For the people in Russian history. Russian people in search of historical truth

Book excerpt in two parts
Name: " Nationalism and national education in Russia»

Starting to state the assumption of what the upbringing and education of the children of the Russian people should be, I consider it necessary, although in brief outline, to point out the peculiarity of the soul of the Russian people, in order to note which aspects of life should be especially encouraged and developed in schools for Russian people, and which should be restrained. and even slow down.

The great psychologist of the Russian people and the historian of their spiritual qualities is F. M. Dostoevsky, and I will cite him with great pleasure in this section.

Here is what he says about the soul of a Russian person: “In a Russian person from the common people, one must be able to distinguish his beauty from superficial barbarism. By the circumstances of almost all of Russian history, our people were so betrayed to debauchery and were so corrupted, seduced and constantly tormented, which is still amazing how they survived, preserving the human image, and not that preserving its beauty. But he also retained the beauty of his image - innocence and honesty, sincerity and a wide, all-open mind, purity, meekness, gentleness - as opposed to everything invented, false, superficial and slavishly borrowed - and all this in the most attractive, harmonious combination.

The Russian people, as a whole, is divided into two very unequal parts: the intelligentsia and the common people. I won’t be mistaken if I say that the number of simple ignorant people, that mass that we used to call the people, is ten to twenty times greater than the particle that makes up the intelligentsia, the part of the people educated, enlightened and enjoying the benefits of science, art and prosperity.

It is the people, their mass, that gives the essence and basis of the nation, for the intelligentsia or the enlightened part of the Russian people is more than half made up of foreigners of a non-Russian nation. Therefore, the common people give the characteristic features that define the nation. And if we want to give a greater or lesser characterization of the spiritual properties of the Russian nation, then we must have in mind primarily the masses of the people, and only partially and with caution their intelligentsia.

“The Russian nation is an extraordinary phenomenon, says F. M. Dostoevsky, in the history of all mankind. The character of the Russian people is so unlike the character of all modern European nations that Europeans still do not understand it and understand everything about it in reverse. All Europeans are moving towards the same goal. But all are separated from each other by grounded interests, exclusive to each other to the point of irreconcilability, and more and more diverge along different paths. The idea of common humanity is more and more erased between them. In the Russian character, there is a sharp difference from the European, a sharp feature - in it, the ability is predominantly highly systematic, the ability of universality, all-humanity. In the Russian man there is no European angularity, impenetrability, inflexibility.

He gets along with everyone and gets involved in everything. He sympathizes with all mankind, without distinction of nation, blood or soil. He finds and immediately admits rationality in everything in which there is at least some general human interest. He has an instinct for common humanity. He instinctively guesses a common human trait, even in the sharpest exclusivities of other peoples, immediately agrees, reconciles them in his ideas, finds a place for them in his conclusion, and often opens a point of connection and reconciliation in completely opposite, rival ideas, two different European ideas, two different European nations - ideas that by themselves, at home, still at home, unfortunately, have not found a way to reconcile, and perhaps never will be reconciled.

We must bow before the people and expect everything from them: both thought and image; bow before the truth and recognize it as the truth.

Turning to our ancestors, the Scythians, Sarmatians and Slavs, we see that they were warlike, brave, fearless and irresistible, but they were so not because of greed and motivation for robbery, but simply because of youth and innate courage. They strive for conquest not for prey and not for power, Khomiakov says. They demand neither gold, nor land, nor slaves. Their power is meek, the dues are easy. They are looking for victory not for the fruits of it, but for the defeated to recognize their superiority in battles. And this thirst for glory, chivalrous, disinterested, we meet at the very first beginnings of history in a tribe whose coarse morals have not yet been illuminated by even the weakest ray of enlightenment.

With such a disinterested desire for victory and glory, the Russian people are distinguished at the same time by unusual modesty and even excessive modesty. He will not become proud and boast, but rather begin to condemn himself. “We do not reject the ability of self-condemnation, we love it and recognize it as the best side of Russian nature, for its peculiarity, for the fact that it does not exist in the West” (Dostoevsky).

Recognizing the strength and power in ourselves, we do not have scrupulousness and resentment. We believe in the strength of the Russian people no less than anyone else.” At the same time, “in a Russian person, one can see the most ardent ability of the most healthy criticism over oneself, the most sober look at oneself and the absence of any self-exaltation that harms freedom of action.

Russian alien violence, arrogance and impudence. He is restrained and cautious for a long time; but when he realizes his strength and decides to act, then I will keep his determination there is no limit. “In the face of Peter I, we see an example of what a Russian person can decide to do when he survives complete conviction in himself and feels that the time has come, and new forces have matured and manifested themselves in him. And it is terrible to what extent the Russian man is free in spirit, to what extent his will is strong!

Due to historical circumstances, the Russians lagged far behind the West in their knowledge, - due to the same circumstances, the Russian people bore the great burden of slavery. Both put Russians in a false position in relation to foreigners. The Russian, as it were, is shy and, on the one hand, keeps himself too restrained and humiliated, and on the other, he is afraid to seem lower than he is. This forces him to seem different, pushes him to flattery and makes him silent when unflattering words are said to him about him and his homeland.

There is no word, at this time he is ashamed of himself and condemns himself, but he does not have enough fortitude to protect his personal dignity and the honor of his homeland. Our civic self-consciousness and consciousness of our dignity are still too low, which is a natural consequence of our centuries-old slavery. This naturally entails a lack of respect in the other person of the person. Insufficient performance of one's duty and even insufficient respect for other people's property. Centuries-old satraps and centuries-old slaves gave rise to descendants with atrophied sense of duty and property, some because they had slaves who belonged entirely to them, others because they were slaves and constituted someone else's property.

Due to the peculiarity of the nature of the Russian Slav to broad philanthropy and due to centuries of slavery with its great physical and mental burden, the Russian people, living by their Orthodoxy and being in its love and self-sacrifice, their only consolation - and brought up in themselves a feeling of boundless love for their neighbor and self-sacrifice. .

On this, his Russian world spirit is based on the liberation of the Orthodox brothers of the Slavs from the Turkish yoke. Knowing for himself what slavery means, he wholeheartedly carried his pennies and himself as a sacrifice for the salvation of Orthodox slaves in Turkey. And the people of Istanbul, Karavelov, Obrenovichi and others who were freed from slavery by Russian blood, but remained slaves and boors in their souls, did not insult him - for the Russian people showed their love and self-sacrifice not for the sake of gratitude, but for their internal Orthodox duty.

