory and the great humiliation cost Donskoy dearly. He fell seriously ill and died in 1389. At the conclusion of peace with the Horde, his son and heir, 11-year-old Vasily, was taken away as a hostage by the Tatars. After 4 years, he managed to escape to Russia. He became the Grand Duke according to his father's will, which had never happened before, and this spoke of the power of the Moscow prince. True, Khan Tokhtamysh also approved the choice - the Khan was afraid of the terrible Tamerlane coming from Asia and therefore appeased his tributary. Vasily ruled Moscow cautiously and prudently for 36 long years. Under him, petty princes began to turn into grand ducal servants, and minting of coins began. Although Vasily I was not a warrior, he showed firmness in relations with Novgorod, annexed his northern possessions to Moscow. For the first time, the hand of Moscow reached out to Bulgaria on the Volga, and once its squads burned down Kazan.

In the 60s. 14th century in Central Asia, Timur (Tamerlane), an outstanding ruler, became famous for his incredible cruelty, which even then seemed wild. Having defeated Turkey, he destroyed the army of Tokhtamysh, and then invaded the Ryazan lands. Horror gripped Russia, which remembered Batu's invasion. Having captured Yelets, Timur moved to Moscow, but on August 26 he stopped and turned south. In Moscow, it was believed that Russia was saved by the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir, which, at the request of the people, averted the arrival of the “iron lame”.

Those who have seen Andrei Tarkovsky's great film "Andrei Rublev" remember the terrible scene of the capture of the city by Russian-Tatar troops, the destruction of churches and the torture of a priest who refused to show the robbers where the church treasures were hidden. This whole story has a genuine documentary basis. In 1410, Nizhny Novgorod prince Daniil Borisovich, together with the Tatar prince Talych, secretly approached Vladimir and suddenly, at the hour of the afternoon rest, the guards burst into the city. The priest of the Assumption Cathedral, Patrikey, managed to lock himself in the church, hid the vessels and some of the clerks in a special room, and himself, while they were breaking the gate, knelt down and began to pray. The intruding Russian and Tatar villains seized the priest and began to inquire where the treasures were. They burned him with fire, drove chips under their nails, but he was silent. Then, tied to a horse, the enemies dragged the body of the priest along the ground, and then killed him. But the people and treasures of the church were saved.

In 1408, the new khan Yedigei attacked Moscow, which had not paid a “way out” for more than 10 years. However, the cannons of the Kremlin and its high walls forced the Tatars to abandon the assault. Having received a ransom, Edigey with many prisoners migrated to the steppe.

Having fled to Russia from the Horde through Podolia in 1386, young Vasily met the Lithuanian prince Vitovt. The brave prince liked Vitovt, who promised him his daughter Sophia in marriage. The wedding took place in 1391. Soon Vytautas also became the Grand Duke of Lithuania. Moscow and Lithuania competed sharply in the matter of "gathering" Russia, but more recently, Sophia turned out to be a good wife and a grateful daughter - she did everything so that her son-in-law and father-in-law did not become sworn enemies. Sofya Vitovtovna was a strong-willed, stubborn and determined woman. After the death of her husband from the plague in 1425, she fiercely defended the rights of her son Vasily II during the strife that again swept over Russia.

Basil II the Dark. Civil War

The reign of Vasily II Vasilyevich is the time of a 25-year civil war, the "dislike" of the descendants of Kalita. Dying, Vasily I bequeathed the throne to his young son Vasily, but this did not suit the uncle of Vasily II, Prince Yuri Dmitrievich - he himself dreamed of power. In a dispute between uncle and nephew, the Horde supported Vasily II, but in 1432 the peace was broken. The reason was a quarrel at the wedding feast of Vasily II, when Sofia Vitovtovna, accusing Yuri's son, Prince Vasily Kosoy, of misappropriating Dmitry Donskoy's golden belt, took this symbol of power from Kosoy and thereby terribly offended him. Victory in the ensuing strife went to Yuri II, but he ruled for only two months and died in the summer of 1434, having bequeathed Moscow to his son Vasily Kosoy. Under Yuri, for the first time, an image of George the Victorious appeared on a coin, striking a snake with a spear. From here came the name "penny", as well as the coat of arms of Moscow, which was then included in the coat of arms of Russia.

After the death of Yuri, Vasily P. again took over in the struggle for power. He captured the sons of Yuri Dmitry Shemyaka and Vasily Kosoy, who became the Grand Duke after his father, and then ordered Kosoy to be blinded. Shemyaka himself submitted to Vasily II, but only feignedly. In February 1446, he arrested Vasily and ordered him to "take out his eyes." So Vasily II became "Dark", and Shemyaka Grand Duke Dmitry II Yuryevich.

Shemyaka did not rule for long, and soon Vasily the Dark returned power. The struggle went on for a long time, only in 1450, in the battle near Galich, Shemyaka's army was defeated, and he fled to Novgorod. Chef Poganka, bribed by Moscow, poisoned Shemyaka - "gave him a potion in the smoke." As N. M. Karamzin writes, Vasily II, having received the news of Shemyaka's death, "expressed immodest joy."
No portraits of Shemyaka have been preserved; his worst enemies tried to denigrate the appearance of the prince. In the Moscow chronicles, Shemyaka looks like a monster, and Vasily is a bearer of goodness. Perhaps if Shemyaka had won, then everything would have been the other way around: both of them, cousins, were similar in habits.

The cathedrals built in the Kremlin were painted by Theophanes the Greek, who arrived from Byzantium, first to Novgorod, and then to Moscow. Under him, a type of Russian high iconostasis was formed, the main decoration of which was the "Deesis" - a number of the largest and most revered icons of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist and the archangels. The visual space of the Greek deesis series was unified and harmonious, and the painting (like the frescoes) of the Greek is full of feeling and inner movement.

In those days, the influence of Byzantium on the spiritual life of Russia was enormous. Russian culture was nourished by juices from the Greek soil. At the same time, Moscow resisted the attempts of Byzantium to determine the church life of Russia, the choice of its metropolitans. In 1441, a scandal broke out: Vasily II rejected the church union of the Catholic and Orthodox churches concluded in Florence. He arrested the Greek Metropolitan Isidore, who represented Russia at the cathedral. And yet, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 caused sadness and horror in Russia. Henceforth, it was doomed to ecclesiastical and cultural loneliness among Catholics and Muslims.

Theophanes the Greek was surrounded by talented students. The best of them was the monk Andrei Rublev, who worked with a teacher in Moscow, and then, together with his friend Daniil Cherny, in Vladimir, the Trinity-Sergius and Andronikov monasteries. Andrew wrote differently than Feofan. Andrei does not have the severity of images characteristic of Theophan: the main thing in his painting is compassion, love and forgiveness. The wall paintings and icons of Rublev already amazed contemporaries with their spirituality, who came to watch the artist work on the scaffolding. Andrei Rublev's most famous icon is the Trinity, which he made for the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. The plot is from the Bible: the son of Jacob is to be born to the elderly Abraham and Sarah, and three angels came to inform them about this. They are patiently waiting for the return of the hosts from the field. It is believed that these are the incarnations of the triune God: on the left is God the Father, in the center is Jesus Christ ready for sacrifice in the name of people, on the right is the Holy Spirit. The figures are inscribed by the artist in a circle - a symbol of eternity. This great creation of the 15th century is imbued with peace, harmony, light and goodness.

After the death of Shemyaka, Vasily II dealt with all his allies. Dissatisfied with the fact that Novgorod supported Shemyaka, Vasily went on a campaign in 1456 and forced the Novgorodians to curtail their rights in favor of Moscow. In general, Vasily II was a “lucky loser” on the throne. On the battlefield, he suffered only defeats, he was humiliated and captured by enemies. Like his opponents, Basil was a perjurer and a fratricide. However, every time Vasily was saved by a miracle, and his rivals made even more gross mistakes than he himself made. As a result, Vasily managed to hold on to power for more than 30 years and easily pass it on to his son Ivan III, whom he had previously made co-ruler.

From an early age, Prince Ivan experienced the horrors of civil strife - he was with his father on the very day when the people of Shemyaka dragged Vasily II out to blind him. Then Ivan managed to escape. He had no childhood - at the age of 10 he became co-ruler of his blind father. In total, he was in power for 55 years! According to the foreigner who saw him, he was a tall, handsome, thin man. He also had two nicknames: "Humpbacked" - it is clear that Ivan was stooping - and "Terrible". The last nickname was later forgotten - his grandson Ivan IV turned out to be even more formidable. Ivan III was power-hungry, cruel, cunning. He was also stern towards his family: he starved his brother Andrei to death in prison.

Ivan had an outstanding gift as a politician and diplomat. He could wait for years, slowly move towards his goal and achieve it without serious losses. He was a real "collector" of lands: Ivan annexed some lands quietly and peacefully, conquered others by force. In a word, by the end of his reign, the territory of Muscovy had grown six times!

The annexation of Novgorod in 1478 was an important victory for the emerging autocracy over the ancient republican democracy, which was in crisis. The Novgorod veche bell was removed and taken to Moscow, many boyars were arrested, their lands were confiscated, and thousands of Novgorodians were “brought out” (evicted) to other counties. In 1485, Ivan annexed another old rival of Moscow - Tver. The last Prince of Tver, Mikhail, fled to Lithuania, where he remained forever.

Under Ivan, a new system of government developed, in which they began to use governors - Moscow service people who were replaced from Moscow. The Boyar Duma also appears - the council of the highest nobility. Under Ivan, the local system began to develop. Service people began to receive plots of land - estates, that is, temporary (for the duration of their service) holdings in which they were placed.

Arose under Ivan and the all-Russian code of laws - the Sudebnik of 1497. It regulated legal proceedings, the size of feedings. The Sudebnik established a single deadline for the departure of peasants from the landlords - a week before and a week after St. George's Day (November 26). From that moment on, we can talk about the beginning of the movement of Russia towards serfdom.

The power of Ivan III was great. He was already an "autocrat", that is, he did not receive power from the hands of the khanatsar. In treaties, he is called the "sovereign of all Russia", that is, the sovereign, the only master, and the two-headed Byzantine eagle becomes the coat of arms. A magnificent Byzantine ceremonial reigns at the court, on the head of Ivan III is the “cap of Monomakh”, he sits on the throne, holding in his hands the symbols of power - the scepter and the “power” - a golden apple.

For three years, the widowed Ivan married the niece of the last Byzantine emperor Constantine Palaiologos - Zoya (Sophia). She was an educated woman, strong-willed and, according to sources, obese, which in those days was not considered a disadvantage. With the arrival of Sophia, the Moscow court acquired the features of Byzantine splendor, which was a clear merit of the princess and her entourage, although the Russians did not like the “Roman woman”. The Russia of Ivan is gradually becoming an empire, adopting the traditions of Byzantium, and Moscow is turning from a modest city into the “Third Rome”.

Ivan devoted a lot of effort to the construction of Moscow, more precisely, the Kremlin - after all, the city was entirely wooden, and fires did not spare him, however, like the Kremlin, whose stone walls did not save from fire. Meanwhile, the prince was worried about stone work - the Russian masters did not have the practice of building large buildings. The destruction in 1474 of the almost completed cathedral in the Kremlin made a particularly heavy impression on the Muscovites. And then, at the behest of Ivan, the engineer Aristotle Fioravanti was invited from Venice, who “for the sake of the cunning of his art” was hired for huge money - 10 rubles a month. It was he who built the white-stone Assumption Cathedral in the Kremlin - the main temple of Russia. The chronicler was in admiration: the church "wonderful majesty, and height, and lordship, and ringing, and space, such did not happen in Russia."

The skill of Fioravanti delighted Ivan, and he hired more craftsmen in Italy. Since 1485, Anton and Mark Fryazin, Pietro Antonio Solari and Aleviz began to build (instead of dilapidated from the time of Dmitry Donskoy) new walls of the Moscow Kremlin with 18 towers that have already come down to us. The Italians built the walls for a long time - more than 10 years, but now it is clear that they were building for centuries. Built of faceted white stone blocks, the Faceted Chamber for receiving foreign embassies was distinguished by its extraordinary beauty. It was built by Mark Fryazin and Solari. Aleviz erected next to the Assumption Cathedral the Archangel Cathedral - the tomb of Russian princes and tsars. Cathedral Square - the place of solemn state and church ceremonies - was completed by the bell tower of Ivan the Great and the Cathedral of the Annunciation built by Pskov masters - the house church of Ivan III.

But still, the main event of Ivan's reign was the overthrow of the Tatar yoke. In a stubborn struggle, Akhmatkhan managed for some time to revive the former power of the Great Horde, and in 1480 he decided to subjugate Russia again. The Horde and Ivan's troops converged on the Ugra River, a tributary of the Oka. In this position, positional battles and skirmishes began. The general battle never happened, Ivan was an experienced, cautious ruler, he hesitated for a long time - whether to enter into a mortal battle or submit to Akhmat. Having stood until November 11, Akhmat went to the steppes and was soon killed by enemies.

By the end of his life, Ivan III became intolerant of others, unpredictable, unjustifiably cruel, almost continuously executing his friends and enemies. His capricious will became law. When the envoy of the Crimean Khan asked why the prince killed his grandson Dmitry, whom he had initially appointed as heir, Ivan answered like a real autocrat: “Am I not free, the great prince, in my children and in my reign? To whom I want, I will give reign! According to the will of Ivan III, power after him passed to his son Vasily III.

Vasily III turned out to be the true heir of his father: his power was, in essence, unlimited and despotic. As the foreigner wrote, "he oppresses everyone equally with cruel slavery." However, unlike his father, Vasily was a lively, active person, traveled a lot, and was very fond of hunting in the forests near Moscow. He was a pious man, and pilgrimages were an important part of his life. Under him, pejorative forms of address to the nobles appear, who do not spare themselves either, submitting petitions to the sovereign: “Your servant, Ivashka, beats with his forehead ...”, which especially emphasized the system of autocratic power in which one person was the master, and slaves, slaves - other.

As a contemporary wrote, Ivan III was sitting still, but his state was growing. Under Basil, this growth continued. He completed his father's work and annexed Pskov. There, Vasily behaved like a true Asian conqueror, destroying the liberties of Pskov and deporting wealthy citizens to Muscovy. The only thing left for the Pskovites was to “weep in their old ways and according to their own will.”

After the annexation of Pskov, Vasily III received a message from the Elder of the Pskov Eliazar Monastery Philotheus, who argued that the former centers of the world (Rome and Constantinople) had been replaced by a third one - Moscow, which had accepted sanctity from the dead capitals. And then the conclusion followed: "Two Romes fell, and the third stands, and the fourth does not happen." Filofey's thoughts became the basis of the ideological doctrine of imperial Russia. So the Russian rulers were inscribed in a single row of rulers of the world centers.

