Who drove the Tatars of the Mongols. Tatar-Mongol yoke - historical fact or fiction

Studying the works of chroniclers, the testimonies of European travelers who visited Rus' and the Mongol Empire, the far from unambiguous interpretation of the events of the 10th–15th centuries by academician N.V. Levashov, L.N. Gumilyov, one cannot help but wonder a range of questions: there was a Tatar-Mongolian yoke or it was invented on purpose, for a specific purpose, this is a historical fact or deliberate fiction.

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Russians and Mongols

The prince of Kyiv Yaroslav the Wise, who died in 978, had to do so, how the british do it, in which the entire inheritance is given to the eldest son, and the rest become either priests or naval officers, then we would not have formed several separate regions given to the heirs of Yaroslav.

Specific disunity of Rus'

Each prince who received the land divided it among his sons, which contributed to an even greater weakening of Kievan Rus, although it expanded its possessions by transferring the capital to forest Vladimir.

Our state do not be specific disunity, would not allow the Tatar-Mongols to enslave themselves.

Nomads at the walls of Russian cities

At the end of the 9th century, Kyiv was surrounded by the Hungarians, who were forced out to the west by the Pechenegs. Following them, by the middle of the 11th century, Torks followed, followed by the Polovtsy; then the invasion of the Mongol Empire began.

Approaches to the Russian principalities repeatedly besieged by powerful troops steppe dwellers, after a while the former nomads were replaced by others who enslaved them with greater prowess and better weapons.

How did the empire of Genghis Khan develop?

The period of the end of the XII - beginning of the XIII century was marked by the unification of several Mongolian clans, directed by the extraordinary Temujin who took the title of Genghis Khan in 1206.

The endless feuds of the governors-noyons were stopped, ordinary nomads were subjected to exorbitant dues and obligations. To strengthen the position of the common population and the aristocracy, Genghis Khan moved his huge army first to the prosperous Celestial Empire, and later to Islamic lands.

The state of Genghis Khan had an organized military administration, government staff of employees, had postal communication, constant taxation. The code of canons "Yasa" balanced the powers of adherents of any beliefs.

The foundation of the empire was the army, based on the principles of universal army duty, military order, and strict restraint. Yurtzh quartermasters planned routes, halts, stocked food. Information about future points of attack brought merchants, heads of convoys, special missions.

Attention! The result of the aggressive campaigns of Genghis Khan and his followers was a gigantic superpower that covered the Middle Kingdom, Korea, Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Transcaucasia, Syria, the steppes of Eastern Europe, and Kazakhstan.

Successes of the Mongols

From the southeast, imperial troops unloaded on the Japanese Islands, the islands of the Malay Archipelago; reached Egypt on the Sinai Peninsula, to the north they approached the European borders of Austria. 1219 - the army of Genghis Khan conquered the greatest Central Asian state - Khorezm, which then became part of the Golden Horde. By 1220 Genghis Khan founded Karakorum- the capital of the Mongol Empire.

Having rounded the Caspian Sea from the south, the cavalry troops invaded Transcaucasia, through the Derbent Gorge they reached the North Caucasus, where they met with the Polovtsians and Alans, defeating whom, they captured the Crimean Sudak.

Steppe nomads persecuted by the Mongols asked for protection from the Russians. The Russian princes accepted the offer to fight with an unknown army outside the borders of their land. In 1223, by a cunning trick, the Mongols lured the Russians and Polovtsians to the shores. The squads of our commanders resisted separately and were completely overturned.

1235 - the meeting of the Mongolian aristocracy approved the decision on the campaign to capture Rus', detaching most of the imperial soldiers, about 70 thousand combat units under the control of Genghis Khan's grandson Batu.

This army was defined symbolically as "Tatar-Mongolian". "Tatars" were called Persians, Chinese, Arabs of the steppes living on northern border with them.

By the middle of the 13th century, in the mighty state of Chingizids, the chiefs of military districts and selected privileged fighters were Mongol, the other troops remained a characteristic imperial army, representing the soldiers of the defeated territories - the Chinese, Alans, Iranians, and countless Turkic tribes. Having captured Silver Bulgaria, the Mordvins and the Kipchaks, this cloud moved closer in the cold of 1237 to the borders of Rus', covered Ryazan, then Vladimir.