According to Dostoevsky, "our people are quiet and reasonable." This means that he relates to every manifestation of life quite meaningfully, consciously and with observation; but having learned and assimilated one or another vital phenomenon, he does not pounce on it, but waits for an opportunity, and even sometimes is only a noble witness, without taking an active part.

The Englishman Bering, who thoroughly studied Russia and the Russian people, in his book The Russian People very well defines its character. The Slavic type, in his opinion, is a concept diametrically opposed to the concept of barbarism.

The Slavs are peaceful, compliant, plastic. They are distinguished by great sharpness of mind and imitative abilities, but they lack originality and initiative (obviously, Bering did not observe the Russian Slavs much). In the Slavic character, there is little will, but a lot of ideological and feeling.

Russian peasants are least of all characterized by rudeness (brutality), but on the other hand, the author often observed the softness and kindness of the Russian people. At the same time, according to Bering, there is no second nation that would be capable of such a high degree of short, but very large strain and effort, and at the same time, completely unusual and unsuitable for regular hard work. Bering establishes that the Russian is capable of "giving little more than the maximum of effort and exertion."

Permanent work is not characteristic of the Russian character. Therefore, among the Russians you will find very many whose knowledge is very diverse and versatile, but superficial. It is also important that if a worthy specialist is found among the Russians, then he is, as it were, ashamed that he knows only his own business, and does not know everything else ... Lack of will entails a lack of moral discipline.

At the same time, Russians are distinguished by an amazing wealth of mental life: they are unusually easy to adapt to the most new and unexpected circumstances for them. Therefore, hardly other nations are compared with Russians in the understanding of other nations. The richness of mental life is inherent not only in the Russian intelligentsia, but also in the peasantry, moreover, the latter are capable of the most diverse work.

According to Bering, the Russians must be excellent colonizers.

A very striking and characteristic manifestation of the character of a Russian person is his tendency to generosity and, moreover, to generosity even with self-sacrifice, even life, without show, without figure, without counting on it even becoming known to others - not to mention the fact that that this is done without any expectation of gratitude and retribution.

Such are the heroic deeds of Arkhip Osipov, Foma Danilov and many, many of our lower ranks and ordinary people. This, so to speak, is the emblem of Russia, all of Russia, all of our native Russia, its true image, Dostoevsky says.

The gift of generosity is an eternal gift, an elemental gift that was born together with the people and is all the more honored because, throughout the centuries of slavery, hardship and poverty, it nevertheless survived intact in the heart of this people. In his generosity, the Russian man does all this and shows it simply, firmly, without demanding any awards or praise, without showing off himself: what I believe in, then I confess. Completely disinterested.

Taking into account the highest qualities of the spiritual qualities of the Russian Slavs, our great Russian thinkers predict a great future for our people.

“Every great people believes and must believe, if it only wants to live long, that in it, and only in it alone, lies the salvation of the World, that it lives to stand at the head of the nations, to unite them all to itself. together and lead them, in a harmonious choir, to the final goal destined for them all. ”This is how ancient Rome thought, that was how France thought, that was how Germany thought. The same fate and our homeland.

“The future will show who is allowed to be ahead of the whole movement,” says Khomyakov, “but if there is any truth in the brotherhood of man, if the feeling of love, truth and goodness is not a ghost, but a living, undying force: the germ of the future life of the world is not a German, an aristocrat and a conqueror, but a Slav. a worker and raznochinets is called to a fruitful feat and great service.

“Who knows, gentlemen foreigners,” says Dostoevsky, “maybe Russia is destined to wait until you finish: in the meantime, imbued with your idea, to understand our ideals, goals, the nature of your aspirations: to harmonize your ideas, elevate them to universal human significance and Finally, in a free spirit, free from all extraneous, class and soil interests, to move into a new broad activity, still unknown in history, starting with what you end up with - and drag you all along with you.

Our former Slavophiles have already asserted that Russia, together with the Slavs and at its head, will say the greatest word to the whole world that it has ever heard, and that this word will precisely be a covenant of social unity, and no longer in the spirit of personal egoism, by which people and nations, artificially and unnaturally, now unite in their civilization, out of the struggle for existence, by positive science defining moral boundaries for the free spirit, at the same time digging holes for each other, uttering lies, blasphemy and slander against each other.

The ideal of the Slavophils was unity in the spirit of true broad love, without lies, without materialism, and on the foundations of a personal magnanimous example, which is destined to give the Russian people at the head of a free pan-Slavic unity in Europe. Therefore, if the Russian national idea is, in the end, only universal universal unity, then all our benefit lies in stopping all discord for everyone, before the time comes to become Russians and nationalists as soon as possible ... (Dostoevsky).

To become Russian means to stop despising your people. And as soon as a European sees that we have begun to respect our people and our nationality, he will immediately begin to respect us ourselves. Having become ourselves, we will finally receive the appearance of a human, and not a monkey. We will get the appearance of a free being, and not a slave, not a lackey, not Potugin; then we will be considered for people, and not for international snooping.

We will then be convinced that the real social word is carried in itself by none other than our people, that in its idea, in its spirit lies the living need for human total unity, total unity with full respect for national personalities and for their preservation, for the preservation of the complete freedom of people. and with an indication of what exactly this freedom consists in - unity in love, guaranteed already by deed, by living example, by the need for true brotherhood in deed, and not by the guillotine, not by millions of severed heads.

Publicity, as one of the main character traits of a Russian Slav, is clearly expressed in many historical facts of Russian life. Russia stands up for the trampled rights of the Italian peoples by revolutionary France and sends her glorious sons to defend justice. Command and the glorious exploits of Suvorov and his miraculous heroes are world facts.

Russia liberates Greece from the Turkish yoke. Russia saves Romania, Russia stands up for the violated rights of the Austrian Emperor. The Russian people shed a sea of blood, lose hundreds of thousands of their sons and billions of money for the freedom of the Bulgarians and Serbs.

All these facts confirm us in our thoughts about the future greatness of Russia. By the power of her love, mercy, mutual assistance, compassion and self-sacrifice, Russia in the future will unite all the tribes subject to it and become in fact a great and glorious Russia. It will unite all the Slavic tribes and become a united one great state.