In 1525, Vasily III divorced his wife Solomonia, with whom he lived for 20 years. The reason for the divorce and forced tonsure of Solomonia was the absence of her children. After that, 47-year-old Vasily married 17-year-old Elena Glinskaya. Many considered this marriage illegal, "not in the old days." But he transformed the Grand Duke - to the horror of his subjects, Vasily "fell under the heel" of young Elena: he began to dress in fashionable Lithuanian clothes and shaved his beard. The newlyweds did not have children for a long time. Only on August 25, 1530, Elena gave birth to a son, who was named Ivan. “And there was,” wrote the chronicler, “great joy in the city of Moscow...” If they knew that Ivan the Terrible, the greatest tyrant of the Russian land, was born on that day! The Church of the Ascension in Kolomenskoye became a monument to this event. Placed on a picturesque bend of the Moyek river bank, it is beautiful, light and graceful. I can’t even believe that it was erected in honor of the birth of the greatest tyrant in Russian history - there is so much joy in it, aspiration upward to heaven. Before us is a majestic melody truly frozen in stone, beautiful and sublime.

Fate prepared for Vasily a difficult death - a small sore on his leg suddenly grew into a terrible rotten wound, general blood poisoning began, and Vasily died. As the chronicler reports, those who stood at the bedside of the dying prince saw "that when they put the Gospel on their chest, his spirit departed like a small smoke."

The young widow of Vasily III, Elena, became regent under the three-year-old Ivan IV. Under Elena, some of her husband's undertakings were completed: they introduced a unified system of measures and weights, as well as a single monetary system throughout the country. Immediately, Elena showed herself as an imperious and ambitious ruler, disgraced her husband's brothers Yuri and Andrei. They were killed in prison, and Andrei died of starvation in a deaf iron cap put on his head. But in 1538, death overtook Elena herself. The ruler died at the hands of poisoners, leaving the country in a difficult situation - continuous raids of the Tatars, squabbling boyars for power.

Reign of Ivan the Terrible

After the death of Elena, a desperate struggle of the boyar clans for power began. One won, then the other. The boyars pushed around the young Ivan IV in front of his eyes, and in his name they carried out reprisals against people they did not like. Young Ivan was unlucky - from an early age, left an orphan, he lived without a close and kind teacher, he saw only cruelty, lies, intrigues, duplicity. All this was absorbed by his receptive, passionate soul. From childhood, Ivan was accustomed to executions, murders, and the innocent blood shed before his eyes did not excite him. The boyars catered to the young sovereign, inflaming his vices and whims. He killed cats and dogs, rushed on horseback through the streets of Moscow, mercilessly crushing the people.

Having reached the age of majority - 16 years old, Ivan struck those around him with determination and will. In December 1546, he announced that he wanted to have a "royal rank", to be called a king. The wedding of Ivan to the kingdom took place in the Assumption Cathedral of the Kremlin. The Metropolitan placed the Cap of Monomakh on Ivan's head. According to legend, this hat in the XII century. Prince Vladimir Monomakh inherited from Byzantium. In fact, this is a gold, sable-trimmed, gem-decorated skullcap of the Central Asian work of the 14th century. It became the main attribute of royal power.
After a terrible fire that happened in 1547 in Moscow, the townspeople rebelled against the boyars, who abused their power. The young king was shocked by these events and decided to start reforms. A circle of reformers arose around the tsar - the Chosen Rada. The priest Sylvester and the nobleman Alexei Adashev became his soul. Both of them remained Ivan's chief advisers for 13 years. The activities of the circle led to reforms that strengthened the state and autocracy. Orders were created - the central authorities, in the localities the power passed from the former governors appointed from above to elected local elders. The Tsar's Code of Laws, a new set of laws, was also adopted. It was approved by the Zemsky Sobor - a frequently convened general meeting elected from various "ranks".

In the first years of his reign, Ivan's cruelty was mitigated by his advisers and his young wife Anastasia. She, the daughter of the okolnichi Roman Zakharyin-Yuriev, was chosen by Ivan as his wife in 1547. The Tsar loved Anastasia and was under her truly beneficial influence. Therefore, the death of his wife in 1560 was a terrible blow for Ivan, and after that his character deteriorated completely. He abruptly changed policy, refused the help of his advisers and placed them in disgrace.

The long struggle of the Kazan Khanate and Moscow on the Upper Volga ended in 1552 with the capture of Kazan. By this time, Ivan's army had been reformed: the core of it was made up of mounted noble militia and infantry - archers, armed with firearms - squeakers. The fortifications of Kazan were taken by storm, the city was destroyed, and the inhabitants were destroyed or enslaved. Later, Astrakhan, the capital of another Tatar khanate, was also taken. Soon the Volga region became a place of exile for Russian nobles.

In Moscow, not far from the Kremlin, in honor of the capture of Kazan by the masters Barma and Postnik, St. Basil's Cathedral, or Pokrovsky Cathedral, was built (Kazan was taken on the eve of the Feast of the Intercession). The building of the cathedral, which still amazes the viewer with its extraordinary brightness, consists of nine churches connected to each other, a kind of “bouquet” of domes. The unusual appearance of this temple is an example of the bizarre fantasy of Ivan the Terrible. The people associated its name with the name of the holy fool - the soothsayer Basil the Blessed, who boldly told Tsar Ivan the truth to his face. According to the legend, by order of the king, Barma and Postnik were blinded so that they could never create such beauty again. However, it is known that the "church and city master" Postnik (Yakovlev) also successfully built stone fortifications of the recently conquered Kazan.

The first printed book in Russia (Gospel) was created in the printing house founded in 1553 by master Marusha Nefediev and his comrades. Among them were Ivan Fedorov and Pyotr Mstislavets. For a long time, it was Fedorov who was mistakenly considered the first printer. However, the merits of Fedorov and Mstislavets are already enormous. In 1563 in Moscow, in a newly opened printing house, the building of which has survived to this day, in the presence of Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Fedorov and Mstislavets began to print the liturgical book "Apostle". In 1567 the craftsmen fled to Lithuania and continued printing books. In 1574, in Lvov, Ivan Fedorov published the first Russian ABC "for the sake of quick infant learning." It was a textbook that included the beginnings of reading, writing and counting.

The terrible time of the oprichnina has come in Russia. On December 3, 1564, Ivan unexpectedly left Moscow, and a month later he sent a letter from Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda to the capital, in which he declared his anger at his subjects. In response to the humiliated requests of his subjects to return and rule in the old way, Ivan announced that he was creating an oprichnina. So (from the word “oprich”, that is, “except”) this state arose in the state. The rest of the lands were called "zemshchina". The lands of the “zemshchina” were arbitrarily taken to the oprichnina, local nobles were exiled, and their property was taken away. The oprichnina led to a sharp increase in autocracy not through reforms, but through arbitrariness, a gross violation of traditions and norms accepted in society.
Massacres, brutal executions, robberies were carried out by the hands of guardsmen dressed in black clothes. They were part of a kind of military-monastic order, and the king was his "abbot". Intoxicated with wine and blood, the guardsmen terrified the country. Councils or courts could not be found for them - the guardsmen covered themselves with the name of the sovereign.

Those who saw Ivan after the beginning of the oprichnina were amazed at the changes in his appearance. As if a terrible internal corruption struck the soul and body of the king. The once blooming 35-year-old man looked like a wrinkled, bald old man with eyes burning with a gloomy fire. Since then, rampant feasts in the company of guardsmen alternated in Ivan's life with executions, debauchery - with deep repentance for the crimes committed.

The tsar treated independent, honest, open people with special distrust. Some of them he executed with his own hand. Ivan did not tolerate protests against his atrocities either. So, he dealt with Metropolitan Philip, who called on the king to stop extrajudicial executions. Philip was exiled to a monastery, and then Malyuta Skuratov strangled the metropolitan.
Malyuta especially stood out among the oprichniki killers, who were blindly devoted to the tsar. This first executioner of Ivan, a cruel and limited person, evoked the horror of his contemporaries. He was the king's confidante in debauchery and drunkenness, and then, when Ivan atoned for his sins in the church, Malyuta rang the bell like a sexton. The executioner was killed in the Livonian War
In 1570 Ivan staged a rout of Veliky Novgorod. Monasteries, churches, houses and shops were robbed, Novgorodians were tortured for five weeks, the living were thrown into the Volkhov, and those who came out were finished off with spears and axes. Ivan robbed the shrine of Novgorod - St. Sophia Cathedral and took out his wealth. Returning to Moscow, Ivan executed dozens of people with the most cruel executions. After that, he brought down the executions already on those who created the oprichnina. The blood dragon was eating its own tail. In 1572, Ivan abolished the oprichnina, and the very word "oprichnina" was forbidden to be pronounced under pain of death.

After Kazan, Ivan turned to the western borders and decided to conquer the lands of the already weakened Livonian Order in the Baltic states. The first victories in the Livonian War, which began in 1558, turned out to be easy - Russia reached the shores of the Baltic. The tsar solemnly drank Baltic water from a golden goblet in the Kremlin. But soon defeat began, the war became protracted. Poland and Sweden joined Ivan's enemies. In this situation, Ivan failed to show the talent of a commander and diplomat, he made erroneous decisions that led to the death of the troops. The king, with painful persistence, looked everywhere for traitors. The Livonian War ruined Russia.

The most serious opponent of Ivan was the Polish king Stefan Batory. In 1581 he laid siege to Pskov, but the Pskovians defended their city. By this time, the Russian army was bled dry by heavy losses, repressions of prominent commanders. Ivan could no longer resist the simultaneous onslaught of the Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes, and also the Crimean Tatars, who, even after a heavy defeat inflicted on them by the Russians in 1572 near the village of Molodi, constantly threatened the southern borders of Russia. The Livonian War ended in 1582 with a truce, but in essence with the defeat of Russia. She was cut off from the Baltic. Ivan, as a politician, suffered a heavy defeat, which affected the position of the country and the psyche of its ruler.

The only success was the conquest of the Siberian Khanate. The merchants Stroganovs, who had mastered the Permian lands, hired the dashing Volga ataman Ermak Timofeev, who, with his gang, defeated Khan Kuchum and captured his capital, Kashlyk. Yermak's associate Ataman Ivan Koltso brought the Tsar a letter of conquest of Siberia.
Ivan, upset by the defeat in the Livonian War, joyfully received this news and encouraged the Cossacks and the Stroganovs.

“The body is exhausted, the spirit is sick,” Ivan the Terrible wrote in his will, “the scabs of the soul and body have multiplied, and there is no doctor who would heal me.” There was no sin that the king did not commit. The fate of his wives (and there were five of them after Anastasia) was terrible - they were killed or imprisoned in a monastery. In November 1581, in a fit of rage, the tsar killed his eldest son and heir Ivan, a murderer and tyrant to match his father, with a staff. Until the end of his life, the king did not give up his habits of torturing and killing people, debauchery, sorting out precious stones for hours and praying for a long time with tears. Embraced by some terrible disease, he rotted alive, emitting an incredible stench.

The day of his death (March 17, 1584) was predicted to the king by the magi. On the morning of that day, the cheerful king sent word to the magi that he would execute them for false prophecy, but they asked them to wait until evening, because the day had not yet ended. At three o'clock in the afternoon, Ivan suddenly died. Perhaps his closest associates Bogdan Velsky and Boris Godunov, who were alone with him that day, helped him go to hell.

After Ivan the Terrible, his son Fyodor came to the throne. Contemporaries considered him weak-minded, almost an idiot, seeing how he sits on the throne with a blissful smile on his lips. For 13 years of his reign, power was in the hands of his brother-in-law (brother of Irina's wife) Boris Godunov. Fedor, with him, was a puppet, obediently played the role of an autocrat. Once, at a ceremony in the Kremlin, Boris carefully adjusted the Cap of Monomakh on Fyodor's head, which allegedly sat crookedly. So, in front of the eyes of the amazed crowd, Boris boldly demonstrated his omnipotence.

Until 1589, the Russian Orthodox Church was subordinate to the Patriarch of Constantinople, although in fact it was independent of him. When Patriarch Jeremiah arrived in Moscow, Godunov persuaded him to agree to the election of the first Russian patriarch, which was Metropolitan Job. Boris, understanding the importance of the church in the life of Russia, never lost control over it.

In 1591, stone master Fyodor Kon built walls of white limestone around Moscow (“White City”), and cannon master Andrei Chokhov cast a giant cannon weighing 39312 kg (“Tsar Cannon”) - In 1590 it came in handy: Crimean Tatars, crossing the Oka, broke through to Moscow. On the evening of July 4, from the Sparrow Hills, Khan Kazy-Girey looked at the city, from the powerful walls of which cannons rumbled and bells rang in hundreds of churches. Shocked by what he saw, the khan ordered the army to retreat. That evening, for the last time in history, the formidable Tatar warriors saw the Russian capital.

Tsar Boris built a lot, involving many people in these works in order to provide them with food. Boris personally laid a new fortress in Smolensk, and the architect Fyodor Kon erected its stone walls. In the Moscow Kremlin, the bell tower built in 1600, called "Ivan the Great", sparkled with a dome.

Back in 1582, the last wife of Ivan the Terrible, Maria Nagaya, gave birth to a son, Dmitry. Under Fyodor, because of the intrigues of Godunov, Tsarevich Dmitry and his relatives were exiled to Uglich. May 15, 1591 The 8-year-old prince was found in the yard with his throat cut. An investigation by the boyar Vasily Shuisky established that Dmitry himself stumbled upon the knife he was playing with. But many did not believe this, believing that the true killer was Godunov, for whom the son of the Terrible was a rival on the way to power. With the death of Dmitry, the Rurik dynasty was cut short. Soon the childless Tsar Fedor also died. Boris Godunov came to the throne, he ruled until 1605, and then Russia collapsed into the abyss of Troubles.

For about eight hundred years, Russia was ruled by the Rurik dynasty, the descendants of the Varangian Rurik. Over these centuries, Russia has become a European state, adopted Christianity, and created an original culture. Different people sat on the Russian throne. Among them were outstanding rulers who thought about the welfare of the peoples, but there were also many nonentities. Because of them, by the XIII century, Russia disintegrated as a single state into many principalities, became a victim of the Mongol-Tatar invasion. It was only with great difficulty that Moscow, which had risen up by the 16th century, managed to create a state anew. It was a harsh kingdom with a despotic autocrat and a silent people. But it also fell at the beginning of the 17th century ...