Important! The historical countdown of the Tatar-Mongol yoke begins in 1237, with the capture of Ryazan.

Russians defend themselves

Since that time, Rus' began to pay tribute to the conquerors, very often subjected to the most severe raids of the Tatar-Mongol troops. Rusichi heroically responded to the invaders. Little Kozelsk entered the history, which the Mongols called the evil city because he fought back and fought to the last; defenders fought: women, old people, children - everything, who could hold a weapon or pouring molten resin from the walls of the city. Not a single person in Kozelsk survived, some died in battle, the rest were finished off when the enemy army broke through the defenses.

The name of the Ryazan boyar Yevpaty Kolovrat is well known, who, having returned to his native Ryazan and seeing what the invaders had done there, rushed after the Batyev detachments with a small army, fought them to the death.

1242 - Khan Batu founded the newest settlement on the Volga plains Genghisid Empire - Golden Horde. The Russians gradually guessed with whom they were to come into conflict. From 1252 to 1263, Alexander Nevsky was the highest lord of Vladimir, in fact, then the Tatar yoke was established as a concept of legal subordination to the Horde.

Finally, the Russians understood that it was necessary to unite against a terrible enemy. 1378 - Russian squads on the Vozha River defeated the huge Tatar-Mongolian hordes under the leadership of an experienced Murza Begich. Offended by this defeat, the temnik Mamai put together an innumerable army and moved to Muscovy. At the call of Prince Dmitry to save his native land, all of Rus' rose.

1380 - Mamai's temnik was finally defeated on the Don River. After that great battle, Dmitry began to be called Donskoy, the battle itself was named after the historical town of Kulikovo field between the rivers Don and Nepryadva, where the massacre took place, called.

But Rus' did not come out of bondage. How many years still could not she gain final independence. Two years later, Tokhtamysh Khan burned Moscow, because Prince Dmitry Donskoy left to gather an army, he could not give worthy rebuff to the attackers. For another hundred years, the Russian princes continued to obey the Horde, and it became weaker and weaker due to the strife of Genghisides - the bloodlines of Genghis.

1472 - Ivan III, Grand Duke of Moscow, defeated the Mongols, refused to pay tribute to them. A few years later, the Horde decided to restore its rights and moved with the next campaign.

1480 - Russian troops settled on one bank of the Ugra River, Mongolian - on the other. "Standing" on the Ugra lasted 100 days.

Finally, the Russians moved away from the coast to make room for a future battle, but the Tatars did not have the courage to cross, they left. The Russian army returned to Moscow, and the opponents returned to the Horde. The question is who won- Slavs or the fear of their enemies.

Attention! In 1480 came the end of the yoke in Rus', its north and northeast. However, a number of researchers believe that Moscow's dependence on the Horde continued until the reign.

The results of the invasion

Some scholars believe that the contributed to the regression of Rus', but this is a lesser evil compared to the Western Russian enemies, who took away our allotments, demanding the transition of the Orthodox to Catholicism. Positive thinkers believe that the Mongol Empire helped Muscovy rise. The strife ceased, the divided Russian principalities united against a common enemy.

After the establishment of stable ties with Russia, the rich Tatar murzas with convoys amicably reached out to Muscovy. The arrivals converted to Orthodoxy, married Slavs, gave birth to children with non-Russian surnames: Yusupov, Khanov, Mamaev, Murzin.

The classic history of Russia is refuted

Among some historians there is a different opinion about the Tatar-Mongol yoke and about those who invented it. Here are some interesting facts:

1. The gene pool of the Mongols is different from the gene pool of the Tatars, so they cannot be combined into a common ethnic group.
2. Genghis Khan had a Caucasian appearance.
3. Lack of writing Mongols and Tatars of the 12th–13th centuries, as a consequence of this - the lack of perpetuated evidence of their victorious raids.
4. Our chronicles, confirming the bondage of the Russians for almost three hundred years, have not been found. There are some pseudo-historical documents that describe the Mongol-Tatar yoke only since the beginning of the reign.
5. Confusion causes lack of archaeological artifacts from the place of famous battles, for example, from the Kulikovo field,
6. The entire territory over which the Horde roamed did not give archaeologists either a lot of weapons of that time, or the burial places of the dead, or mounds with the bodies of the dead on the camps of the steppe nomads.
7. The ancient Russian tribes had paganism with a Vedic worldview. Their patrons were the God Tarkh and his sister, the Goddess Tara. From here came the name of the people "Tarkhtars", later simply "Tartars". The population of Tartaria was Russian, further to the east of Eurasia they were diluted with scattered multilingual tribes, nomadic in search of food. All of them were called Tartars, in the present - Tatars.
8. Later chroniclers covered up the fact of the violent, bloody imposition of the Greek Catholic faith on Rus' by the invasion of the Horde, carried out the order of the Byzantine Church and the ruling elite of the state. The new Christian doctrine, which received the name Orthodox Christianity after the reform of Patriarch Nikon, led the masses to a split: some accepted Orthodoxy, those who disagree exterminated or exiled to the northeastern provinces, to Tartaria.
9. The Tartars did not forgive the destruction of the population, the ruin of the Kyiv principality, but its army failed to respond with lightning speed, distracted by turmoil on the Far Eastern borders of the country. When the Vedic empire gained strength, it rebuffed those who planted the Greek religion, a real civil war began: the Russians with the Russians, the so-called pagans (Old Believers) with the Orthodox. Lasting almost 300 years modern historians filed a confrontation of their own against ours as a “Mongol-Tatar invasion”.
10. After the forced baptism by Vladimir the Red Sun, the Kiev principality was destroyed, the settlements were devastated, burned, most of the inhabitants were destroyed. They could not explain what was happening, so they covered it with a Tatar-Mongol yoke to mask the cruelty transition to a new faith(not without reason Vladimir after that began to be called Bloody) the invasion of "wild nomads" was called.

Tatars in Rus'

Kazan's past

The Kazan fortress of the end of the 12th century becomes the patronal city of the state of the Volga-Kama Bulgars. After some time, the country submits to the Mongols, for three centuries it submits to the Golden Horde, the Bulgarian rulers, akin to the Moscow princes, pay dues, correct subordinate functions.

By the fifties of the XV century, following the obvious division of the Mongol Empire, its former ruler Udu-Muhammed, who found himself without property, invaded the Bulgarian capital, executed the governor Ali-Bek, seized his throne.

1552 - Tsarevich Yediger arrived in Kazan - the heir of the Khan of Astrakhan. Ediger descended on 10,000 foreigners, self-willed nomads wandering around the steppe.

Ivan IV Vasilyevich, Tsar of All Rus', conquers the capital of Bulgaria

The battle for Kazan was played out not with the native inhabitants of the state, but with the military masses of Yediger, who had been overtaken by him from Astrakhan. The army of many thousands of Ivan the Terrible was opposed by a flock of Genghisides, consisting of the peoples of the Middle Volga region, Turkic tribes, Nogais, Mari.

October 15, 1552 after 41 days courageous defense, during a frenzied assault, the glorious fertile city of Kazan surrendered. After the defense of the capital, almost all of its defenders perished. The city was completely destroyed. A merciless punishment awaited the surviving residents: wounded men, old people, children - all were finished off by victors at the behest of the Moscow Tsar; young women with tiny babies were sent into slavery. If the tsar of all Rus', having finished with Kazan and Astrakhan, planned to perform the rite of baptism against the will of all Tatars, then, of course, he would have committed another lawlessness.

Even Peter I advocated the creation of a mono-confessional Christian state, but during his reign, the peoples of Rus' did not reach the universal baptism.

The baptism of the Tatars in Rus' took place from the first half of the 18th century. 1740 - Empress Anna Ioannovna issued a decree according to which all the heterodox peoples of Russia were to accept Orthodoxy. According to the prescriptions, it was not fitting for new converts to live with non-Christians; non-Christs were to be resettled in separate localities. Among the Muslim Tatars who recognized Orthodoxy there was a small share much less in comparison with the pagans. The situation gave rise to the displeasure of the crown and the administration, who adopted the practice of the last quarter of the 16th century. Those in power initiated cardinal sanctions.

Radical measures

It was not possible to baptize the Tatars in Rus' several centuries ago and remains problematic in our time. Actually, the refusal of the Tatars to accept Orthodoxy, as well as the resistance to the course of Christianization of the Orthodox priesthood, led to the implementation of the intention to destroy Muslim churches.