It will unite all the other tribes of Europe and become one great universal state. And she will bring about this unification not with weapons, not with physical strength, but with the strength of her Russian national genius: the strength of love, mercy, compassion and self-sacrifice. The seeds of the historical past will bear fruit in the future and create the greatness and glory of United Russia.

It is necessary to strictly distinguish between "cosmopolitanism" and "universal humanity".

Cosmopolitanism is the unification of mankind through the absorption of nationalities. This is unification through violence and the extermination of the weakest. Whereas universal humanity or pan-humanity is the unification of various nations into one whole, with the preservation of the mental face of each nation, and the unification is based on peace, love, harmony and mutual assistance.

All Western and other peoples see and feel this power of ours, this strength of ours, this our greatness, but they do not understand and hate Russia. They don't know her, but they are afraid. They do not understand it, but judging by themselves, they envy and expect aggressiveness and conquest. They expect her victory and their overthrow, and therefore fear and hate her.

First of all, we have some special attraction to aliens and foreigners. Already Krizhanich noted this inclination of the Slavs to foreigners and considered it the source of many disasters. He calls this inclination foreignness and finds "too much frenzied belief in foreigners."

We ourselves are to blame for many things. Former slaves (a slave is not only one who serves as a slave, but also one who owns slaves) and backward in knowledge, our ancestors could not help but bow before the scientific and social greatness of the West. At the same time, they were ashamed of their slavery and ignorance, were silent before the mockery of them behind their backs, and even themselves often supported and endured this contempt and mockery.

The smarter and more honest ones were at least ashamed of themselves and their meanness, but the more stupid and with the addition of rudeness, they themselves molested the choir of foreign jackals and were not ashamed to dishonor their motherland and their people.

“The Europeans did not want to honor us for their own for nothing, for any sacrifice and in no case. And the more we despised our nationality to please them, the more they despised us ourselves. They were surprised at how we, being such Tatars, could not become Russians; we could never explain to them that we want to be not Russians, but common people. They ended up directly calling us enemies and future destroyers of European civilization.

What do we do?

First and foremost, become Russian. If universal humanity is a national Russian idea, then first of all one must become Russian, that is, oneself. To become Russian means to stop despising your people.”

And the Germans and other Western peoples are terribly afraid of this. They are afraid that Ilya Muromets will wake up and therefore they are terribly glad of all our failures. They want with all their might to draw us into an alliance with them in order to use our power for themselves, and thereby weaken us. They understand our shortcomings, our humility, trust, kindness, compassion and pride, and very successfully play on these strings of the Russian Slavic soul.

Our enemies, both external and internal, used the closed eyes of the slumbering hero and whispered sweet but false words to him. Not seeing the deed, he believed them. Followed their crafty friendly tips. He walked, not seeing clearly ahead. He often wounded himself, friends - jackals and hyenas uttered a joyful howl.

But the Russian hero woke up. Ilya Muromets opened his eyes. Tempora mutantur et nos mutantur in illis…

Having expressed and pointed out the good, positive aspects of the nature and properties of the soul of the Russian Slavic tribe, it is our duty to note, shade even brighter and more truthfully the negative aspects of our brothers, so that with proper education it would be possible to correct and eradicate what has been imposed by our living conditions and thousands of years of slavery.

Already Krizhanich noted among the Russian Slavs: simplicity, ingenuity and gullibility. This is used by other peoples and various tricks and deceptions seduce the Slavs. They interfere with us in their wars, and they themselves interfere in our wars, they promise us help, but in reality they bring defeat.

But more often it happens that they wait for the end of hostilities, and then some power mediates in the conclusion of a peace treaty, and, of course, this mediation is not to our advantage. And this was said over three hundred years ago. How madly and miserably true to ourselves we are.

Russia's diplomatic relations with foreign states bring her nothing but harm and humiliation. In diplomatic relations with Russia, Western states do not look at her as an equal value, therefore they do not respect her, they strive not for mutual, but only for their own benefit. If the vital needs of Russia lead to a clash with foreign powers, then one should firmly and openly put forward one's demands, and in case of refusal to achieve their fulfillment by the armed force (Krizhanich).

It becomes incredibly painful for the soul, when you remember our diplomacy in Persia, China, and also Vorontsov-Dashkov in the Caucasus ... God, how long will we endure all this! ..

Living on a boundless plain and possessing land as much as anyone needed, the Russian Slavs settled not together, not in groups, not in close-knit settlements, but in clans, and each of these clans constituted an independent unit. The eldest in the kind of head and ruler. No one cares about other genera, and other genera do not care about this either. Russian Slavs loved freedom and were independent.

Subordination and dependence were unbearable for them. They did not bear the power over them. Any strengthening of one kind caused doubt, mistrust, envy and opposition in other kinds. There is no word, in cases of trouble, danger and mass failures, the family helped the family, but in ordinary life between births. there was strife, disagreement, distrust, a tendency to quarrels and civil strife.

Their own could not rule over many clans. The power of outsiders, as it were, destroyed mutual envy and could restrain childbirth into submission and obedience, and even then not for long, and as long as this power was not too cool. Otherwise, individual clans united, rebelled against the government and expelled it. Such were the Novgorodians, such were the people of Kiev, such were all the Russian Slavs. There were cases when they themselves called on this power from outside, if only not their own turned out to be something better, something stronger, something more excellent.

This national strife is characteristic not only of the Russian Slavs, but of all Slavs, which is confirmed by the thousand-year history of the Slavic people.

With this discord, with this mutual enmity, with this disagreement, envy and mistrust, we need to fight with all our might and in all ways. Through education, we must achieve mutual trust, unity, spiritual harmony and joint action in all matters. It must be firmly remembered that unity is not only not a violation of freedom and independence, but, on the contrary, an increase in freedom and a strengthening of independence.

Further, the thousand-year-old slavery in the days of Kievan Rus, the specific principality, the Tatar yoke and serfdom killed the people's consciousness of their own dignity and settled a feeling of distrust of themselves, lack of initiative or undertaking, lack of worries about the future, indifference to the present, lack of interest and respect for property etc.

The natural consequence of a lack of self-respect is a lack of respect in the other person. From this follows either a rude, or a disrespectful attitude towards everything near and around. It couldn't be otherwise. A slave could not respect a slave. They were both impersonal. The slave could not respect the slave owner - he was afraid of him. The slave owner could not respect the slave, his property. Yes, the slave owner could hardly respect the slave owner.