(Old Russian state), the oldest state of the east. Slavs, formed in the IX-X centuries. and stretching from the Baltic coast in the north to the Black Sea steppes in the south, from the Carpathians in the west to Sr. Volga region in the east. Its formation and development were accompanied by intensive processes of interethnic interaction, which led either to the assimilation by the Slavs of the Baltic, Baltic and Volga-Finnish, Iran. tribes that inhabited these territories, or to their stable inclusion in the tributary sphere of Russia. As a result, within the framework of D.R., a single nationality arose, which served as an afterlife. a common basis for Great Russian, Ukrainian. and Belarusian. peoples. The beginning of the formation of the latter on linguistic grounds dates back to the XIV-XV centuries. On the XIV century. there is also an intensive decay of the former Old Russian. unity is not so much after. the general weakening of the principalities under the rule of the Mongols, how many after. loss of dynastic community as a result of the inclusion of app. and south. lands of Russia in the Lithuanian and Polish state-in. So, 2nd floor. 13th century should be considered the upper chronological boundary of D. R. In this sense, the often encountered application of the term “Old Russian” to later historical phenomena and cultural phenomena, sometimes up to the 17th century, cannot be considered quite justified. (Old Russian literature, etc.). As a synonym for the name D. R. (Old Russian state), science traditionally uses the term “Kievan Rus” (less often “Kiev State”), however, it seems less successful, because the period of political unity of D. R. with the center in Kyiv or the political dominance of Kyiv extends to the middle. 12th century and later the Old Russian state existed in the form of a set of dynastically united and politically closely interacting, but independent lands-princes.

Ethnic landscape Europe on the eve of the formation of the Old Russian state

The formation of the Old Russian state was preceded by a period of active settlement of Slavs. tribes in East. Europe, restored almost exclusively by means of archeology. The earliest authentically famous. Prague-Korchak and Penkovskaya cultures of the 5th-7th centuries are considered archaeological cultures: the 1st occupied the area south of Pripyat, from the upper reaches of the Dniester and the West. Bug to Wed. Dnieper in the Kyiv region, the 2nd was located south of the first, from N. Podunavia to the Dnieper, several. entering the Dnieper left bank in the space from Sula to Aurélie. Both correlate with those known from written sources of the 6th century. glory. groups, which were called Slavs (Slavens; Σκλαβηνοί, Sklaveni) and Antes (῎Ανται, Antae). At the same time, in the V-VII centuries, in the north-west of the East. Europe, from Lake Peipus. and r. Great in the west to the Msta basin in the east, the culture of the Pskov long mounds took shape, the carriers of which may also have been the Slavs. Between these two areas of original glory. settlements, there was a belt of other ethnic archaeological cultures: Tushemlinsko-Bantserovskaya, Moshchinskaya and Kolochinskaya (upper reaches of the Neman, Western Dvina, Dnieper, Oka, Desna, Posemye), which with more or less reason can be considered Baltic in ethnicity. On vast expanses to the north and east of the described region, from the south. shores of the Gulf of Finland. and Ladoga to the V. Volga region, Finns lived. tribes: Estonians, Vods, Karelians, the whole (Vepsians), Merya, Meshchera, Muroma, Mordvins. In the VIII-IX centuries. glory zone. settlement expanded: the tribes of the Baltic "belt" were assimilated, as a result of which Slavs arose. tribal groups of the Krivichi, who left the culture of the Smolensk-Polotsk long barrows, as well as the Radimichi and Dregovichi; the Dnieper left bank was actively developed up to the upper reaches of the Don, where, in interaction with the Volyntsev culture, which probably originated from the Penkovsky antiquities, the Romen-Borshevsky culture of the northerners tribal group was formed; the Slavs penetrated into V. Poochye - a tribal group of Vyatichi formed here. In the 8th century Northerners, Radimichi and Vyatichi found themselves in tributary dependence on the Khazar Khaganate - an ethnically mixed state, which included not only the Turks. (Khazars, Bulgars, etc.), but also Iran. (Alans) and other peoples and stretched from the North. Caspian and N. Volga to the Don and Crimea.

The culture of the Pskov long mounds evolved into the culture of the Novgorod hills, correlated with the tribal grouping of the Ilmen Slovenes. On the basis of the Slavs of the Prague-Korchak area, tribal groups of Volynians (in the interfluve of the Western Bug and Goryn), Drevlyans (between the Sluch and Teterev rivers), glades (Kiev Dnieper region), Vostok Slavs developed. Croats (in V. Podnestrovie). Thus, by the 9th century. in general, there was that tribal structure east. Slavs, which acquired finished features in Old Russian. period and is outlined in the story about the settlement of the Slavs in the introductory part to the one compiled in the beginning. 12th century Old Russian Chronicles - "The Tale of Bygone Years". Mentioned by the chronicler, in addition, the tribes of the Ulichs and Tivertsy do not lend themselves to a certain localization; probably, the latter settled in the Dniester region south of the Croats, and the first - in the Dnieper region south of the glades, in the tenth century. moving west. The development of the Slavs Fin. lands - Belozerye (all), the Rostov-Yaroslavl Volga region (Merya), the Ryazan Territory (murom, meshchera), etc. - already went in parallel with the state formation processes of the 9th-10th centuries, continuing into the last.

"Norman problem". Northern and southern centers of ancient Russian statehood

Formation of the Old Russian state in the IX-X centuries. was a complex process, in which they interacted, causing each other, both internal (the social evolution of local tribes, primarily Eastern Slavs.), And external factors (active penetration into Eastern Europe of military trading squads of immigrants from Scandinavia - the Varangians, or, as they were called in Western Europe, the Normans). The role of the latter in the construction of ancient Russian. statehood, hotly discussed in science during the 2.5 century, is the "Norman problem". Closely adjacent to it, although in no way predetermining its decision, is the question of the origin of the ethnic (originally, perhaps, socio-ethnic) name "Rus". A common opinion is that the name "Rus" is Scandal. root, faces historical and linguistic difficulties; other hypotheses are even less convincing, so the question should be considered open. At the same time, quite numerous Byzantine, Western European, Arab-Persian. sources leave no doubt that in the IX - 1st floor. 10th century the name "Rus" was applied specifically to the ethnic Scandinavians and that Russia at that time was distinguished from the Slavs. Mobile, close-knit and well-armed groups of the Varangians were the most active element in the organization of international trade along the river routes of the East. Europe, the commercial development of which certainly prepared the political unification of the lands of D.R.

According to ancient tradition, reflected in the "Tale of Bygone Years" and in the annalistic code of con. XI century, the presence of the Varangians in Russia was initially limited to the collection of tribute from the Slavs. tribes of Krivichi and Slovenes and from Fin. Chud tribes (probably Estonians, Vodi and other tribes of the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland), Meri and, perhaps, Vesi. As a result of the uprising, these tribes got rid of tributary dependence, but the internal strife that began forced them to call Rurik and his brothers as princes of the Varangians. The rule of these princes, however, was apparently conditioned by an agreement. Part of the Varangian squad of Rurik, led by Askold and Dir, went south and settled in Kyiv. After the death of Rurik, his relative Prince. Oleg, with the young son of Rurik, Prince. Igor in his arms, captured Kyiv and united the Novgorod north and Kyiv south, creating, thus, the state. the basis of D. R. In general, there is no reason not to trust this legend, but a number of its details (Askold and Dir - Rurik's combatants, etc.), most likely, were constructed by the chronicler. The fruit of the not always successful calculations of the chronicler on the basis of the Greek. The chronology of events also became chronographic sources (852 - the expulsion of the Varangians, the calling of Rurik, the reign of Askold and Dir in Kyiv; 879 - the death of Rurik; 882 - the capture of Kyiv by Oleg). Contract book. Oleg with Byzantium, concluded in the autumn of 911, makes Oleg's appearance in Kyiv approximately at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries, and the calling of Rurik to the immediately preceding time, i.e. to the last. quad 9th century Earlier events are restored according to foreign sources and archeology.

Archeology allows us to attribute the appearance of Scand. ethnic component in Finnish. and (or) glory. surrounded in the north East. Europe to the period from the middle - 2nd half. 8th century (St. Ladoga) to middle - 2nd half. 9th century (Rurik's settlement in the upper reaches of the Volkhov, Timerevo, Gnezdovo on the upper Dnieper, etc.), which in general (with the exception of Gnezdov) coincides with the original range of the Varangian tribute outlined in the annals. At the same time, the first dated reliable information about Scand. according to the origin of Russia (1st half - middle of the 9th century), they are connected not with the north, but with the south. Vost. Europe. Arab-Persian. geographers (al-Istakhri, Ibn Haukal) speak directly about 2 groups of Russia in the 9th century: southern, Kievan (“Kuyaba”), and northern, Novgorod-Slovenian (“Slaviya”), each of which has its own ruler (mentioned in these texts, the 3rd group, "Arsaniyya/Artaniya", does not lend itself to precise localization). Thus, independent data confirm the story of Old Russian. annals about 2 centers of Varangian power in Vost. Europe in the ninth century (northern, with a center in Ladoga, then in Novgorod, and southern, with a center in Kyiv), but they are forced to attribute the appearance of Varangian Rus in the south to a time much earlier than the calling of Rurik. Since the archaeological scandal. ninth century antiquity were not found in Kyiv, one has to think that the 1st wave of newcomer Varangians was quickly assimilated here. population.

Most of the written evidence about Russia in the 9th century. refers specifically to southern, Kievan, Rus, the history of which, unlike the northern one, can be outlined in general terms. Geographically, the chronicle connects the South. Russia, first of all, with the region of the tribal reign of the glades. Retrospective historical and geographical information, Ch. arr. XII century., allow us to consider that along with the actual Polyanskaya land Yuzh. Russia included part of the Dnieper left bank with the later cities of Chernigov and Pereyaslavl Russian (modern Pereyaslav-Khmelnitsky) and an indefinite east. border, as well as, obviously, a narrow strip of watershed between the Pripyat basins, on the one hand, and the Dniester and Yuzh. Bug - on the other. Even in the XI-XIII centuries. the outlined territory bore a clearly surviving name "Russian land" (to distinguish it from the Russian land as the name of the Old Russian state as a whole, it is called in science the Russian land in the narrow sense of the word).

South Russia was quite a powerful political entity. She accumulated a significant economic and military potential of the Slavs. Dnieper, organized sea campaigns to the lands of the Byzantine Empire (in addition to the campaign against K-pol in 860, at least one more, earlier, to the Asia Minor coast of the Black Sea near the city of Amastris) and competed with the Khazar Khaganate, as it says, in particular, the adoption by the ruler of Yuzh. Rus Khazars. (Turk. by origin) the supreme title "kagan", as a relic attached to the Kyiv princes as early as the 11th century. Probably from Russian-Khazar. The embassy of the Khagan of Russia to the Byzantines was also connected with the confrontation. imp. Theophilus in the 2nd half. 30s 9th century with an offer of peace and friendship, and unfolded at the same time with the Byzantine. With the help of active fortification construction of the Khazars: in addition to Sarkel on the Don, more than 10 fortresses were built in the upper reaches of the Seversky Donets and along the river. Quiet Pine (to the right tributary of the Don), which indicates the claims of Yuzh. Russia to a part of glory. tributary sphere of the Khazars (at least for the northerners). Trade relations were extensive. Russia, merchants from a swarm in the west reached the middle Danube (the territory of modern V. Austria), in the northeast - Volga Bulgaria, in the south - Byzantine. Black Sea markets, from where along the Don, and then along the Volga, they reached the Caspian Sea and even Baghdad. To the 2nd floor. 60s 9th century include the first information about the beginning of the Christianization of the South. Rus, they are associated with the name of the K-Polish Patriarch Photius. However, this “first baptism” of Russia did not have significant consequences, since its results were destroyed after the capture of Kyiv by those who came from the North. Rus squads of the book. Oleg.

Assimilation scand. element in the North. Russia went much more slowly than in the South. This is due to the constant influx of new groups of newcomers, the main occupation of which was also international trade. The mentioned places of concentration of scand. archaeological antiquities (St. Ladoga, Rurik's settlement, etc.) have a pronounced character of trade and craft settlements with an ethnically mixed population. Numerous and sometimes huge treasures of the Arab. coin silver in the territory of the North. Russ, fixed from the turn of the VIII and IX centuries, allow us to think that it was the desire to secure access to the rich high-quality Arab. a silver coin to the markets of the Volga Bulgaria (to a lesser extent - to the distant Black Sea markets along the Volkhov-Dnieper route “from the Varangians to the Greeks”) attracted the military trading squads of the Varangians to the East. Europe. Another striking fact testifies to the same: it was an Arab. The dirham formed the basis of Old Russian. monetary system. The vocation of Rurik probably entailed the political consolidation of the North. Russia, which made possible its unification under the rule of the sowing. the Varangian dynasty of Rurikovich with a more advantageously located in the trade and military-strategic respect Yuzh. Russia.

Strengthening of the Old Russian state in the tenth century. (from Oleg to Svyatoslav)

Campaigns against the capital of the Byzantine Empire, organized in 907 and 941. the princes of united Russia - Oleg and his successor Igor, as well as the resulting peace treaties of 911 and 944, which provided Russian. merchants significant trading privileges in the Polish market, speak of a sharply increased military-political and economic opportunities D. R. The weakened Khazar Khaganate, which finally lost tribute from the Slavs in favor of Russia. tribes on the left bank of the Dnieper (northerners and Radimichi), could not or did not want (claiming part of the booty) to prevent the massive raids of the Rus. rooks on the rich cities of South. Caspian region (c. 910, under Oleg, and in the 1st half of the 40s of the 10th century, under Igor). Apparently, at this time, Russia acquired strongholds in the key waterway to the Caspian Sea and the Arabs. East of the Kerch Strait area - Tmutarakan and Korchev (modern Kerch). The military-political efforts of Russia were also directed along the overland trade route to the middle Danube: Slavs fell into tributary dependence on Kyiv. tribes of Volhynians and even Lendzians (to the west of the headwaters of the Western Bug).

After the death of Igor during the uprising of the Drevlyans (apparently, not earlier than 944/5), the rule, due to the infancy of Svyatoslav, the son of Igor, was in the hands of the widow of the latter equal to the ap. kng. Olga (Elena). Her main efforts after the appeasement of the Drevlyans were aimed at the internal stabilization of the Old Russian state. With kng. Olga entered a new stage of Christianization of the ruling elite D. R. (“The Tale of Bygone Years” and the treaties of Russia with Byzantium testify that many Varangians from Prince Igor’s squad were Christians, in Kyiv there was a cathedral church in the name of the prophet Elijah) . The ruler was baptized during a trip to K-pol, her plans included the establishment of a church organization in Russia. In 959, for this purpose, kng. Olga sent to german. box An embassy to Otto I, which asked to appoint a "bishop and priests" for Russia. However, this attempt to establish Christianity was not long, and the Kyiv mission of Bishop. Adalbert 961-962 ended unsuccessfully.