The Islamic people not only rushed to the authorities with petitions, but also reacted extremely disapprovingly to the widespread destruction of mosques. It spawned dominant power concern.

Orthodox priests of the Russian army became preachers among non-Christian servicemen. Upon learning of this, some of the heterodox recruits preferred to be baptized even before mobilization. In order to induce the adoption of Christianity, tax discounts were used by the baptized, and non-Orthodox had to pay additional contributions.

Documentary film about the Mongol-Tatar yoke

Alternative history, Tatar-Mongol yoke

findings

As you understand, many opinions are offered today about the features of the Mongol invasion. Maybe in the future, scientists will be able to find solid evidence of the fact of its existence or fiction, what politicians and rulers covered up with the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and for what purpose this was done. Perhaps the true truth about the Mongols (the "great" as other tribes called Genghisides) will be revealed. History is a science where there can be no unambiguous view on this or that event, as it is always considered from different points of view. Scientists collect facts, and descendants will draw conclusions.

It is noteworthy that the epithet "settled" is most often attached to myths.
This is where the root of evil lies: myths take root in the mind as a result of a simple process - mechanical repetition.

WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS

The classical, that is, the version of the "Mongol-Tatar invasion of Rus'", "Mongol-Tatar yoke" and "liberation from the Horde tyranny" recognized by modern science is quite well known, but it would be useful to refresh it in memory once again. So... At the beginning of the 13th century, in the Mongolian steppes, a brave and devilishly energetic tribal leader named Genghis Khan put together a huge army of nomads, soldered by iron discipline, and set out to conquer the whole world, "to the last sea." Having conquered the nearest neighbors, and then seized China, the mighty Tatar-Mongol horde rolled to the west. After passing about five thousand kilometers, the Mongols defeated the state of Khorezm, then Georgia, in 1223 they reached the southern outskirts of Rus', where they defeated the army of Russian princes in the battle on the Kalka River. In the winter of 1237, the Mongol-Tatars invaded Rus' with all their innumerable troops, burned and destroyed many Russian cities, and in 1241, in fulfillment of the precepts of Genghis Khan, they tried to conquer Western Europe - they invaded Poland, the Czech Republic, in the southwest they reached shores of the Adriatic Sea, but turned back, because they were afraid to leave in their rear ruined, but still dangerous for them, Rus'. And the Tatar-Mongol yoke began. The huge Mongol empire, stretching from Beijing to the Volga, hung like an ominous shadow over Russia. The Mongol khans issued labels to the Russian princes for reigning, attacked Rus' many times in order to rob and rob, repeatedly killed Russian princes in their Golden Horde. It should be clarified that there were many Christians among the Mongols, and therefore individual Russian princes established rather close, friendly relations with the Horde rulers, even becoming their sworn brothers. With the help of the Tatar-Mongol detachments, other princes kept on the "table" (ie on the throne), solved their purely internal problems, and even collected tribute for the Golden Horde on their own.

Having grown stronger over time, Rus' began to show its teeth. In 1380, the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Horde Khan Mamai with his Tatars, and a century later, in the so-called "standing on the Ugra", the troops of the Grand Duke Ivan III and the Horde Khan Akhmat met. The opponents camped for a long time on opposite sides of the Ugra River, after which Khan Akhmat, finally realizing that the Russians had become strong and he had every chance of losing the battle, gave the order to retreat and led his horde to the Volga. These events are considered "the end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke."

VERSION
All of the above is a brief summary or, speaking in a foreign manner, a digest. The minimum of what "every intelligent person" should know.

... I like the method that Conan Doyle gave to Sherlock Holmes' impeccable logic: first, the true version of what happened is presented, and then the chain of reasoning that led Holmes to the discovery of the truth.

That is exactly what I intend to do. First, to state your own version of the "Horde" period of Russian history, and then, over a couple of hundred pages, methodically substantiate your hypothesis, referring not so much to your own feelings and "insights", but to the annals, the works of historians of the past, which turned out to be undeservedly forgotten.

I intend to prove to the reader that the classical hypothesis briefly outlined above is completely wrong, that what happened actually fits into the following theses:

1. No "Mongols" came to Rus' from their steppes.

2. The Tatars are not aliens, but residents of the Volga region, who lived in the neighborhood with the Russians long before the notorious invasion.