From this position of people among themselves follows the following: lack of consciousness and fulfillment of one's duty to God, neighbor, nature and property. This shortcoming, unfortunately, is too sharply expressed not only in former slaves, but also in former slave owners.

The lack of a sense of ownership follows from the same slavery, and the latter gives rise to a lack of understanding of proper work in quantity and quality: laziness and dishonest performance. This state of affairs caused coercion, punishment, humiliation and punishment.

On the other hand, next to this there was a lack of feelings of resentment, self-love, insults to the personality both in oneself and in others, as well as ingratiation, flattery, deceit, deceit and self-humiliation. Unfortunately, these consequences of the property are inherent not only to the common people, thousand-year-old slaves, but also to educated Russians who lived among slavery and endured the yoke and alienation from knowledge and skill in the past.

Emotional emptiness, lack of a sense of ownership, lack of striving for the best, apathy, hopelessness gave rise to a vice - oblivion and seeking pleasure in alcohol. Previously, for the Russian Slavs there was “drinking - fun”, now drunkenness was the filling of that emptiness, that emptyness, that hopelessness and unconsciousness of despair, which were the result of the absence of everything human, everything spiritual in them.

Recently, the Russian people have been accused of brutality, of a tendency to cruelty, destructiveness, and even murder. It is not true. This is not true. At the time of the revolutionary movement in 1905, the common people really showed both inhumanity, and cruelty, and destructiveness. But this was not his own spiritual manifestation, but inspired - it was a moment of intoxication with anarchy and alcohol - and at the head of this direction were the cruel sons of Jehovah. Never without the participation and leadership of the most evil and most misanthropic sons of Jehovah, our people would not have reached such a brutality.

They say that even now the guys of the village are exemplary barbarians, robbers and destroyers. If this is true, then only in part. But first of all, it should be noted that the revolutionary time has not yet ended, and the instigation of the worshipers of Jehovah, with the assistance of our erring youth and many corrupt teachers of the people, has not yet ended either. The seeds sown by the Cadets bear fruit and will bear fruit for some time to come, but let these false teachers remember that this fruit is too bitter for the people, the people will not forget it, and its curse will fall both on the false teachers and on their descendants.

The Russian people in itself are not cruel and fanatical. He is downtrodden, he is oppressed, he is apathetic, he is timid, he is cautious, he is indecisive, he is impersonal, he is distrustful - but it was. And now the Russian people are waking up with all their good Russian Slavic qualities. Good luck!

Where is the beginning of the Russian land?

Our land is great, vast. Different peoples live on it. Russians and Tatars, Mordovians and Maris, Bashkirs, Avars and many, many others. And where they came from, how they settled, how they lived, science tells us about this history.

The largest people in Russia are Russians. He is probably one of the oldest peoples living in our country. And that's the least known about him.

Where did the Russians come from, who are they? There are many assumptions, and there is no definitive answer to this question yet. It is only known that the first mention of the Rus as a people appeared two thousand years ago. They say that they came from the places where the Swedes, Finns and Belgians now live. This, they say, is not a Slavic tribe. This opinion is disputed by other scientists, arguing that the Rus are Slavs. And they came from the Balkan mountains.

One way or another, the Russians settled on the land where Ukrainians now live, Ukraine. Next to them lived Slavic tribes. Ants settled in the east. Veneti - in the north, and in the south - sklavins. Sometimes they lived peacefully, sometimes they quarreled among themselves. The Russians bullied the most. They constantly raided their neighbors, stealing livestock, taking away property and people. But over time, the tribes began to mix with each other, to become related. Thus a people was formed, which began to be called Russian.

Actually, all peoples on earth appear the same way. First, people (tribes) gather in one place, they begin to either be at enmity or make friends. Gradually, the people that make up the tribes become related to each other, then unite into one common thing - the people. This is a community of people who have a common land, language, customs, that is, culture. And, of course, the general story. It is about the history of the Russian people and the peoples living with them that we will tell.

Someone once thought that the Russians had no history before they accepted the Christian faith. They lived, they say, in an animal way, in dugouts, they could not write, read. They didn't even have cities. Don't believe. Long before the baptism, Russia was called by our European neighbors the country of cities - Gardarika. There were more of them on our land than in all European countries. And where there are cities, there must be books. And that means smart people.

One of our oldest cities is Veliky Novgorod. It is much older than Kyiv, which became the capital of the first known Russian state. There is a small town near Novgorod. It is called Staraya Ladoga. The first Russian prince, Rurik, was either born or settled in this town. When he was born is not exactly known, but it is known when he died. And he died in 879.

He was a Varangian. The exact meaning of this word is also not known. It is assumed that it means either a hired warrior, or an armed merchant, or a salt cooker. But whoever Rurik was, in the middle of the 9th century he began to rule in Novgorod. Again, either he himself seized power in the city, or he was invited to reign in Novgorod, that is, to rule the city.

Then this was easy in Russia. Citizens in the cities gathered at the veche and resolved their issues. For example, they could invite the prince to him to rule them and protect the city from enemies. And if you don’t like how it works, you could get kicked out. The prince, at that time, was like our president. That is, he was chosen and invited, bothered. expelled After the death of Rurik, his sons began to reign in Kyiv. It became the capital of the first known Russian state.

Thus began the Russian people.

People are the children of the gods, but one cannot remain children forever.
Yu. D. Petukhov.

The question of the origin of the Russian people and the Slavic group of peoples is one of the cornerstones in the history of Europe and Russia. Even the chronicler Nestor in The Tale of Bygone Years raised this question: “Where did the Russian land come from?”. And he answered it quite correctly: he began the countdown of Russian history from the mythical Japheth-Iapetus, then, after a long period of time, he located Russia on the banks of the Danube River in Norik. And only then he brought Rus to the banks of the Dnieper and Lake Ilmen, already known from the school course - Kievan-Novgorod Rus. So, even in the heavily edited Tale of Bygone Years, there are two ancestral homes of the Russian people - the Middle East and the Balkans.