The main reason for the failure in the attempt to establish Christianity in Russia was indifference to religions. questions from the Kyiv Prince. Svyatoslav Igorevich (c. 960-972), during whose reign active military expansion resumed. First, the Vyatichi were brought under the rule of Russia, then the Khazar Khaganate suffered a decisive defeat (965), because of which it soon became dependent on Khorezm and left the political arena. 2 bloody Balkan campaigns in 968-971, in which Svyatoslav at first participated in the defeat of the Bulgarian kingdom as an ally of Byzantium, and then, in alliance with conquered Bulgaria, turned against Byzantium, did not lead to the desired goal - the consolidation of Russia on the lower Danube. Defeat from Byzantine troops. imp. John I Tzimiskes forced Svyatoslav in the summer of 971 to sign a peace treaty that limited the influence of Russia in the North. Black Sea region. After the early death of Svyatoslav at the hands of the Pechenegs on his way back to Kyiv (in the spring of 972), the territory of D.R. was divided between the young Svyatoslavichs: Yaropolk, who reigned in Kyiv (972-978), Oleg, whose inheritance was the tribal territory of the Drevlyans, and equal to the Ap. Vladimir (Vasily) Svyatoslavich, whose desk was in Novgorod. Vladimir emerged as the winner from the civil strife that had begun between the brothers. In 978 he captured Kyiv. The reign of Vladimir Svyatoslavich (978-1015) opened the era of the rise of the Old Russian state in the end. X - ser. 11th century

Political and economic system D.R.

in the reign of the first Kyiv princes emerges only in general terms. The ruling elite consisted of the princely family (rather numerous) and the prince's retinue, which existed at the expense of princely income. State. the dependence of those who were part of the Old Russian state was mainly slav. tribes was expressed in the payment of regular (probably annual) tribute. Its size was determined by the contract and the obligation to participate in the military enterprises of the Old Russian. princes. In the rest, apparently, the tribal life remained unaffected, the power of the tribal princes was preserved (for example, the prince of the Drevlyans named Mal is known, who tried to marry Igor's widow Olga in about 945). This suggests that the annalistic Eastern Slavs. tribes in the tenth century. were rather complex political formations. The very act of the aforementioned calling to reign on the part of a group of glories. and fin. tribes testifies to their rather high political organization. Whether or not they were part of the Old Russian state that existed in the 70s. 10th century to Eastern Slavic In the lands, political formations were ruled by other (besides the Rurikovich) Varangian dynasties (the dynasty of Prince Rogvolod in Polotsk, Prince Tura in Turov, on Pripyat) and when they arose remains unclear.

The collection of tribute was carried out in the form of the so-called. polyudya - detours of the tributary territory during the autumn-winter season by the prince or other owner of the tribute (the person to whom the prince conceded the collection of tribute) with a squad; at this time, tributaries had to be supported by tributaries. Tribute was levied both in natural products (including goods intended for export to foreign markets - furs, honey, wax), and in coins, ch. arr. Arab. coinage. With the name kng. Olga, the legend reflected in the annals connects the administrative-tributary reform of the middle. X century, which, as one might think, consisted in the fact that tributes, the volume of which was revised, were now brought by tributaries to certain permanent points (graveyards), where representatives of the princely administration stayed. The tribute was subject to division in a certain proportion between the owner of the tribute and the subject of the state. power, i.e., the princely family: the first was 1/3, the last - 2/3 tribute.

One of the most important components of the economy of D. R. was the dispatch of annual trade caravans with export goods collected during the polyudya down the Dnieper to the international markets of the Black Sea region, etc. - a procedure described in detail in Ser. 10th century in Op. Byzantium imp. Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus "On the management of the empire". In the K-field of Old Russian. merchants had their own farmstead at the mon-re of St. Mamant and received a salary from the imp. treasury, which also took on the costs of equipping the return voyage. Such a pronounced foreign trade orientation of the economy of D.R. of that time determined the presence of a special social group - merchants engaged in international trade, a cut even in the middle. 10th century It was, like the princely family, predominantly of Varangian origin. Judging by the fact that numerous representatives of this social group participated in the conclusion of agreements between Russia and Byzantium, it could have an independent voice in state affairs. management. Apparently, the merchant class was the social and property elite in Old Russian. trade and craft settlements of the 9th-10th centuries. like Gnezdov or Timerev.

Reign of Vladimir Svyatoslavich

The first decade of Vladimir's reign in Kyiv was a time of restoring the position of the Old Russian state, which had been shaken due to the internecine strife of the Svyatoslavichs. One after another followed campaigns to the west. and east. outside Russia. OK. 980, it included Przemysl, the cities of Cherven (a strategically important region on the western coast of the Western Bug) and Sr. The Bug region, which was inhabited by the Baltic tribes of the Yotvingians. Then, by campaigns against the Radimichi, Vyatichi, Khazars and Volga Bulgars (with the latter a long-term peace treaty was concluded as a result), the successes achieved here by Svyatoslav were consolidated.

Both the international position and the tasks of internal consolidation of D. R., heterogeneous in ethnicity, and hence in religion. relation, urgently demanded ofic. Christianization. Favorable foreign policy circumstances for Russia 2nd half. 80s X century., When the Byzantine. imp. Basil II the Bulgar Slayer was forced to ask for Russian. military assistance to suppress the rebellion of Varda Foki, allowed Vladimir to quickly take a decisive step towards the adoption of Christianity: in 987-989. the personal baptism of Vladimir and his entourage was followed by the marriage of the prince of Kyiv with the sister of the imp. Basil II by Princess Anna, the destruction of pagan temples and the mass baptism of the people of Kiev (see Baptism of Russia). Such a marriage of a purple-born princess was a flagrant violation of the Byzantines. dynastic principles and forced the empire to take active measures to organize the Old Russian Church. The Kyiv Metropolis and several. dioceses in the largest or closest urban centers to Kyiv, probably in Novgorod, Polotsk, Chernigov and Belgorod (near Kyiv, now does not exist), which were headed by the Greek. hierarchies. In Kyiv, the Greek the masters erected the 1st stone temple in Russia - the Tithes Church. (completed in 996), were brought among other shrines from Chersonesos the relics of St. Clement, Pope of Rome. The original wooden church of St. Sophia, the Wisdom of God, became the Metropolitan Cathedral in Kyiv. The princely power took upon itself the material support of the Church, which, at least in the early period, was centralized (see Art. Tithes), and also took a number of other organizational measures: the construction of temples on the ground, the recruitment and education of children of the nobility to provide the Church with cadres of clergy, etc. The influx of liturgical books for church worship. language was carried out to Russia mainly from Bulgaria (see South Slavic influences on ancient Russian culture). The manifestation of the newfound state. The prestige of Russia was the minting of gold and silver coins by Vladimir, iconographically close to Byzantium. samples, but of economic importance, apparently, which did not have and performed political and representative functions; picked up at the beginning 11th century Svyatopolk (Peter) Vladimirovich and Yaroslav (George) Vladimirovich, later this coin had no continuation.

In addition to the tasks of Christianization, the most important moments in the policy of Vladimir after baptism were the defense of the West. frontiers from pressure from the Old Polish state, which sharply increased during the reign of Boleslav I the Brave (992-1025), and the reflection of the Pecheneg threat. In the west of Russia, such an important city as Berestye (modern Brest) was fortified, and a new one was built - Vladimir (modern Vladimir-Volynsky). In the south, with numerous fortresses, as well as earthen ramparts with wooden palisades, Vladimir fortified the banks of the Sula, Stugna and other rivers that covered the approaches to Kyiv from the steppe. An essential sign of Vladimir's time was the completion of the Slavicization of the princely family (which began in the middle of the 10th century) and its Varangian entourage (Vladimir, unlike his father, was half - on his mother - of Slavic origin). The Varangians did not stop coming to Russia, but they no longer replenished the ruling elite of the Old Russian state or the elite of trade and craft centers, but acted mainly as military mercenaries of princes.

Russia in the era of Yaroslav the Wise

After the death of Prince Vladimir on July 15, 1015, the situation of the 70s was repeated. 10th century: Internecine strife immediately broke out between the most influential of his many sons. The Kyiv table was occupied by the eldest of the princes - Svyatopolk, who began with the murder of his younger brothers - Svyatoslav, saints Boris and Gleb. Yaroslav the Wise, who reigned in Novgorod, expelled Svyatopolk in 1016, who returned to Russia in 1018 with the military help of his father-in-law, the Polish. box Boleslav I. However, a year later, Yaroslav Vladimirovich (1019-1054) again established himself in Kyiv, this time finally. In 1024, Mstislav Vladimirovich, who reigned in Tmutarakan, presented his rights to participate in the management of the Old Russian state. The clash between the brothers ended in 1026 with the conclusion of an agreement, under the terms of which Yaroslav retained Kyiv and Novgorod, his brother received all the lands of the Dnieper left bank with the capital in Chernigov.

The most important event of the 10-year joint reign of Yaroslav and Mstislav was their participation in an alliance with the Germans. imp. Conrad II in the beginning. 30s 11th century in the war against the Polish. box Meshka II, which led to the temporary disintegration of the Old Polish state and the return of Cherven cities to Russia, torn from it in 1018 by Boleslav I. The death of Mstislav in 1036 made Yaroslav the Wise the sovereign ruler of the Old Russian state, which Yaroslav reached the pinnacle of external power and international influence. The victorious battle of 1036 under the walls of Kyiv put an end to the Pecheneg raids. Continuing the military-political alliance with Germany, Yaroslav, with a number of campaigns in Mazovia, contributed to the restoration of the power of the prince in Poland. Casimir I, son of Sack II. In 1046, with the military help of Yaroslav, the Hungarians. the throne was erected by a friendly Rus cor. András I. In 1043, the last Russian campaign took place. fleet to K-pol (the reasons for the conflict with Byzantium are unclear), which, although it ended not entirely successfully, resulted in an honorable peace for Russia in 1045/46, as can be judged from the then marriage of Prince. Vsevolod (Andrey), one of the younger sons of Yaroslav, with a relative (daughter?) imp. Constantine IX Monomakh. And other marital ties of the princely family clearly testify to the political weight of D.R. in that period. Yaroslav was married to the daughter of a Swede. box Olaf St. Irina (Ingigerd), his son Izyaslav (Dimitry) - on the sister of the Polish. book. Casimir I, who married Yaroslav's sister. Yaroslav's daughters were married to a Norwegian. box Harald Surov, Hung. box Andrew I and French. box Henry I.

The reign of Yaroslav the Wise also became a time of internal strengthening of D. R. List of Rus. dioceses in the patriarchal notitia episcopatuum of the 70s. 12th century allows us to think that most likely under Yaroslav the number of dioceses in Russia was significantly increased (the departments were established in Vladimir-Volynsky, in Pereyaslavl, in Rostov, in Turov). The reign of Yaroslav was characterized by the rapid growth of general Russian. national and state self-awareness. This found expression in church life: in 1051, in the appointment of the Kyiv Metropolis by the Cathedral of Rus. Bishops of Rusyn St. Hilarion, in general Russian. glorification of Saints Boris and Gleb as heavenly patrons of the dynasty and Russia in general and in the first original works of Old Russian. lit-ry (in the Praise of Prince Vladimir in the Word on Law and Grace of St. Hilarion), and in the 30-50s. XI century - in a radical transformation of the architectural appearance of Kyiv according to the Polish metropolitan model (in the city of Yaroslav, which had increased many times over in comparison with the city of Vladimir, the front Golden Gates, the monumental Cathedral of St. Sophia and other stone buildings were erected). Stone cathedrals dedicated to St. Sophia, the Wisdom of God, were also erected during this period in Novgorod and Polotsk (the latter was built, perhaps, shortly after the death of Yaroslav). The reign of Yaroslav is the era of expanding the number of schools and the appearance of the first Old Russian. scriptorium, where the copying of church Slavs was carried out. texts, and also, probably, translations from Greek. language.

The political system of D. R. under Vladimir and Yaroslav

determined in general by the nature of inter-princely relations. According to the concepts inherited from an earlier time, the state. the territory and its resources were considered the collective property of the princely family, and the principles of their ownership and inheritance followed from customary law. The grown-up sons of the prince (usually at the age of 13-15) received certain areas in possession, while remaining under paternal authority. So, during the life of Vladimir, his sons were in Novgorod, in Turov, in Vladimir-Volynsky, in Rostov, in Smolensk, in Polotsk, in Tmutarakan. In Novgorod and Volhynia (or in Turov) Yaroslav planted his eldest sons. Thus, this method of maintaining the princely family was at the same time the mechanism of the state. management of the lands of Russia. After the death of the prince-father of the state. the territory was to be divided among all his adult sons. Although the father's table went to the eldest of the brothers, the relations of subordination of the regions to the Kyiv table disappeared and politically all the brothers turned out to be equal, which entailed the actual fragmentation of the state. authorities: both the Svyatoslavichs and the Vladimirovichs were politically independent of each other. At the same time, after the death of the eldest of the brothers, the Kyiv table did not go to his sons, but to the brother next in seniority, who took upon himself the arrangement of the fate of his nephews by endowing them. This led to constant redistribution of the general public. territory, which was a kind of way to preserve political unity, not excluding the potential autocracy. The obvious shortcomings of this system with t. sp. more mature state. consciousness led Yaroslav the Wise to the establishment of a seignorate, i.e., to the eldest of the sons assimilation of a certain amount of political prerogatives inherited from his father in the general public. scale: the status of the guarantor of the dynastic legal order, the guardian of the interests of the Church, etc.

Received development and such an important part of the state. life, like a trial. The existence in D. R. of a fairly differentiated customary law (“Russian law”) is already known from agreements with Byzantium of the 1st half. X century, but the codification of its criminal part (punishments for murder, for insult by action, for crimes against property) first took place under Yaroslav (the ancient Russian Truth). At the same time, certain norms of princely legal proceedings were fixed (“Pokonvirny”, which regulated the content of the peasant line of the princely court official - “virnik”). Vladimir tried to introduce certain Byzants into local law. norms, in particular the death penalty, but they did not take root. With the advent of the institution of the Church, there was a division of the court according to the Byzantines. model for secular (princely) and church. In addition to crimes committed by certain categories of the population (clergy and so-called church people), cases related to marriage, family, inheritance, witchcraft were subject to church jurisdiction (see the articles Church Charter of Prince Vladimir, Church Charter of Prince Yaroslav).

D. R. under the Yaroslavichs (2nd half of the 11th century)

According to the will of Yaroslav the Wise, the territory of the Old Russian state was divided between 5 of his surviving sons by that time: the eldest, Izyaslav, received Kyiv and Novgorod, St. Svyatoslav (Nikolai) - Chernigov (the region then included Ryazan and Murom) and Tmutarakan, Vsevolod - Pereyaslavl and Rostov, the younger ones, Vyacheslav and Igor, got Smolensk and Volyn, respectively. As an additional (along with the seignorate of Izyaslav) political mechanism that stabilized this system of destinies, a specific council was created in the general Russian. questions of 3 senior Yaroslavichs, which was fixed by the division between them of the Middle Dnieper core of D. R. (ancient Russian land in the narrow sense of the word). A special position was occupied by Polotsk, still allocated by Vladimir to his son Izyaslav; after the death of the latter (1001), the Polotsk throne was inherited by his son Bryachislav (1001 or 1003-1044), then his grandson Vseslav (1044-1101, with a break). This is a general Russian. the triarchy acquired complete features after the imminent death of the younger Yaroslavichs (Vyacheslav - in 1057, Igor - in 1060), so that even the metropolis was divided into 3 parts: in Chernigov and Pereyaslavl, their own metropolitan departments were temporarily established (probably, c. 1070); 1st lasted until ser. 80s, 2nd - until the 90s. 11th century After some successful joint actions (a decisive victory over the Torks in 1060/61), the administration of the Yaroslavichs began to experience difficulties. For the first time, the conflict between uncles and nephews, typical for a seigneur, made itself felt: in 1064, Prince. Rostislav, son of the Novgorod prince. St. Vladimir, the eldest of the Yaroslavichs, who died during his father's lifetime, was taken by force from Svyatoslav Yaroslavich by Tmutarakan, which he held until his death in 1067. A clash with another nephew, Prince of Polotsk. Vseslav, who sacked Novgorod in 1066, did not end with the defeat of Vseslav the following year by the combined forces of the Yaroslavichs and captivity.