3. What is commonly called the Tatar-Mongol invasion was in fact a struggle between the descendants of Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest (son of Yaroslav and grandson of Alexander) with their rival princes for sole power over Russia. Accordingly, Yaroslav and Alexander Nevsky act under the names of Genghis Khan and Batu.

4. Mamai and Akhmat were not alien raiders, but noble nobles, who, according to the dynastic ties of the Russian-Tatar families, had the right to a great reign. Accordingly, "Mamay's Battle" and "standing on the Ugra" are episodes not of the struggle against foreign aggressors, but of another civil war in Rus'.

5. To prove the truth of all of the above, there is no need to turn on its head the historical sources we have today. It is enough to re-read many Russian chronicles and works of early historians thoughtfully. Weed out frankly fabulous moments and draw logical conclusions instead of mindlessly taking on faith the official theory, whose weight lies mainly not in evidence, but in the fact that the "classical theory" has simply been settled for many centuries. Having reached the stage at which any objections are interrupted by a seemingly iron argument: "Forgive me, but EVERYONE KNOWS this!"

Alas, the argument only looks ironclad... Only five hundred years ago "everyone knew" that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Two hundred years ago, the French Academy of Sciences in an official paper ridiculed those who believed in stones falling from the sky. Academicians, in general, should not be judged too harshly: in fact, “everyone knew” that the sky is not a firmament, but air, where stones have nowhere to come from. One important clarification: no one knew that it was stones flying outside the atmosphere that could often fall to the ground ...

We should not forget that many of our ancestors (more precisely, all of them) had several names. Even simple peasants had at least two names: one - worldly, under which everyone knew the person, the second - baptismal.

One of the most famous statesmen of Ancient Rus', Prince of Kyiv Vladimir Vsevolodich Monomakh, it turns out, is familiar to us under worldly, pagan names. In baptism, he was Vasily, and his father was Andrei, so his name was Vasily Andreevich Monomakh. And his grandson Izyaslav Mstislavich, according to his and his father's baptismal names, should be called - Panteleimon Fedorovich!) The baptismal name sometimes remained a secret even for loved ones - there were cases when in the first half of the 19th (!) Century, inconsolable relatives and friends only after the death of the head of the family recognized that a completely different name should be written on the tombstone, with which the deceased, it turns out, was baptized ... In church books, for example, he was listed as Ilya - meanwhile, he was known all his life as Nikita ...

WHERE MONGOLS?
Indeed, where is the "better half" of the expression "Mongol-Tatar" horde that has stuck in the teeth? Where are the Mongols proper, according to other zealous authors, who constituted a kind of aristocracy, cementing the core of the army that rolled into Rus'?

So, the most interesting and mysterious thing is that not a single contemporary of those events (or who lived in fairly close times) is unable to find the Mongols!

They simply do not exist - black-haired, slanted-eyed people, those whom anthropologists, without further ado, call "Mongoloids". No, even if you crack!

It was possible to trace only the traces of two Mongoloid tribes that certainly came from Central Asia - the Jalairs and the Barlases. But they did not come to Rus' as part of the army of Genghis, but to ... Semirechie (a region of present-day Kazakhstan). From there, in the second half of the 13th century, the Jalairs migrated to the area of ​​\u200b\u200bpresent Khujand, and the Barlases to the valley of the Kashkadarya River. From Semirechye they ... came to some extent Turkified in the sense of the language. In the new place, they were already so Turkicized that in the 14th century, in any case, in the second half of it, they considered the Turkic language their native language "(from the fundamental work of B.D. Grekov and A.Yu. Yakubovsky" Rus' and Golden Horde" (1950).

Everybody. No matter how they struggle, historians are unable to detect any other Mongols. The Russian chronicler among the peoples who came to Rus' in the Batu Horde puts in the first place the "Kumans" - that is, the Kipchaks-Polovtsy! Who did not live in present-day Mongolia, but practically next door to the Russians, who (as I will prove later) had their own fortresses, cities and villages!

Arab historian Elomari: "In ancient times, this state (the Golden Horde of the 14th century - A. Bushkov) was the country of the Kipchaks, but when the Tatars took possession of it, the Kipchaks became their subjects. Then they, that is, the Tatars, mixed up and intermarried with them, and they all definitely became Kipchaks, as if they were of the same genus."