In a rather controversial and not recognized by all historians source, the Veles Book, huge territories are indicated as a zone of settlement of the Slavic-Russian tribes: Siberia, the Urals, the steppes of South Russia, the Caucasus, the Black Sea region, including the Crimea-Tavria, the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathians, the Middle Asia (Seven Rivers), Mesopotamia - the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Syria, India, the lands of the future Novgorod Russia.

Classic version

The classic hypothesis about the origin of the Russian people - Rusov, is very Russophobic in its content and is very close to the heart of any Westerner, liberal. Like, Russian history begins from the 8th-9th centuries, with the calling of the Germans-Varangians to Novgorod, some remove the border of the beginning of the "civilized" history of Russia until the 10th-11th centuries - when Christianity became the dominant form of faith.
And before this milestone, they say, the Ruses were in a “wild state”, they did not know God, almost in “primitiveness”. Yes, and they were "aliens" on the Russian Plain, who came from nowhere (possibly from the swamps of Pripyat) and pressed the tribes of the Finno-Ugric peoples and the Balts. This classical scheme was founded by German scientists who were in the service of the Russian state in the 18th century - G. Z. Bayer (1694-1738), G. F. Miller (1705-1783), A. L. Schletser (1735-1809).

In the 19th century, this concept was enshrined in the 12-volume work of N. M. Karamzin (1766-1826) “The History of the Russian State”, which consolidated the German conclusions with the phrase: “This is a great part of Europe and Asia, now called Russia, in its moderate climates was originally inhabited, but by wild peoples, plunged into the depths of ignorance, who did not mark their existence with any of their own historical monuments. Karamzin's conclusions were continued by the historian S. M. Solovyov (1820-1879) in the "History of Russia from Ancient Times" in 29 volumes, the historian V. O. Klyuchevsky in the "Complete Course of Russian History" in 4 volumes.

They consolidated the "classical" version of Russian history: its essence is that the history of Russia goes from the 4th (6th) - 8th (10th) centuries, from the calling of the Varangians and the adoption of baptism, and before that there were "dark ages", "savagery", "desolation". This scheme continued to dominate in the 20th century, at the beginning of the 21st century with minor modifications, it is studied in schools and higher educational institutions as the only and unalternative Truth.

The position of the state and the church

The state supported this version, because it was not interested in information that went beyond the state-legal structures. The appearance of the state and law was associated with the appearance of the Rurik dynasty. The arrival of the "Varangians" was also beneficial for the authorities for foreign policy reasons, linking the Rurikovichs, and then the Romanovs, with "enlightened Europe" by a common origin and dynastic unions. Especially important was the connection with the German ruling houses and England. The Romanovs became famous for their love for these countries.

The thesis about the "savagery" of the Slavic-Russian tribes, before the arrival of Christian missionaries and the baptism of Russia, is more than satisfied with the church organization. After all, he gives the Church the right to assert that the development of culture (one writing is worth something) is connected with the establishment of Christianity in Russia.

Modernity

This concept, cherished and encouraged in every possible way, occupies a dominant position today - in schools, universities, popular science literature, the media, and cinema. Only a few ascetics try to break through the veil of lies and convey at least a part of the historical Truth.

The statement about “young Russia”, “backwardness” of Russians is one of the weapons of the Information War - with the aim of undermining the historical memory of the Russian people, weakening the Will and killing the Spirit of the Russian world. Therefore, the Vatican, the historical schools of England, Germany, also support the "academic" version of world history.

The approaches of this version are rather shaky, the researchers, in most cases, take as a basis the thesis that the first written monuments speaking about the Slavs appeared in the 4th-6th centuries of our era. But it is well known that "written testimonies" is a very subjective category, while the people are objective, peoples exist beyond the will of writers and chroniclers. For example: Native American cultures existed outside of chronicle evidence for thousands of years.

Only one fact delivers a strong blow to the "classical" scheme - the number of Slavs and Russians. The Russian people, after the terrible upheavals of the 20th century - participation in 2 world wars, 4th revolution, including the December 1991, civil war, liberal democratic genocide of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, a huge number of regional wars and conflicts, are one of the most numerous ethnic groups on the planet. So, according to the calculations of the Russian genius D. I. Mendeleev (1834-1907), if it were not for the catastrophic consequences of the 20th century, there would have been 400 million Russians in the middle of the 20th century, and 800 million in the middle of the 21st century. But even at present, Russians and Slavs are the largest language group, an ethnic community in Europe.

A thousand years ago there were approximately 10 million Slavs and, as in modern times, this was the largest ethno-linguistic community in Europe. A legitimate question arises, how did a large part of the population of Europe appear out of nowhere?

Russian (Slavophile) concept of history

Fortunately for us, many researchers were looking for an answer to this question, based on common sense, and not dead common truths. They searched for the origins of Russian identity in the very beginnings of human history, finding the roots of our ancestors in various parts of Eurasia. The tradition of the Russian concept of history goes back to the Croatian (Italian?) researcher Mavro Orbini (? - 1614), who in his work "Historiography of the Slavic people" written in 1606 (published in St. sources (apparently confiscated by the Vatican), bluntly wrote: “The Russian people are the most ancient people on earth, from which all other peoples descended. The Empire, with the courage of its warriors and the best weapons in the world, kept the entire universe in obedience and obedience for thousands of years. The Russians have always owned all of Asia, Africa, Persia, Egypt, Greece, Macedonia, Illyria, Moravia, Shlonsky land, the Czech Republic, Poland, all the shores of the Baltic Sea, Italy and many other countries and lands ... "

This concept was supported by two Russian geniuses V. N. Tatishchev (1686-1750) in The History of Russia and M. V. Lomonosov (1711-1765) in Ancient Russian History. The studies of the ascetics were published only after their death. However, the main thing is that both thinkers came to the same conclusion, apart from each other: the roots of the history of the Slavs and Russians go to the depths of millennia and concern many ancient peoples who have lived in Eurasia since time immemorial. They are known under different names to ancient and other authors (compilers of the Bible, Arabic, Persian, Chinese chroniclers).

Tatishchev led the genealogy of the Slavic-Russian tribes from the Scythian clans. The Scythians-Skolots and related tribes have been known since the 1st millennium BC. and occupied a vast territory from the Danube to the Pacific Ocean. Interestingly, the Byzantines were called "Scythians". "Tauro-Scythians" of the soldiers of the Russian princes Askold, Oleg, Igor, Svyatoslav. And Russia was often called “Great Scythia-Skuf.