In the 60s. 11th century to the south the borders of Russia, a new threat arose - from those who migrated to South Russian. the steppes of the Polovtsy, the fight against which became an urgent task for more than a century and a half, right up to the Mong. invasion. In the summer of 1068, the Yaroslavichi troops were defeated by the Polovtsy near Pereyaslavl. Izyaslav's indecisiveness in repulsing the nomads caused an uprising in Kyiv, during which the people of Kiev released Vseslav from prison and proclaimed him a prince of Kyiv, and Izyaslav with his family and retinue was forced to flee to the Polish court. book. Boleslav II. In the spring of 1069, Izyaslav from the Polish. help, but with the demonstrative inaction of the brothers Svyatoslav and Vsevolod, he regained Kyiv. In Russia, meanwhile, there was a significant redistribution of power to the detriment of Kyiv (for example, Novgorod, which belonged to Izyaslav, ended up in the hands of Svyatoslav), which inevitably had to lead to a conflict between the Yaroslavichs. The solemn transfer of the relics of Saints Boris and Gleb to the new stone church built by Izyaslav, in which 3 brothers took part on May 20, 1072, turned out to be the last joint act of the Yaroslavichs. In 1073, Svyatoslav, with the support of Vsevolod, expelled Izyaslav from Kyiv, but died already in 1076. Izyaslav returned to the Kyiv table in 1077 without much success, seeking support in Poland, Germany and Rome (from Pope Gregory VII) Izyaslav, who , however, in 1078 he died in a battle with the son of Svyatoslav Oleg (Michael) and his other nephew, Boris Vyacheslavich. Vsevolod (1078-1093) became the prince of Kyiv, whose reign was filled with complex internal political maneuvering in order to satisfy the requests of his nephews (Svyatopolk (Mikhail) and Yaropolk (Gavriil) Izyaslavich and David Igorevich), as well as the grown-up sons of Rostislav Vladimirovich (Rurik, Volodar and Vasily (Cornflower)).

As one of the dioceses of the K-Polish Patriarchate D. R. in the 2nd half. 11th century was affected by the consequences of the division of Zap. and Vost. churches; pl. Old Russian Greek authors and Metropolitans of Kyiv became active participants in the controversy against the "Latins". At the same time, continued contacts with Zap. Europe led to the fact that in Russia during the reign of Vsevolod a common with the West was established. The church celebrates the transfer in 1087 of the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker in Bari (May 9), unknown to the Greek Church.

Lubech Congress of 1097

After the death of Vsevolod in 1093, the Kyiv table, with the consent of the influential Chernigov prince. Vladimir (Vasily) Vsevolodovich Monomakh was occupied by the eldest in the princely family Svyatopolk Izyaslavich (1093-1113). The death of Vsevolod was taken advantage of by the most militant of the Svyatoslavichs - Oleg (since 1083, with the support of Byzantium, reigned in Tmutarakan), who in 1094, with the help of the Polovtsy, regained his patrimonial Chernigov by force, ousting Vladimir Monomakh from there to Pereyaslavl. In this confusing political situation, in 1097, a general Russian gathered in the Dnieper city of Lyubech. the congress of princes, designed to improve the Kyiv seignorate established by Yaroslav the Wise, adapting it to the changed conditions. The resolution of the Lyubech Congress: "Let everyone keep his fatherland" - meant that the possessions of the princes, according to the will of Yaroslav, were assigned to his grandchildren: for Svyatopolk Izyaslavich - Kyiv, for St. book. David, Oleg and Yaroslav (Pankraty) Svyatoslavichs - Chernigov (Tmutarakan in the 90s of the XI century, apparently, came under the rule of Byzantium), after Vladimir Vsevolodovich - Pereyaslavl and Rostov (in addition to which Novgorod and Smolensk were also in the hands of Monomakh) , after David Igorevich - Volyn, at the expense of the south and south-west of the swarm (bud. Galician principality), however, two Rostislavichs were also endowed.

The effectiveness of the system of collective preservation of the status quo established in Lyubech was immediately demonstrated in the forceful settlement of the conflict in Volhynia, unleashed by David Igorevich and beginning with the blinding of Vasilko Rostislavich: Svyatopolk was forced to abandon attempts to seize the possessions of the Rostislavichs, and David had to lose his desk and be content with secondary Dorogobuzh . Dr. A positive consequence of the princely congresses was the joint actions initiated by Vladimir Monomakh against the nomads, the raids of which sharply intensified in the 90s. XI century, after the death of Vsevolod. As a result of the victories of 1103, 1107, 1111 and 1116. the Polovtsian danger was eliminated for half a century and the Polovtsy took a subordinate place of the allies of one or another Russian. princes in their internecine struggle. The decisions of the Lyubech Congress did not affect traditions. the principle of inheritance of the Kievan table genealogically by the oldest of the princes; they only, as is clear from what follows, excluded the Svyatoslavichs from among his potential heirs - after all, de jure Kyiv was not a fatherland for them, since the Kiev reign of Svyatoslav Yaroslavich was considered usurpation. This led to the actual co-ruling in Russia of Svyatopolk and Vladimir Monomakh, so that after the death of the former in 1113, Kyiv, with the support of local boyars, freely passed into the hands of the latter.

Kiev reign of Vladimir Monomakh and his elder sons (1113-1139)

Board of Prince. Vladimir (1113-1125) and his son St. book. Mstislav (Theodore) the Great (1125-1132) was the time of internal political stabilization of the Old Russian state. Vladimir Monomakh united dominance over most of Russia, with the exception of Chernigov (St. Prince David Svyatoslavich reigned here), Polotsk (where under the rule of the descendants of Vseslav, along with the old Polotsk, a new center emerged - Minsk), Volhynia (it was the possession of Prince Yaroslav (John) Svyatopolchich) and the South Volyn outskirts of the Rostislavichs. Attempts of armed protest against this domination - by the Minsk prince. Gleb Vseslavich in 1115/16-1119 and Yaroslav Svyatopolchich in 1117-1118 - ended in failure: both lost their tables and died, which further strengthened the position of Vladimir Monomakh, who acquired Volyn. At the same time, at the beginning of his reign, the issue of inheriting the Kyiv table was also resolved in advance: in 1117, the eldest of the Vladimirovichs, Mstislav, who was sitting in Novgorod, was transferred by his father to the Kyiv suburb of Belgorod, and Novgorod gave, which is significant, not to someone from their next in seniority sons (Yaropolk (John), Vyacheslav, Yuri (George) Dolgoruky, Roman, who were sitting respectively in Pereyaslavl, in Smolensk, in Rostov and in Volyn, or for the time being landless Andrei the Good), and the eldest of the grandchildren - St. book. Vsevolod (Gabriel) Mstislavich. The purpose of this measure became clear when in 1125 Kyiv, after the death of Vladimir Monomakh, was inherited first by Mstislav the Great, and then, in 1132, by the next in seniority Monomashich - Yaropolk. Having radically resolved the "Polotsk issue" by expelling almost all of Vseslav's offspring to Byzantium in 1129, Mstislav the Great left his younger brother a seemingly well-organized inheritance. 1st political step of the Kyiv book. Yaropolk Vladimirovich was the translation of the book. Vsevolod Mstislavich from Novgorod to Pereyaslavl. Thus, the plan of Monomakh, sealed by the agreement of the brothers, Mstislav the Great and Yaropolk, was reduced to a significant adjustment of the seignorate: after the death of Yaropolk, Kyiv was to go not to any of the brothers of the latter, but to his elder nephew Vsevolod; in the future, he had to remain in the Mstislavich family - otherwise, after a generation, the immoderate increase in the number of stepparents of Kyiv would inevitably lead to political chaos. Thus, Vladimir Monomakh strove to save the Lubech principle of Kyiv's ancestry by violating this principle in relation to his younger children.

However, these plans ran into their categorical rejection by the Rostov Prince. Yuri Dolgoruky and Volyn Prince. Andrei Dobry, the sons of Monomakh from his 2nd marriage. Yaropolk was forced to yield to his brothers, but then a conflict broke out between the younger Monomashichs and their nephews (primarily Vsevolod and Izyaslav (Panteleimon) Mstislavichs), which resulted in an open war, in which the Chernigov princes intervened on the side of the latter. In the words of the Novgorod chronicler of that time, "the whole Russian land was infuriated." With great difficulty, Yaropolk managed to appease all parties: Pereyaslavl was given to Andrei the Good, while the center of the Kursk Family, transferred to Chernigov, was separated from it, while Novgorod was in the hands of the Mstislavichs, to which Prince returned. Vsevolod, Volyn, received by Izyaslav, and Smolensk, where St. book. Rostislav (Mikhail) Mstislavich. However, this compromise, established at the beginning. 1136, was extremely shaky. A crisis of Lubech principles has set in. Already at the beginning 1139 occupied, according to the seigneurate, Kyiv Prince. Vyacheslav Vladimirovich was through several. days driven from the table by the Chernigov prince. Vsevolod (Kirill) Olgovich.

The most important changes in the social system and economic structure D.R.

Along with the evolution of the system of inter-princely relations described above, the main innovations of the period under review in the socio-economic field were the manifested political role of the city and the emergence of private patrimonial land ownership. In the beginning. 11th century there were fundamental changes in the economic structure of the Old Russian state, which entailed socio-political consequences. At the turn of the X and XI centuries. the influx of Arabs into Russia stopped. coin silver, only to the north of Novgorod in the XI century. continued to receive silver from the West. Europe. This meant a crisis oriented in the IX-X centuries. to the international markets of the economy D. R. The results of archaeological research indicate that in the beginning. 11th century trade and craft settlements of the proto-urban type quickly and everywhere ceased to exist, next to which new cities grew up - centers of princely power (Novgorod next to the Rurik settlement, Yaroslavl next to Timerev, Smolensk next to Gnezdov, etc.), often also were the centers of the dioceses. The economic basis of the new cities was, in all likelihood, the agrarian production of the volost, which was drawn to the city, as well as handicraft production oriented mainly to the local market. A sufficiently high level of development of commodity-money relations in these local markets can be judged by the fact that usury operations were in the 11th century. common occurrence. In the reign of Prince Svyatopolk Izyaslavich, usury acquired the character of an obvious social evil, against which the princely power under Vladimir Monomakh was forced to take restrictive measures.

The socio-political structure of a large city of a given time can only be judged in general terms. The population of the city was divided into military adm. units - hundreds, headed by sots; The next, highest level of the princely administration in the city was the citywide thousand. At the same time, the city also had a certain self-government in the form of a veche, which, under certain conditions, could come into conflict with the princely power. The earliest of the known independent political actions of the city council was the above-mentioned erection in 1068 of the Polotsk prince on the Kyiv table. Vseslav. In 1102, Novgorod resolutely refused to accept the reign of the son of the Kyiv prince, thereby destroying the agreement between Svyatopolk and Vladimir Monomakh (the son of the latter, St. Prince Mstislav, remained on the Novgorod table). It was in Novgorod that such self-government acquired its most complete forms. Here, after the uprising of 1136 and the expulsion of Prince. Vsevolod Mstislavich (perhaps a few years earlier) there was “liberty in the princes” - the right of the Novgorodians to choose and invite the prince themselves, whose power was limited by agreement, which became the legal basis for the entire later political system of Novgorod.

The transformation of agricultural production into the most important part of economic life was an inevitable consequence of the transformation in the field of land ownership. The bulk of the lands were lands of rural communities-vervey, cultivated by free farmers-communities - smerds. However, along with communal lands, lands of princes, boyars, church corporations (episcopal chairs, mon-rays) appeared, acquired into ownership through the development of previously undeveloped lands, purchase or donation (the latter usually happened with mon-ryami). Persons who cultivated such lands were often in one or another economic or personal dependence on the owner (ryadovichi, purchases, serfs). A number of articles of the Russkaya Pravda in the lengthy edition established under Vladimir Monomakh regulated the status of precisely these social groups, while in the short edition codified under the Yaroslavichs (probably in 1072), such norms were still absent. There is no data to judge how great was the income from this kind of princely lands in comparison with the income from the state. taxes - direct taxes and court fees, but it is clear that it was the suburban princely villages that formed the basis of the palace economy, not only rural, but also handicraft. The lands of the palace complex did not belong to one or another specific prince, but to the princely table as such. In the 2nd floor. XI - 1st floor. 12th century the church tithe became more differentiated (with tribute, bargaining, court fines, etc.), it was collected locally, although in some cases it could still be replaced by a fixed amount, which was paid from the prince's treasury.

The emergence and development of landownership on private law also changed the nature of relations within the ruling elite of the Old Russian state. If earlier the squad in property terms was inextricably linked with the prince, who allocated part of the state for its maintenance. income, now wealthy combatants, acquiring land, have the opportunity to become private owners. This predetermined the constant weakening of the dependence of the senior squad (boyars) on the prince, which over time was fraught with an open conflict of their interests (for example, in the Galician and Rostov-Suzdal lands in the 2nd half of the 12th century). There is not enough data to give a definite answer to the question to what extent land grants from the prince played a role in shaping the economic and socio-political status of the boyars. This circumstance, as well as the presence in science of various interpretations of the essence of feudalism (state-political, socio-economic, etc.), makes conditional the widespread characterization of the social system of D. R. in the 10th-12th centuries. as (early) feudal and brings to the fore the problem of the specifics of Old Russian. feudalism in comparison with the classical Western European.

The struggle for Kyiv in the middle. 12th century

The Kievan reign of Vsevolod Olgovich (1139-1146) opened an era of practically unceasing struggle for Kyiv, which inevitably led to the gradual degradation of the political role of the general Russian. capital Cities. Vsevolod was in every respect a destroyer of traditions. dynastic rules. In 1127, he seized the Chernigov throne by force by forcibly removing his uncle Yaroslav Svyatoslavich and bypassing the genealogically oldest cousins ​​- the sons of the Chernigov prince. St. David Svyatoslavich. Vsevolod could not offer anything else as a device of power, how to pick up the idea of ​​Monomakh, only replacing one dynasty (Mstislavichs) with another (Olgovichi). As a result, the entire complex system of inter-princely relations, which Vsevolod built through military pressure and political compromises, and whose success was based solely on the lack of unity between the descendants of Monomakh, collapsed immediately after his death in 1146. The transfer of Kyiv planned by Vsevolod to his siblings - first St. book. Igor (George), then Prince. Svyatoslav (Nikolai), despite the kissing oath of the people of Kiev and Izyaslav Mstislavich, then Prince of Pereyaslav (the eldest of the Mstislavichs after the death of St. Prince Vsevolod in 1138), did not take place. During the rebellion that broke out in Kyiv, Prince. Igor was captured, tonsured a monk and soon died, and the people of Kiev invited Izyaslav to reign. As a result, the struggle immediately resumed between the Mstislavichs (in their hands were also Smolensk and Novgorod, where the younger brothers of Izyaslav, princes Rostislav and Svyatopolk, were sitting) and their uncle, the Rostov-Suzdal prince. Yuri Vladimirovich Dolgoruky.