M. V. Lomonosov in "Ancient Russian History" believed that the Slavic-Russian tribes inhabited a vast region from the Baltic and Central Europe to the Black Sea and the Caucasus, and they were known under the names of the Vends-Venets, Varangians-Ros, Sarmatians, Roxolans. Lomonosov refuted the fabrications of German historians that Rurik and the Varangians were of German origin, proving that Rurik and the Varangians were Western Rus. Even the name "Rurik" of the Russian root means "rarog" - a falcon.

Lomonosov and Tatishchev were not alone in carefully studying the question of the origin of the roots of the Russian people. V. K. Trediakovsky (1703-1769) analyzed this problem in great detail and carefully in his historical work: “Three arguments about the three most important Russian antiquities, namely: Varangians-Russians, Slovenian rank, gender and language. An excellently educated scientist and writer, who studied at the Moscow Slavic-Greek-Latin Academy, in Holland, France, was fluent in many living and dead languages, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Latin and Russian eloquence, an outstanding Russian educator who stood with M.V. Lomonosov at the origins of Russian grammar and versification. Trediakovsky supported and developed Tatishchev's idea about the Russian beginning of the "Scythians", and he also proved the Russian origin of their self-name. “Scythians-sketes” are “wanderers”, that is, people leading a rather mobile lifestyle, “nomads”.

The Russian concept of history, coming from the thinkers of the 18th century, was continued and consolidated in the works of researchers of the 19th-20th centuries: Tadeusz (Thaddeus) Volansky (1785-1865), A. D. Chertkov (1789-1858), E. I. Klassen ( 1795-1862), Yu. Venelin (1802-1839), F. L. Moroshkin (1804-1857), A. S. Khomyakov (1804-1860), I. E. Zabelina (1820-1909), D. I. Ilovaisky (1832-1920), D. Ya. Samokvasov (1843-1911), A. I. Sobolevsky (1857-1927), G. V. Vernadsky (1877-1973) and a number of other ascetics.

G. V. Vernadsky in the book "Ancient Russia", began the history of the Russian people from the Stone Age and led through the Cimmerian, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnic-Antic periods. The archaeologist and historian D. Ya. Samokvasov defended the Scythian roots of the Russian people, calling the ancestral home of Russia “Ancient Wandering”.

The Bulgarian historian, Slavist, an ascetic of the Slavic national revival, Yu. I. Venelin, believed that Attila was the Grand Duke of the Rus state. He was the first to suggest that the first ruling dynasty of France, the Merovingians, was founded by the Russian prince Merovei.

Of great importance for Russian self-consciousness are the works of the President of the Society of Russian History and Antiquities A. D. Chertkov: “An Outline of the Ancient History of the Proto-Slovenes”, “Pelasgo-Thracian Tribes that Inhabited Italy”, “On the Language of the Pelasgians who Inhabited Italy”. Based on a deep knowledge of ancient languages, a huge number of sources available to him, Chertkov pointed to the linguistic and ethno-cultural affinity between the Slavs and Pelasgians, Etruscans, Scythians, Thracians, Getae, ancient Greeks and Romans. The discovery of Chertkov did not become an event of great importance and significance in national and world history, since it did not correspond to the generally accepted concept of world history.

Chertkov's discovery that the Etruscan-Rasenians are related to the Slavs was supported in his research by the Polish ascetic T. Volansky. He deciphered a large number of Etruscan inscriptions, in deciphering he was based on the Slavic languages. T. Volansky also studied the inscriptions of other civilizations and made a sensational conclusion that the zone of settlement of the Slavic-Russian clans in the south in ancient times extended from North Africa (Egypt, Carthage) to Persia and India. Indirectly, the correctness of his path is proved by the fact that the works of F. Volansky in 1853 were listed in the Vatican in the “Index of Forbidden Books” and sentenced to immediate burning. Volansky challenged the Western concept of world history and the papacy immediately reacted.

In the future, Volansky's research was used by various kinds of researchers, supporters of the relationship of the Etruscans and Slavs. The modern researcher V. Chudinov (b. 1942) believes that the Slavic-Russian Vedic civilization and Slavic runic writing were the first on the planet.

The linguist G.S. Grinevich (born in 1938) compiled a summary table of Proto-Slavic writing. He concluded that a significant part of the ancient inscriptions - Terterian, ancient Indian, Cretan, Etruscan - were made in the Proto-Slavic language.

Modern research in the field of DNA genealogy is of great importance, so A. Klyosov pushed back the border of the origin of the Russian people by 12 thousand years.

At present, the most complete concept of Genuine Russian history, from the 40th millennium BC to the present day, as the main core of the World historical process, was compiled by the Russian thinker, philosopher, historian Yu. D. Petukhov (1951-2009). In his work “The Roads of the Gods”, published back in 1990, on the basis of comparative mythoanalysis, linguistics, he answered the most important question - who were the mysterious Indo-European Aryans. He proved that the progenitors of the Indo-European language family were the Slavs-Aryans-Rus.

In 1994-2000, Petukhov made a series of trips around the Mediterranean basin, the Middle East, Egypt, Asia, studying the most important archaeological excavations in this area, studying the collections of the leading museums in these regions. And having received a huge material database confirming his conclusions, in 2000 he began the publication of the multi-volume "True History of the Rus" (from 40 thousand BC), unfortunately, a strange death that interrupted the life of the Russian Titan of the Spirit did not allow the publication of the work to be completed, the thinker gave basic data from 40 to 3 thousand BC. e. But most importantly, he concluded that "the people of the Rus is incredibly ancient, almost eternal, it gave birth to many other peoples."

And the work of Russian historians and patriots is to continue what the Russian ascetics of the 18th-20th centuries started, to break through the conspiracy of silence.

Sources

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Venelin Yu. Ancient and present Bulgarians. 2 volumes. M .: In the university printing house, 1856.
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Gilferding A.F. On the affinity of the Slavic language with Sanskrit. St. Petersburg: Printing house of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1853.
Hilferding A.F. Remains of the Slavs on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. St. Petersburg: Printing house of V. Bezobrazov, 1862.
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Verbs of Russian sages. Chelyabinsk, 2002.
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Grinevich G.S. Proto-Slavic writing. M., Miratos, 2006.
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For many centuries, scientists have been breaking spears, trying to understand the origin of the Russian people. And if the studies of the past were based on archaeological and linguistic data, today even geneticists have taken up the matter.