The internecine struggle between Yuri and Izyaslav occupied the entire ser. 12th century Yuri relied on an alliance with the extremely strong Galician principality of Vladimir Volodarevich; on the side of Izyaslav were the sympathies of the people of Kiev and the military support of the Hungarians. box Geza II, married to Izyaslav's sister. A split occurred among the Chernigov Svyatoslavichs: Svyatoslav Olgovich was loyal to Yuri, and Vladimir and Izyaslav Davidovichi united with Izyaslav. The struggle went on with varying success, and Kyiv several. once passed from hand to hand: Izyaslav occupied it three times - in 1146-1149, 1150 and 1151-1154, also Yuri three times - in 1149-1150, 1150-1151, 1155-1157, and in the winter of 1154/55 g., after the death of Izyaslav, the brother of the latter Smolensk prince tried unsuccessfully to gain a foothold here. Rostislav Mstislavich, then Prince of Chernigov. Izyaslav Davidovich.

All Russian. the scale of the upheavals was aggravated by the fact that the Church was also captured by them. Back in 1147, under pressure from Prince. Izyaslav Mstislavich to the metropolis without the sanction of the K-Polish Patriarch part of the Russian. hierarchs (mainly from South Russia) Clement Smolyatich was erected. This was an attempt on the part of the prince to break the usual order of placing the Kyiv metropolitans in the K-field and to get in the person of the metropolitan an instrument for the fulfillment of his political plans. However, Clement was not recognized not only by Bishop of Rostov. Nestor (which would be understandable), but also the bishops of Novgorod, St. Nifont and Smolensk St. Manuel. The split lasted until 1156, when a new Met. Constantine I. He not only canceled all the consecrations of Clement, but also subjected him, as well as (posthumously) his patron Izyaslav, to a church curse, which once again emphasized the extreme bitterness of the conflict. It ended only after the death of Yuri Dolgoruky in 1157, when, after the short reigns of Izyaslav Davidovich (1157-1158) and Mstislav (1158-1159), the eldest son of Izyaslav Mstislavich, St. book. Rostislav Mstislavich (1159-1167, with a brief break), at the request of whom a new metropolitan, Theodore, arrived in Kyiv. However, Rostislav could no longer return the former importance to the Kievan principality.

Old and new in relation to Kyiv on the part of the princes and the formation of the political predominance of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality (last third of the 12th - early 13th centuries).

Shortly after his death in 1167, Prince. Rostislav, it seemed, the conflict situation of the times of Izyaslav and Yuri Dolgoruky resumed in the next generation: Mstislav Izyaslavich (1167-1169), who had reigned in Kyiv again, was knocked out of him as a result of a campaign of princes, which he organized led. book. St. Andrey Yuryevich Bogolyubsky, and even his cousins ​​​​who had departed from their previous alliance with Mstislav (Smolensk Prince Roman and David, Rurik and Mstislav Rostislavich who sat in various cities of the Kiev region), who were dissatisfied with the fact that Mstislav Izyaslavich sent his son Roman as prince to Novgorod, from where one of the Rostislavichs, Svyatoslav, was expelled. In March 1169, Kyiv was taken and plundered, including its churches and monasteries, which had never happened before in the course of princely civil strife, and Mstislav fled to Volhynia, to his fatherland. Andrei Bogolyubsky (who did not personally participate in the campaign) used his success not for his own reign in Kyiv, like his father, but for planting his younger brother here, Prince Pereyaslavl. Gleb Yurievich. And although a similar trip to Novgorod in the beginning. 1170 was not crowned with success (see "The Sign", the icon of the Mother of God), the Novgorodians soon also had to submit and, having sent Mstislavich, to accept Prince. Rurik Rostislavich, who in 1172 was replaced by Andrei's son Yuri. In 1170 Volyn Prince died. Mstislav, at the beginning 1171 - Kyiv prince. Gleb, after which the eldership of Andrei was again clearly identified: he once again ordered the fate of Kyiv, planting Roman Rostislavich there. Thus, the fears of Vladimir Monomakh came true: the somehow sustained order of the legacy of the Kyiv table was lost, the connection between the capital's reign and the recognized eldership in the princely family was severely undermined, and with it - one of the most important institutions that ensured the unity of the Old Russian state . The dominance of the Rostov-Suzdal prince did not last long. In 1173, the Rostislavichi, outraged by his too straightforward autocracy, refused to submit to him, the punitive campaign against Kyiv in 1174 ended unsuccessfully, and in the summer of that year, as a result of a conspiracy, Andrei Bogolyubsky was killed. The battle for Kyiv immediately began, in which 3 sides now took part: in addition to the Rostislavichs, the younger brother of the late Mstislav Izyaslavich Yaroslav (who reigned in Volyn Lutsk) and Chernihiv prince. Svyatoslav (Mikhail) Vsevolodovich. As a result, in 1181 for a long period (until the death of Svyatoslav in 1194), an unprecedented order of a kind of dual power was established in Kyiv, when the capital itself was in the power of Svyatoslav, and the entire Kiev principality was in the hands of his co-ruler Rurik Rostislavich.

At this time, one no longer hears about the seniority of this or that prince in all of Russia, we are talking only about a separate seniority in the "Monomakh tribe" and especially among the Chernigov Olgoviches. The real political influence was increasingly taken into the hands of the Vladimir-Suzdal Prince, recognized as the oldest among all the Monomashichs (including the Volyn descendants of Izyaslav Mstislavich). Vsevolod (Dimitry) Yurievich Big Nest, younger brother of Andrei Bogolyubsky. From the time of the treaty of Kyiv in 1181, he steadily, with a short break, until his death in 1212, held suzerainty over Novgorod, anticipating the later connection of the Novgorod table with the Grand Duchy of Vladimir. In 1188-1198/99. the supreme power of Vsevolod was also recognized by the last Galician prince from the Rostislavich family, Vladimir Yaroslavich. Even earlier, at the very beginning of Vsevolod's reign (in 1177), the Ryazan and Murom princes turned out to be dependent on him. Thus, the nominal supremacy of the Vladimir-Suzdal prince extended to the whole of Russia, except for Chernigov. This position was reflected in his title: it was to Vsevolod the Big Nest from ser. 80s 12th century for the first time in ancient Russia. practice, the definition of “Grand Duke” began to be systematically applied, which has since become official. the title of Vladimir-Suzdal, and then Moscow princes. It is all the more significant that, despite the favorable situation for himself, Vsevolod, like Andrey Bogolyubsky, never made attempts to establish himself in Kyiv.

Formation of the polycentric status of D. R. (2nd half of the 12th - 1st third of the 13th century).

The decline of the political significance of Kyiv, its transformation into a subject of claims from the princes from various princely groups, became the result of the development of the Old Russian state, outlined by the Lyubech Congress. To the 2nd floor. 12th century clearly showed a tendency to form several. territorially stable large lands-princes, politically little dependent both on each other and on changes in Kyiv. This development was facilitated by the above-mentioned growth in the political influence of local elites and the urban population, who preferred to have "their own" princes - a dynasty, the interests of which would be tightly connected with the fate of one or another regional center. This phenomenon is often characterized as "feudal fragmentation", which puts it on a par with political particularism in the countries of classical feudalism (France, Germany). However, the legitimacy of such a definition remains in question due to the origin of the principality lands not from feudal grants, but from dynastic divisions. The main obstacle to the separation of lands was the constant redistribution of tables and volosts, which usually accompanied the appearance of a new prince in Kyiv. The lands were the first to separate, the princes of which were excluded from the number of heirs of the Kyiv table: Polotsk, Galicia and Muromo-Ryazan.

Polotsk land

Having expelled the princes of Polotsk in 1129, the Kyiv prince. Mstislav the Great first annexed the land of Polotsk to Kyiv, ruling it through his son Izyaslav, but after the death of Mstislav, the Polotsk people planted Vseslav's grandson Vasilk Svyatoslavich (obviously one of the few who escaped exile) on their table, although the Minsk volost remained under the rule of Kyiv for a while . Immediately after the reign of Vsevolod Olgovich in Kyiv, the Polotsk princes returned to their homeland, and the history of the land in the 40-50s. 12th century took place under the sign of the struggle for Polotsk between the Minsk prince. Rostislav, son of Gleb Vseslavich, and Rogvolod (Vasily), son of Prince Polotsk. Rogvolod (Boris) Vseslavich. In the 60-80s. 12th century Vseslav Vasilkovich was held in Polotsk with some interruptions. In the course of this struggle, far from all the stages of which are quite clear, the Polotsk land was divided into separate principalities (in addition to the mentioned Minsk, also Drutsk, Izyaslavl, Logozhsk, Borisov, etc.), princes to-rykh, as well as Polotsk proper, entered into a relationship of dependence either from Svyatoslav Olgovich (from the princes of the Chernigov branch, to whom in the 50s of the XII century the Dregovichi lands belonged to the south of the Polotsk land), then from the east. neighbors - the Smolensk Rostislavichs, who even for some time owned the Vitebsk volost. The further history of the Polotsk land looms vaguely. Political and economic dependence on Smolensk continued to grow stronger, while in the 1st third of the XIII century. in the north-west, Polotsk was under pressure from Riga and the Livonian Order, and by 1207 and 1214. lost its important in strategic and commercial relations vassal principalities in the lower reaches of the West. Dvina - Koknese (Kukenois) and Jersike (Gercike). At the same time, the weakening Polotsk land suffered from the litas. raids.

Galician and Volyn lands

The situation was similar Pereyaslav principality, located on the left bank of the Dnieper, south of the Ostra (the left tributary of the Desna), with the difference, however, that here in the 2nd half. 12th century unable to form their own princely dynasty. Gleb Yuryevich, after leaving for Kyiv, transferred Pereyaslavl to his son Vladimir in 1169, who held him (with a short break) until his death in 1187. Subsequently, the Pereyaslavl table was replaced either by the Kyiv princes, or by the closest relatives or sons of Vsevolod the Big Nest. Data for the 1st third of the 13th century. sketchy; it seems that after 1213 to ser. 50s 13th century Pereyaslavl was under the supreme authority of the led. Prince Vladimir. Pereyaslav principality played a key role in the defense of the south. borders of Russia from the Polovtsy.

Chernihiv land

was one of the most important parts of D. R. Its territorial basis was the lands received in 1054 by the son of Yaroslav the Wise Svyatoslav. They extended to the east from the Dnieper, including all of the Desenje, up to Wed. Poochya with Murom. Deprived, apparently, at the Lyubech congress of 1097 of the right to participate in the inheritance of the Kyiv table, the Chernigov Svyatoslavichs (David, Oleg and Yaroslav), apparently, it was then that they received the Kursk Estate (separated from Pereyaslavl) as compensation, as well as the Dregovichi lands ceded by Kyiv north of Pripyat with the cities of Klechesk, Sluchesk and Rogachev. These areas were lost by Chernigov in 1127 - the price of non-intervention of the Kyiv prince. Mstislav the Great in the conflict between Vsevolod Olgovich, who seized the Chernigov table, and his uncle Yaroslav Svyatoslavich; but soon both Kursk (in 1136) and the mentioned Dregovichi volosts (in the middle of the 12th century) again became part of the Chernigov land. Despite the fact that after the capture of Kyiv by Vsevolod Olgovich in 1139, the Chernigov princes more than once successfully intervened in the struggle for it, they, as a rule, did not seek to obtain tables outside the Chernigov land, which indicates the well-known isolation of their dynastic consciousness, which was formed in 1 th generation of Svyatoslavichs.

The division of the Chernigov land between the Svyatoslavichs (the eldest, David, got Chernigov, Oleg - the middle Podesene with the cities of Starodub, Snovsk and Novgorod-Seversky, the youngest, Yaroslav - Mur) marked the beginning of the development of independent volosts. The most important of them in the middle - 2nd floor. 12th century there were volosts Gomiy (modern Gomel) on the lower Sozh, Novgorod-Seversky, Starodub, Vshchizh in Podesene, Kursk, Rylsk and Putivl in Posemye. Vyatichi Poochie for a long time remained a peripheral forest region, where even at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries. tribal princes were preserved; information about the specific table here (in Kozelsk) first appears in the beginning. 13th century Davidovichi quickly left the historical arena. The involvement of Izyaslav Davidovich in the struggle for Kyiv at the turn of the 50s and 60s. 12th century ended with the fact that the entire Chernihiv land was in the power of Svyatoslav Olgovich and his nephew Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich, and the only grandson of David Svyatoslav Vladimirovich died in 1167 on the Vshchizh table. After the death in 1164 of the Chernigov prince. Svyatoslav Olgovich, the Chernigov throne was inherited according to genealogical seniority: from his nephews Svyatoslav (1164-1176; in 1176 Svyatoslav became the prince of Kyiv) and Yaroslav Vsevolodovich (1176-1198) to his son Igor (1198-1202), the hero of an unsuccessful campaign against the Polovtsy in 1185 g., sung in the "Tale of Igor's Campaign". Following. this Chernigov reign in the next generation of Olgovichi, in the 1st quarter. XIII century, concentrated in the hands of the sons of Svyatoslav Vsevolodovich (Vsevolod Chermny, Oleg, Gleb, Mstislav), and then his grandchildren (St. Prince Mikhail Vsevolodovich and Mstislav Glebovich). The offspring of Svyatoslav Olgovich was forced in general (excluding the brief reign in Chernigov of Igor Svyatoslavich) to be content with Novgorod-Seversky, Putivl, Kursk and Rylsky. The sons of Igor, who were the grandchildren of the Galician prince by their mother. Yaroslav Osmomysl, were in the beginning. XIII century, after the death in 1199 of a childless Galician prince. Vladimir Yaroslavich, were drawn into the political struggle in the Galician land, but they could not gain a foothold on the Galician tables (with the exception of Kamenets): three of them in 1211, when Galich was once again captured by the Hungarians, were hanged at the insistence of their opponents from among the influential Galician boyars (an exceptional case for Russia).

Smolensk land

In the 2nd floor. XI - 1st third of the XII century. Smolensk, like Volyn, was considered a volost belonging to Kyiv. Since 1078, the beginning of the Kyiv reign of Vsevolod Yaroslavich, Smolensk was assigned (excluding a short break in the 90s of the 11th century) to Vladimir Monomakh, in 1125 it went to the grandson of the latter, St. book. Rostislav Mstislavich, with the reign of whom in 1125-1159. the political isolation of Smolensk from Kyiv, the emergence of the Smolensk diocese in its possessions (see Smolensk and Kaliningrad diocese) and the final territorial design of the Smolensk land, which stretched from the upper reaches of the Sozh and the Dnieper in the south to the interfluve of the West. Dvina and Lovat (Toropetsk volost) in the north, capturing the "Vyatichi wedge" in the east between the upper reaches of the Moscow River and the Oka. Thus, the core of the Smolensk land was the region of portages between Lovat, Zap. Dvina and Dnieper - a key section on the "path from the Varangians to the Greeks." On the territory and tax centers of the Smolensk land in the 1st half. 12th century a visual representation is given by a unique document - the Charter of the book. Rostislav of the Smolensk diocese in 1136

Rostislav did not take an active part in the struggle for Kyiv, which unfolded between his older brother Izyaslav and Yuri Dolgoruky in 1149-1154, but 2 years after the death of Yuri, in 1159, becoming the genealogical oldest among the Monomashichs, he went to Kyiv, leaving in Smolensk, the eldest son of Roman. Dr. The Rostislavichs (Rurik, David, Mstislav; Svyatoslav Rostislavich held Novgorod at that time) during the reign of Kiev of their father received tables in the Kyiv land, which they retained even after the death of Rostislav in 1167. A stable and monolithic complex of possessions of the princes of the Smolensk house was formed to the west and northwest of Kyiv with tables in Belgorod, Vyshgorod, Torchesk and Ovruch. Its stability was explained, obviously, by the fact that the older Rostislavichs, and later their descendants, if they did not occupy the Kyiv table, then always were one of the main contenders for it. The tendency of the Rostislavichs to occupy tables outside the Smolensk land, which so distinguished them from representatives of other branches of Old Russian. princely family, manifested itself in temporary possession in the 2nd half. 12th century Polotsk volosts bordering Smolensk - Drutsk and Vitebsk. Shortly after his death, ca. 1210 Kyiv prince. Rurik Rostislavich, the Smolensk princes again and for a long time took possession of the Kyiv table, on which in 1214-1223. sat the grandson of Rostislav Prince. Mstislav (Boris) Romanovich the Old, and in 1223-1235 - cousin of the last prince. Vladimir (Dimitry) Rurikovich. It was the period of the highest power of Smolensk. No later than the 20s. 13th century under his suzerainty was the capital of Polotsk, and in the Kiev reign of Mstislav Romanovich also Novgorod.

Following. In contrast to other lands of D. R. (with the exception of Novgorod), the formation of politically isolated volosts is practically not traced in Smolensk land. Occasionally, only the princely table in Toropets was occupied. Even when he was already the prince of Smolensk (1180-1197), David Rostislavich planted his son, prince, who had been expelled from Novgorod in 1187. Mstislav is not in Smolensk land, but in Kiev Vyshgorod. According to indirect data, it can be assumed that all the Rostislavichi had some kind of possessions in the Smolensk land (for example, in 1172 Rurik allocated the Smolensk city of Luchin to his newborn son Rostislav), but they preferred to reign outside it. This trend also affected the inheritance of the Smolensk table itself. Twice, in 1171 and 1174, leaving for Kyiv, Roman Rostislavich handed him over not to the next oldest brother, but to his son Yaropolk, and only the indignant Smolensk veche for the 2nd time insisted on replacing Yaropolk with the youngest of the Rostislavichs - Mstislav the Brave (to -ry, however, was forced to cede Smolensk to Roman, who left the Kyiv table in 1176). In the future, Smolensk was already inherited according to tradition. paternal seniority among the closest descendants of Roman († 1180) and David († 1197), of which the latter finally settled here in the 2nd half. 13th century

Vladimir-Suzdal land

(see also Art. Vladimir Grand Duchy) was formed on the basis of the Rostov fatherland of Vladimir Monomakh. The last at the turn of the XI and XII centuries. embraced the lands of the Volga-Klyazma interfluve with the cities of Rostov, Suzdal and Yaroslavl, as well as Beloozero located to the north. OK. In 1110/15, it went to one of the younger Monomashichs (the eldest son from Vladimir's 2nd marriage) - Yuri Dolgoruky, who during almost half a century of rule took shape as an independent land. The rapid rise of the Rostov-Suzdal Territory under Yuri was the result of the convenient location of these lands: thanks to the Volga, they were directly involved in trade with the rich East, the fertile Suzdal opole served as a reliable agricultural basis, and the Vyatichi forests blocked the path of the Polovtsian raids. Yuri made Suzdal his capital city (apparently, like his successors, burdened by the tutelage of the old Rostov boyars) and expanded the territory of the principality through the development of the Tver Volga region and the Moskva River basin, also starting the promotion of Rostov-Suzdal tributes for the Volga, to Bud. Galich-Kostroma region.

Entering in 1149 in the struggle for Kyiv, Yuri took steps that were very reminiscent of a slightly later practice of the Smolensk prince. Rostislav Mstislavich: he began to distribute volosts to the sons in the south of Russia, primarily in Kyiv land (Andrey - Vyshgorod, Boris - Belgorod, Rostislav, and then Gleb - Pereyaslavl, Vasilko - Porosye with Torchesky), but none of them, except for the Pereyaslav prince . Gleb Yurievich, after. did not stay there. Moreover, in 1155 Andrei left Vyshgorod without permission and returned to his fiefdom in his homeland (probably Vladimir), anticipating the main trend of the future Kyiv policy of the Vladimir-Suzdal princes. It was precisely in order to provide his offspring with a decisive influence in the Kyiv land that Yuri bequeathed the Suzdal table to his younger sons from his 2nd marriage - Mikhalk (Mikhail) and Vsevolod. But his plans were shattered by the willfulness of the Rostov and Suzdal vech, who invited Prince. Andrei Bogolyubsky (1157-1174). Andrei dealt with the princely opposition, sending three younger brothers (Vasilko, Mikhalka, Vsevolod) and nephews - the sons of his elder brother Rostislav, who died during the life of Yuri Dolgoruky, as well as part of his father's senior squad into exile for a while. Having received the reign thanks to the veche, Andrei did not tolerate any dependence on him and therefore made Vladimir the main table, because of which a deep conflict arose between the old Rostov and Suzdal and the new Vladimir, which was sharply revealed after the murder of Prince. Andrei in 1174. Rostov and Suzdal called Mstislav and Yaropolk, the sons of Rostislav Yuryevich, to the table, while the people of Vladimir stood for the younger Yuryevichs - Mikhalk and Vsevolod. The confrontation ended in favor of the latter, and on the Vladimir table (after the imminent death of Mikhalok) Vsevolod the Big Nest (1176-1212) reigned for a long time. After a protracted civil strife between the Vsevolodovichs in 1212-1216, Novgorod was also drawn into the swarm, and St. book. Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir. 1158-1160, 1185-1189 Photo. Kon. 20th century

Assumption Cathedral in Vladimir. 1158-1160, 1185-1189 Photo. Kon. 20th century

The reign of Vsevolod Yurievich the Big Nest became the era of the political and economic prosperity of the Vladimir-Suzdal land, the prince of which was an authority for all of Russia. At the same time, if Andrei Bogolyubsky, while remaining in Vladimir, still tried to dictate his will to the South Russian. princes, then Vsevolod already preferred to confine himself to a simple recognition on their part of his seniority. This policy of the Yurievichs had 2 important consequences. The first was the most dramatic (compared with other lands) isolation of the Vladimir-Suzdal land within the Old Russian state, expressed, in particular, in Andrei's attempts, albeit unsuccessful, to establish in the 60s. 12th century in Vladimir, a separate metropolis from Kyiv (after the death in 1167 of the Kievan prince Rostislav Mstislavich, Andrei became the oldest genealogically and the plans to create the Vladimir metropolis were abandoned). The second consequence was the intensive formation of the possessions of numerous Vsevolodoviches and their descendants. On the eve of the Mongol invasion, there were already at least 5 such specific tables (Rostov, Yaroslavl, Uglich, Pereyaslavl Zalessky, Yuryev Polsky), despite the fact that the main territory remained in the hands of the leaders. Prince Vladimir. These possessions quickly turned into fatherlands (Rostov became the fatherland of the descendants of Prince Vasilko Konstantinovich, the eldest grandson of Vsevolod, Pereyaslavl - the fatherland of the descendants of Yaroslav (Theodore) Vsevolodovich, etc.). In the future, this fragmentation progressed rapidly.

With a restrained interest in affairs in the south of D. R., the princes of Vladimir and Suzdal, pursuing, probably, the strategic goal of securing their interests in international trade, directed great efforts to control Novgorod and to fight the Volga Bulgaria. Already to the last quad 12th century co-ownership of Vladimir and Novgorod took shape at a key point in the south of Novgorod land - Torzhok, which gave Vladimir a powerful lever of influence on Novgorod, since it was through Torzhok that the bread that was so necessary for Novgorod came from the south. Campaigns were directed against the Volga Bulgaria: in 1120 under Yuri Dolgoruky (after which a peace treaty was concluded, which, as far as one can judge, was observed almost until the end of Yuri's reign), in 1164 and in the winter of 1171/72 under Andrei Bogolyubsky, a grandiose campaign 1183 under Vsevolod the Big Nest (which also ended in a long-term peace treaty), in 1220 under Yuri Vsevolodovich. These hostilities were accompanied by the expansion of the territory of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality down the Volga (not later than the 60s of the XII century, Gorodets Radilov was founded, in 1221 - Nizhny Novgorod), as well as bringing the Mordovs into vassalage. tribes previously subordinate to the Bulgars.

Novgorod land

occupied a special place among the lands-princes of D. R. Until the end. 11th century the Novgorod table was replaced by princes and posadniks, who were appointed from Kyiv, and, consequently, Novgorod was politically subordinate to the Kyiv princes. However, it seems to be ok. In 1090, a posadnik from the local boyars appeared in Novgorod, with whom the prince had to somehow share power. The institute of posadnichestvo was strengthened when, in 1117, the grandson of St. Monomakhov entered the Novgorod table. book. Vsevolod Mstislavich, who, as there is reason to believe, was for the first time forced to condition his reign on an agreement with Novgorod. In 1136, the Novgorodians expelled Vsevolod, citing, among other things, the violation of the contract by the prince, and since then the election of the Novgorod prince has finally become the prerogative of the city council. At the same time, the bishops of Novgorod also became elected, who then went to Kyiv to be appointed to the metropolitan. Novgorod "freedom in the princes" was not unlimited. Political and economic interests forced Novgorod to look for a place in the general Russian. politics, maneuvering between the strongest princes and, depending on the situation, trying to get a prince from them: either from the Vladimir-Suzdal Yurievichs, or from the Smolensk Rostislavichs, or (less often) from the Chernigov Olgovichi.

In the 2nd floor. XII - 1st quarter. 13th century the management structure of Novgorod took on the form that was generally preserved in the last. at the time of independence: along with the prince, whose competence was limited to military issues and a joint court with the posadnik, and whose property rights were significantly constrained, the veche elected the posadnik and the archbishop, with con. XII century - thousandth. The influential layer was the merchants, organized into self-governing corporations headed by elders. This influence of the merchants was explained primarily by the active participation of Novgorod in international trade in the Baltic. Novgorod trading boats went to Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, German. ports. In Novgorod, there were farmsteads of the Gotland (Gotsky yard; apparently, from the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries) and German. merchants (German court; most likely from the end of the 12th century), on the territory of which there were Catholic. churches (there were also in Kyiv and Smolensk). This international trade was regulated by special treaties, the oldest of which (from among the surviving ones) dates most likely to 1191/92. In addition to the usual for large Old Russian. cities divided into 10 hundreds Novgorod was divided into 5 ends. The same adm. the organization was also characteristic of the Novgorod land as a whole, in addition to hundreds, it was also subdivided into 5 quintuples. The relationship between the centenary and Konchan-Pyatinka structures remains controversial.

General state issues were often resolved at the veche, in which, along with the Novgorodians, representatives of other cities of the Novgorod land - Pskov, Ladoga, Rusa, took part, which reflected the territorial scope of the Novgorod region of the 11th century - from Pskov to the Msta basin, from Ladoga to Lovat. Already in the XI century. began the penetration of Novgorod tributes to the northeast - to the area of ​​​​Lake Onega. and Podvinya (Zavolochye). Not later than the 1st quarter. 12th century these lands were tightly covered by the system of Novgorod churchyards, as the Charter of Prince. Svyatoslav of the Novgorod bishopric in 1137. It is difficult to determine the mobile border of Novgorod possessions in the west and north, just as it is not easy to separate the territories of Novgorod tributaries from the lands directly included in the political structure of Novgorod land. In the 1st floor. 11th century the power of Novgorod was established in the region of the Estonians to the west of Lake Peipsi, where in 1030 Yaroslav the Wise founded the city of Yuryev Livonsky (modern Tartu), but these possessions were lost after the start in the 90s. 12th century expansion of the Livonian Order and Denmark in the East. the Baltic States, although later. protests of Estonians against Livonian and dates. dominations often enjoyed the military support of Novgorod. Probably, simultaneously with the lands of the Estonians, the regions of the Vodi and Izhora to the south were developed. shore of the Gulf of Finland., as well as Karelians around Lake Ladoga. Later, tributary dependence on Novgorod extended to Finns. Emi tribes in the north. coast of the Gulf of Finland, no later than the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries - to the Finns of the Tersky coast (the White Sea coast of the Kola Peninsula). Emi lands were lost to Novgorod in the middle. XII century., When they were captured by Sweden. Novgorod-Swedish. the conflict was long, sometimes taking the form of long-distance campaigns: the Swedes to Ladoga in 1164, the Karelians subject to Novgorod to the Swedish capital Sigtuna (the region was taken and plundered) in 1187.

The fate of the Kyiv land and the mechanisms of all-Russian unity

Kyiv land, like Novgorod, stood apart in the system of lands-princes of D. R.. Traditional the idea of ​​Kyiv as a possession of a princely family, expressed in the successive replacement of the Kyiv table by princes from different branches in accordance with the principles of genealogical seniority and ancestry (a prince could not claim Kyiv, whose father had never reigned in it), did not allow the capital D R. become the property of some separate dynasty, as was the case in all other lands except Novgorod. Elder, made with the middle - 2nd floor. 12th century unobvious and increasingly becoming the subject of an inter-princely agreement, could not prevent the fact that Kyiv turned into a bone of contention between the opposing factions of princes and its possession was achieved at the cost of more or less significant territorial compromises. As a result, in the 70s. 12th century Kyiv land lost in favor of Volhynia such important volosts as Beresteyskaya, inherited by the sons of the Vladimir-Volyn prince. Mstislav Izyaslavich, and Pogorin (in the upper reaches of the Goryn with the center in Dorogobuzh), where the sons of Mstislav's brother, Prince of Lutsk, reigned. Yaroslav Izyaslavich. All R. 12th century Turov also left the Kyiv reign.