From the Danube

Of all the theories of Russian ethnogenesis, the most famous is the Danube one. We owe its appearance to the chronicle "The Tale of Bygone Years", or rather the centuries-old love for this source of domestic academics.

The chronicler Nestor determined the initial territory of the settlement of the Slavs by the territories along the lower reaches of the Danube and the Vistula. The theory of the Danube "ancestral home" of the Slavs was developed by such historians as Sergei Solovyov and Vasily Klyuchevsky.
Vasily Osipovich Klyuchevsky believed that the Slavs moved from the Danube to the Carpathian region, where an extensive military alliance of tribes arose, led by the Duleb-Volhynian tribe.

From the Carpathian region, according to Klyuchevsky, in the 7th-8th centuries, the Eastern Slavs settled in the East and Northeast to Ilmen Lake. The Danubian theory of Russian ethnogenesis is still adhered to by many historians and linguists. A great contribution to its development was made at the end of the 20th century by the Russian linguist Oleg Nikolaevich Trubachev.

Yes, we are Scythians!

One of the most fierce opponents of the Norman theory of the formation of Russian statehood, Mikhail Lomonosov, leaned towards the Scythian-Sarmatian theory of Russian ethnogenesis, which he wrote about in his Ancient Russian History. According to Lomonosov, the ethnogenesis of the Russians occurred as a result of the mixing of the Slavs and the Chudi tribe (Lomonosov's term is Finno-Ugric), and he named the interfluve of the Vistula and the Oder as the place of origin of the ethnic history of the Russians.

Supporters of the Sarmatian theory rely on ancient sources, as did Lomonosov. He compared Russian history with the history of the Roman Empire and ancient beliefs with the pagan beliefs of the Eastern Slavs, finding a large number of coincidences. The fierce struggle with the adherents of the Norman theory is quite understandable: the people-tribe Rus, according to Lomonosov, could not come from Scandinavia under the influence of the expansion of the Norman Vikings. First of all, Lomonosov opposed the thesis about the backwardness of the Slavs and their inability to independently form a state.

Hellenthal theory

The hypothesis about the origin of the Russians, published this year by the Oxford scholar Garrett Hellenthal, seems interesting. Having done a lot of work on the study of the DNA of various peoples, he and a group of scientists compiled a genetic atlas of the migration of peoples.
According to the scientist, two significant milestones can be distinguished in the ethnogenesis of the Russian people. In 2054 B.C. e., according to Hellenthal, the trans-Baltic peoples and peoples from the territories of modern Germany and Poland migrated to the northwestern regions of modern Russia. The second milestone is 1306, when the migration of the Altai peoples began, which actively interbred with representatives of the Slavic branches.
Hellenthal's study is also interesting in that genetic analysis proved that the time of the Mongol-Tatar invasion had practically no effect on Russian ethnogenesis.

Two ancestral homes

Another interesting migration theory was proposed at the end of the 19th century by the Russian linguist Aleksey Shakhmatov. His theory of "two ancestral homelands" is also sometimes called the Baltic one. The scientist believed that initially the Balto-Slavic community stood out from the Indo-European group, which became autochthonous on the territory of the Baltic states. After its collapse, the Slavs settled in the territory between the lower reaches of the Neman and the Western Dvina. This territory became the so-called "first ancestral home". Here, according to Shakhmatov, the Proto-Slavic language was formed, from which all Slavic languages originated.

The further migration of the Slavs was associated with the great migration of peoples, during which, at the end of the second century AD, the Germans went south, freeing the Vistula River basin, where the Slavs came. Here, in the lower basin of the Vistula, Shakhmatov defines the second ancestral home of the Slavs. Already from here, according to the scientist, the division of the Slavs into branches began. The western one went to the Elbe region, the southern one was divided into two groups, one of which settled the Balkans and the Danube, the other - the Dnieper and the Dniester. The latter became the basis of the East Slavic peoples, which include the Russians.

We are local

Finally, another theory that is different from migration is the autochthonous theory. According to it, the Slavs were an indigenous people inhabiting eastern, central and even part of southern Europe. According to the theory of Slavic autochthonism, the Slavic tribes were the indigenous ethnic group of a vast territory - from the Urals to the Atlantic Ocean. This theory has rather ancient roots and many supporters and opponents. The Soviet linguist Nikolai Marr adhered to this theory. He believed that the Slavs did not come from anywhere, but were formed from tribal communities that lived in vast territories from the Middle Dnieper to Laba in the West and from the Baltic to the Carpathians in the south.
Polish scientists also adhered to the autochthonous theory - Klechevsky, Pototsky and Sestrentsevich. They even led the genealogy of the Slavs from the Vandals, basing their hypothesis, among other things, on the similarity of the words "Vendals" and "Vandals". Of the Russians, the origin of the Slavs Rybakov, Mavrodin and Grekov was explained by autochthonous theory.

Christianity began to penetrate the territory of the future Old Russian state long before Prince Vladimir - back in the 9th century. At that time, paganism reigned in these lands, and almost every tribe had its own pantheon. But, according to some sources, the priests who arrived from Byzantium even baptized the princes Askold and Dir along with their boyars.

Approximately in 957, during an official visit to Constantinople, the Kievan princess Olga, the grandmother of Prince Vladimir, became a Christian, and at baptism she took the name Elena. However, at the same time, she was unable to obtain from the basileus (a monarch with hereditary power in ancient Greece) a number of trade, economic and political preferences. But after the princess pretended to think about the establishment of a church in Russia according to the Western rite, official Constantinople hurried to conclude an agreement with Russia that was extremely beneficial for Kyiv, similar to those that are called “treaties of friendship and cooperation” in modern diplomatic practice. And since about the middle of the tenth century, more and more pectoral crosses began to appear in burials in Russia.

F. A. Bruni "The arrival of the bishop in Kyiv" (1839)

Paganism interfered with Russia in the political and even socio-economic sense. Tribal cults served as an obstacle to the creation of a single people and a powerful centralized state. The ruler of Russia, Prince Svyatoslav Igorevich, did not want to accept Christianity and allegedly told his mother Olga that he could lose authority in the eyes of the squad because of this. He failed to create a centralized state.