However, even in such a truncated form, Kyiv and the Kyiv land were a political organism, in relation to which, in one way or another, the interests of almost all the lands of D.R. were intertwined and thus united; general Russian the significance of Kyiv was to a large extent due to the fact that there was a chair of the primate of the Russian Church. In the conditions of state polycentricity, the idea of ​​D. R. unity, which continued to live as the core idea of ​​Old Russian. public consciousness and the dynastic idea consecrated by antiquity, was embodied primarily in the church unity of Old Russian. lands that made up the Kyiv Metropolis, the primates of the swarm constantly acted as peacekeepers in inter-princely conflicts. The tradition of tribal ownership of D. R. was reflected in the belief that the protection of the South. Russia, i.e., primarily the Kiev and Pereyaslav regions, from the Polovtsian threat was the common cause of the princes of all lands (which was supported by the memory of the ancient Russian land in the narrow sense of the word). In order to more effectively "observe the Russian land", the princes of the lands had the right to claim possessions ("parts", or "communions") in this Russian land. Although it remains unclear how systematically the practice of "participles" was implemented, its significance as an institution that embodied the idea of ​​a common Russian. unity is evident. Campaigns in the Polovtsian steppe were, as a rule, more or less collective enterprises. So, in the campaign of 1183, in response to the renewed Polovtsian raids, in addition to Kyiv, Smolensk, Volyn and Galician regiments took part. The appeal of the Tale of Igor's Campaign for joint defense against the Polovtsy (at the same time, the Chernigov author of the Lay ... addresses the princes of all the most important ancient Russian lands in the 1280s by name) is not just a patriotic slogan, but an appeal to the prevailing political practice. In fact, the campaign against the Mongols that ended in a complete defeat on the Kalka in 1223 with the participation of the princes of Kyiv Mstislav Romanovich, Chernigov Mstislav Svyatoslavich, Galician Mstislav Mstislavich, Volyn Daniil Romanovich (the regiment sent by Vladimir Grand Duke Yuri Vsevolodovich did not have time to battle) was actually all-Russian. A vivid evidence of a living sense of the unity of great Russia - from "Ugor" (Hungary) to the "Breathing Sea" (Northern Arctic Ocean), the memory of the time of its heyday - the reign of Vladimir Monomakh - as a public and state. The ideal can serve as the “Word about the destruction of the Russian land”, created immediately after mong. invasions (until 1246).

The Mongol invasion and the decline of the Old Russian state (middle - 2nd half of the 13th century)

Mong. invasion of 1237-1240 and the establishment in the future of the supreme power of the Mongols over almost all Old Russian. principalities led to a general upheaval of the Old Russian state. Mong. the khans did not seek to destroy the political structures that existed in Russia, trying to rely on them for their administrative and economic (tax collection) and military purposes (the use of Russian troops). The most important domong established in domong continued to exist. the time of the reigning land: Vladimir-Suzdal (under the rule of the descendants of Vsevolod the Big Nest), Galicia-Volyn (under the rule of the Romanovichs), Smolensk (where the Rostislavichi still ruled), Chernigov-Severskaya, the center of which temporarily moved to Bryansk (here the Olgovichi retained power, but Bryansk at the end of the 13th century was in the hands of the princes of the Smolensk branch), Ryazan (which also retained its dynasty); Novgorod, as before, recognized the suzerainty of the Vladimir provinces. princes. The fate of Kyiv and the Kyiv land of that time is extremely sparingly reflected in the sources, but it is known that, probably, the power of the Vladimir leds was kept there. princes - at least under Yaroslav Vsevolodovich (1238-1246) and St. Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky (1252-1263), who received Kyiv at the will of the leader. Khan back in 1249. In this sense, the loss of political sovereignty of Old Russian. princes in the middle 13th century did not yet mean the immediate destruction of the Old Russian state.

However, the radical military-political and economic weakening of the Old Russian. principalities with a sharp increase in external threats led to the fact that the trend towards regionalization of the political interests of the principal princes, persistently manifested already in the domong. period have become irreversible. The utopian attempt to organize a collective rebuff to the Mongols through a military-political alliance between led. book. Vladimirsky Andrey Yaroslavich (1249-1252) and Daniil Galitsky. The only realistic politics prevailed. book. Alexander Nevsky, loyal to the Mong. khanam, which was formed, of course, at the time of his Novgorod reign from the experience of repelling the offensive of Sweden and the Livonian Order on the lands vassal to Novgorod, and then on Novgorod. All this disabled one of the main mechanisms of the general Russian. unity - joint defense against the "nasty" (steppe dwellers). In parallel, there was a process of political fragmentation of the Old Russian. principalities and lands. So, in ser. 13th century in the Vladimir-Suzdal land, in addition to the Rostov, Yaroslavl, Uglich, Pereyaslavl, Suzdal, Starodub and Yuriev principalities that already existed by that time, 6 more princely tables were formed: Belozersky, Galicia-Dmitrovsky, Moscow, Tver, Kostroma and Gorodetsky, in almost every -ryh entrenched his own princely branch. The situation was similar in the Chernihiv-Seversk land, where the Vorgol, Lipovech, Bryansk, Karachev, Glukhov and Tarusa principalities appeared at that time, and in other lands. The consequence of the political fragmentation of Old Russian. principalities and lands was the devaluation of the political role of the great reign, which became simply a territorial addition to the possessions of one or another "oldest" prince of his kind. The exception was the Galicia-Volyn principality, which from the 70s. 13th century consolidated under the rule of the Galician prince. Lev I Danilovich and Volyn prince. Vladimir Vasilkovich with the leading role of the first. However, the political interests of Leo I and Vladimir, as well as their successors, were Catholic-oriented. the west (Hungary and Poland) and the pagan north (repelling the Lithuanian and Yatvingian threat).

In the current conditions, there is no any stable coordination of the efforts of the Old Russian. principalities (Volyn, Smolensk, Bryansk, Novgorod, etc.), suffering from litas. raids, which gradually developed into territorial seizures, are not observed (with the exception of campaigns organized by order and with the participation of the troops of the Horde khans). In this sense, the crisis of the Old Russian. statehood as a result of the establishment of the Horde yoke predetermined the success of the expansion of Lithuania in the XIV century, catastrophic for Old Russian. unity, for he deprived the fragments of the Old Russian state of the last political bond - the community of the dynasty. All these events significantly weakened the unifying role of the Church in relation to Old Russian. lands. In con. 13th century center of general Russian the metropolis moved from Kyiv, devastated by the Mongols, to the northeast - first to Vladimir, then to Moscow. To the southwest. lands, from ser. 14th century turned out to be dependent on the litas. and Polish. rulers, from the beginning of this century, attempts were made, which had temporary success, to establish independent metropolitan sees (see the articles Galician diocese, Lithuanian metropolis). As a result, to ser. 15th century Russian Church on several centuries was divided into Moscow and West Russian parts. Old Russian idea. unity continued to live in the field of culture and writing, primarily in church circles, turning into an ideology that was waiting for the time when it would be adopted by the Moscow sovereigns and the Russians. emperors.

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A. V. Nazarenko

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

"Kievan Rus" was invented by historians

The name "Kievan Rus" appeared in the 19th century in the writings of Mikhail Maksimovich and other historians in memory of the primacy of Kyiv. Already in the very first centuries of Russia, the state consisted of several separate principalities, living their own lives and quite independently. With the nominal subordination of the lands to Kyiv, Russia was not united. Such a system was common in the early feudal states of Europe, where each feudal lord had the right to own land and all the people on it.

The appearance of the Kyiv princes was not always truly "Slavic" as it is commonly represented. 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. On 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 beaters. After the Mongol conquests, the organs were lost and forgotten, and the first bell makers came again from Western Europe. The researcher of musical culture Tatyana Vladyshevskaya writes about organs in the Old Russian era. On one of the frescoes of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv, "Buffoons", a scene with playing the organ is depicted.

Western origin

The language of the Old Russian population is considered East Slavic. However, archaeologists and linguists do not quite agree with this. The ancestors of the Novgorod Slovenes and part of the Krivichi (Polochans) did not come from the southern expanses from the Carpathians to the right bank of the Dnieper, but from the West. Researchers see the West Slavic "trace" in the finds of ceramics and birch bark records. A prominent historian and researcher Vladimir Sedov is also inclined to this version. Household items and features of rituals are similar among the Ilmen and Baltic Slavs.

How Novgorodians understood Kyivans

Novgorod and Pskov dialects differed from other dialects of Ancient Russia. They had features inherent in the languages ​​of the Polabs and Poles, and even completely archaic, Proto-Slavic. Well-known parallels: kirki - “church”, hede - “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 Kievans could understand each other quite well: the words reflected the life common to all Slavs.

"White spots" in the most prominent 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 of archaeologists and later chronicles is scarce and ambiguous. Written treaties mention certain Helga, Inger, Sfendoslav, but the dates of the events differ in different sources. The role of the Kyiv "Varangian" Askold in the formation of Russian statehood is not very clear either. And this is not to mention the eternal disputes around the personality of Rurik.

"Capital" was a border fortress

Kyiv was far from the center of Russian lands, but was the southern border fortress of Russia, 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, Polovtsy, or were predominantly defensive (for example, Pereyaslavl).

Russia - the state of the slave trade

An important article of the wealth of Ancient Russia was the slave trade. They traded not only captured foreigners, but also Slavs. The latter were in great demand in the Eastern markets. Arabic sources of the 10th-11th centuries describe in colors the way of slaves from Russia to the countries of the Caliphate and the Mediterranean. The slave trade was beneficial to the princes, the large cities on the Volga and the Dnieper were the centers of the slave trade. A huge number of people in Russia were not free, they could be sold into slavery to foreign merchants for debts. One of the main slave traders were Jewish radonites.

Khazars "inherited" in Kyiv

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", which contains the correspondence in Hebrew of Kyiv Jews with other Jewish communities. The manuscript is kept in the Cambridge Library. One of the three main Kyiv gates was called Zhidovskie. In one of the early Byzantine documents, Kyiv is called Sambatas, which, according to one of the versions, can be translated from the 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 went to hundreds, for the first time in the history of Russia, the planning of quarters was used in it, making the streets slender. The city was admired by Europeans, Arabs, Byzantines and called the rival of Constantinople. However, from all the abundance of that time, almost not a single building remained, not counting the St. Sophia Cathedral, a couple of rebuilt churches and the recreated Golden Gate. The first white-stone church (Desyatinnaya), where the people of Kiev fled from the Mongol raid, was destroyed already in the 13th century.

Russian fortresses older than Russia

One of the first stone fortresses of Russia was the stone-and-earth fortress in Ladoga (Lyubshanskaya, 7th century), founded by the Slovenes. The Scandinavian fortress that stood on the other side of the Volkhov was still made of wood. 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 a 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 completely wooden. The oldest stone fortress was Andrey Bogolyubsky's castle near Vladimir, although it is more famous for its decorative part.

Cyrillic was almost never used

The Glagolitic alphabet, the first written alphabet of the Slavs, did not take root in Russia, 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 Russia was associated with the preacher Cyril and was called "Cyrillic". The Glagolitic was often used as a secret script. The first inscription in Cyrillic proper was a strange inscription “goroukhshcha” or “gorushna” on an earthenware vessel from the Gnezdovo barrow. The inscription appeared shortly before the baptism of the people of Kiev. The origin and exact interpretation of this word is still controversial.

Old Russian universe

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

Heir of Great Moravia

With the decline of Great Moravia, the largest Slavic power for its time, the rise of Kyiv and the gradual Christianization of Russia began. So, the annalistic white Croats got out from under the influence of the collapsing Moravia, and fell under the attraction of Russia. Their neighbors, Volhynians and Buzhans, have 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 were oppressed by the Latins with the collapse of the state, is unknown, but the largest number of translations of Great Moravian Christian books (about 39) was in Kievan Rus.

Alcohol and sugar free

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

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

Two "Bulgaria" in the service of Russia

These two most powerful neighbors of Russia had a huge impact on her. After the decline of Moravia, both countries, which arose on the fragments of Great Bulgaria, are flourishing. The first country said goodbye to the "Bulgarian" past, dissolving into 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 Russia. A variant of the Old Bulgarian language became the language of the Church. It has been used in numerous lives and teachings. Bulgaria, in turn, sought to restore order in trade along the Volga, suppressing the attacks of foreign bandits and robbers. The normalization of the Volga trade provided the princely possessions with an abundance of oriental goods. Bulgaria influenced Russia with culture and literacy, and Bulgaria contributed to its wealth and prosperity.

Forgotten "megacities" of Russia

Kyiv and Novgorod were not the only major cities of Russia; it was not for nothing that it was nicknamed “Gardarika” (country of cities) in Scandinavia. 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 on the sidelines. But perhaps we know his name from the sagas - Surnes. The most populated were also Ladoga, symbolically considered the "first capital", and the Timerevskoye settlement near Yaroslavl, which was built opposite the famous neighboring city.

Russia was baptized by the XII century

The annalistic baptism of Russia 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 Mur, where there were still many Finno-Ugric peoples. The fact that most of the common population remained pagans was confirmed by 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 a truly dominant religion.

The Turks also had cities in Russia

In Kievan Rus, there were also completely “non-Slavic” cities. Such was Torchesk, where Prince Vladimir allowed nomadic Torks 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 union of “black hoods”, subordinate to Russia. In the old cities on the site or in the vicinity of Rostov, Murom, Beloozero, Yaroslavl lived mainly Finno-Ugric peoples. In Murom - murom, 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 not only

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

Slavs outside the borders

Traces of the Slavs could be found outside the state of Rurikovich. Many cities along the middle Volga and in the Crimea were multinational and populated, including 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 speaks of the constant presence of Russian merchants. The Chud cities of Estland (modern Estonia) - Kolyvan, Yuryev, Bear's Head, Klin - with varying success passed into the hands of the Slavs, then the Germans, then the local tribes. Along the Western Dvina, the Krivichi settled interspersed with the Balts. In the zone of influence of Russian merchants 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. So, for example, the Galician prince Yaroslav Osmomysl "locked the door of the Danube with a key."

Both pirates and nomads

Fugitive people of various volosts of Russia formed independent associations long before the Cossacks. Berladniks were known, 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 participated in joint campaigns with Russian princes. Chronicles also introduce us to wanderers, a mixed population of unknown origin, who had much in common with Berladniks.

Sea pirates from Russia were ushkuyniki. Initially, these were Novgorodians who were engaged in raids and trade on the Volga, Kama, in Bulgaria and the Baltic. They even undertook campaigns in the Cis-Urals - to Yugra. Later, they separated from Novgorod and even found their own capital in the city of Khlynov on Vyatka. Perhaps it was the Ushkuyniki, together with the Karelians, who ravaged the ancient capital of Sweden, Sigtuna, in 1187.