Svyatoslav's son Yaropolk, according to historians, allegedly felt sympathy for Christianity, but brother Vladimir, who defeated him in the struggle for power, first became a supporter of the spiritual "reaction" and even tried to establish a single pagan pantheon in the country, but felt that this was not at all the same as what Russia needs. And then, according to the annalistic narrations, the prince attended to the "choice of faith."

Choice of Faith

According to legend, Vladimir personally talked with the preachers of Islam, Judaism, Western Rite Christianity, and only a Greek philosopher convinced the prince to opt for Eastern Rite Christianity. Scholars see a certain symbolism in this story.

“In fact, Vladimir had two real options: Christianity of the Western and Eastern rites. However, it was Christianity of the Eastern Rite that had long-standing roots among the Slavs. It began to penetrate into Russia in the 9th century, many local residents, including representatives of the nobility, had already been baptized. By this time, many realized that the adoption of Christianity from Rome would lead to inevitable political dependence on it, ”Anton Gorsky, doctor of historical sciences, shared in an interview with RT the head of the Center for Source Studies of Russian History of the IRI RAS.

I. E. Eggink "Grand Duke Vladimir chooses faith"

According to the professor of the Faculty of Political Science of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov, Doctor of Historical Sciences Sergei Perevezentsev, in the choice of Prince Vladimir, an important role was played by the activities of the Christian preachers Cyril and Methodius, who created the Old Slavonic alphabet in the 9th century and preached among the Slavs and other peoples who lived on the shores of the Black Sea.

“Cyril and Methodius, who were just immigrants from Byzantium, translated liturgical texts, the Gospel into Slavonic. In the West, services were originally conducted in Latin, the Bible was read in Latin, and thanks to Cyril and Methodius, Christianity, namely the Eastern rite, became clear to the Slavs, and most of the Slavs at that time, respectively, turned out to be oriented to the Eastern tradition, ”he noted.

According to the expert, the Western rite was treated coolly in Russia. “At that time, people from the Western Slavic peoples who were baptized according to the Eastern rite lived in Kyiv, who already had a negative experience of communicating with the Germans, and they shared it with the inhabitants of Russia,” Sergei Perevezentsev emphasized.

Land of Chersonese

According to historical sources, in the late 980s, the Byzantine emperor Basil concluded an alliance with Prince Vladimir against the rebellious commander Varda Foki, who claimed the throne of the empire. One of the key points of the agreement was the marriage of the Kyiv prince to the emperor's sister Anna.

Details of further events are known from later retellings and cause discussions among historians today. According to one of the most common versions, at a certain stage, the Byzantine basileus tried to evade the fulfillment of his obligations. Then the squad of Vladimir besieged and captured the outpost of Constantinople in the Northern Black Sea coast Korsun-Chersones (it was located on the site of modern Sevastopol).

After that, the emperor decided that the contract still needed to be fulfilled, and the Byzantine princess Anna went to the Crimea, where her fiancé was waiting for her. Vladimir was baptized and married Anna according to the Christian rite.

V. M. Vasnetsov "Baptism of Vladimir"

“Vladimir and his retinue were baptized in Korsun and removed many Christian shrines from here. The first priests who baptized Russia were from Chersonese. It is believed that Anastas, a priest who later became the rector of the Church of the Tithes, is also from Chersonesus. The spirit of the Christian faith, coming from the Eastern Mediterranean, from Byzantium, reached Chersonesos-Kherson-Korsun and became a bridge along which faith came to Russia. And under Vladimir, the most important thing has already happened - this is the gathering of Russian lands by a single spiritual force, the Orthodox faith, ”said Ekaterina Altabaeva, chairman of the Legislative Assembly of Sevastopol, in an interview with RT.

The emergence of the Russian people

Returning with his legal wife to Kyiv, Vladimir ordered to throw pagan idols into the river and baptize first the people of Kiev, and then the rest of the inhabitants of Russia. Contrary to myths, in the central regions of Russia, baptism went smoothly. Collisions took place only in the north of Russia, and in the east the process simply took place gradually.

“The picture of the Christianization of Russia in our days is supplemented by archeology. Pectoral crosses have been appearing since the middle of the 10th century, and in the 11th century, judging by archaeological finds, the process of the spread of Christianity in Russia took on a mass character. People cared about the salvation of their souls and thought about the afterlife. And we see that the transition to a new funeral rite took place extremely quickly, ”said Vladimir Petrukhin, chief researcher at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Historical Sciences, in an interview with RT.

According to Sergei Perevezentsev, baptism played a decisive role in Russian ethnogenesis.

“The adoption of Christianity, in fact, created the very Russian people, which then built the great Russian civilization.

Prior to this, the population of Russia was a heterogeneous union of tribes and ethnic groups. It is quite possible that if the Eastern Slavs had not been baptized, they, like the Polabian Slavs, would not have been able to unite and would have perished at the hands of the Germans. And so, thanks to the adoption of Christianity, the Russian people arose, ”the expert emphasized.

The influence of baptism on the formation of the Russian people is also noted by Vladimir Pervukhin.

“Before the adoption of Christianity, there were Vyatichi, Krivichi, Dregovichi. And after the baptism, the people united into a completely new community,” he explained.

Anton Gorsky draws attention to the impact the adoption of Christianity had on the culture of Russia. “Along with faith, writing also came to Russia. It was known as a phenomenon before, but the emergence of book culture was associated precisely with the adoption of Christianity,” the expert noted.

The head of the press service of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, priest Alexander Volkov, in an interview with RT, said that the whole history of Russia and Russia is connected with Christianity.

RIA News

“It is impossible to separate the secular history of Russia from the church history. It all started with the adoption of Christianity by the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir. This decision has become the starting point from which we can count our history. If we look at the history of Russian culture, we will see that the Orthodox faith was its core. Orthodoxy played a crucial role in our history in the Middle Ages, in the New Age, and in the restless 20th century,” he stressed.

According to Ekaterina Altabaeva, the 1030th anniversary of the Baptism of Russia is an important event in our lives. “For us, 1030 years of the Baptism of Russia is a special date that we experience together with all the Orthodox, with the Russian world, as a very important stage in the formation of the spiritual development of our Russian people,” she said.

The most important civilizational role of baptism in the history of Russia is also emphasized by Anton Gorsky. “What can be said? The cultural code of Russia was set by Eastern Christianity,” the expert summed up.