The fact that the Tatars did not come from anywhere, but from time immemorial lived close to the Russians, I will tell a little later, when I detonate, honestly, a serious bomb. In the meantime, let's pay attention to an extremely important circumstance: there are no Mongols. The Golden Horde is represented by Tatars and Kipchaks-Polovtsy, who are not Mongoloids, but normal Caucasian types, fair-haired, light-eyed, not at all slanted... (And their language is similar to Slavic.)

Like Genghis Khan with Batu. Ancient sources depict Genghis as tall, long-bearded, with "lynx", green-yellow eyes. Persian historian Rashid
ad-Din (a contemporary of the "Mongolian" wars) writes that in the family of Genghis Khan, children "were born mostly with gray eyes and blond." G.E. Grumm-Grzhimailo mentions a "Mongolian" (whether Mongolian?!) legend, according to which the ancestor of Genghis in the ninth tribe of Boduanchar is blond and blue-eyed! And the same Rashid ad-Din also writes that this very generic name Borjigin, assigned to the descendants of Boduanchar, just means ... Gray-eyed!

By the way, the image of Batu is drawn in exactly the same way - fair-haired, light-bearded, light-eyed... The author of these lines has lived all his adult life not so far from those places where allegedly "created his innumerable army of Genghis Khan." I have seen enough of someone, but the primordially Mongoloid people - Khakasses, Tuvans, Altaians, and the Mongols themselves. There are no fair-haired and light-eyed among them, a completely different anthropological type ...

By the way, there are no names "Batu" or "Batu" in any language of the Mongolian group. But "Batu" is available in Bashkir, and "Basty", as already mentioned, in Polovtsian. So the very name of Genghis's son definitely did not come from Mongolia.

I wonder what his fellow tribesmen wrote about their glorious ancestor Genghis Khan in the "real", present-day Mongolia?

The answer is disappointing: in the 13th century, the Mongolian alphabet did not yet exist. Absolutely all the chronicles of the Mongols were written no earlier than the 17th century. And consequently, any mention that Genghis Khan really came out of Mongolia will be no more than a retelling of ancient legends recorded three hundred years later ... Which, presumably, the "real" Mongols really liked - no doubt, it was very pleasant to suddenly find out that your ancestors, it turns out, once went with fire and sword to the very Adriatic ...

So, we have already found out a rather important circumstance: there were no Mongols in the "Mongol-Tatar" horde, i.e. dark-haired and narrow-eyed inhabitants of Central Asia, who in the XIII century, presumably, peacefully roamed their steppes. Someone else "came" to Rus' - fair-haired, gray-eyed, blue-eyed people of European appearance. And in fact, they came and not so far away - from the Polovtsian steppes, no further.

HOW MUCH WAS "MONGOLO-TATARS"?
In fact, how many of them came to Rus'? Let's start to find out. Russian pre-revolutionary sources mention "a half-million Mongol army".

Sorry for the harshness, but both the first and second figures are bullshit. Since they were invented by the townspeople, cabinet figures who saw the horse only from afar and had absolutely no idea what cares it takes to keep a fighting, as well as pack and marching horse in working condition.

Any warrior of a nomadic tribe goes on a campaign, having three horses (as a minimum, two). One is carrying luggage (a small "dry ration", horseshoes, spare bridle straps, every little thing like spare arrows, armor that is not necessary to wear on the march, etc.). From the second to the third, you need to change from time to time so that one horse is a little rested all the time - you never know what will happen, sometimes you have to engage in battle "from the wheels", i.e. with hooves.

A primitive calculation shows: for an army of half a million or four hundred thousand fighters, about one and a half million horses are needed, in extreme cases - a million. Such a herd will be able to advance at most fifty kilometers, but it will not be able to go further - the advanced ones will instantly exterminate the grass over a vast area, so that the rear ones will die of starvation very quickly. No matter how much oats you store for them in toroki (and how much can you store?).

Let me remind you that the invasion of the "Mongol-Tatars" into the borders of Rus', all the main invasions unfolded in winter. When the remaining grass is hidden under the snow, and grain has yet to be taken away from the population - besides, a lot of fodder perishes in burning cities and villages ...

They may object: the Mongolian horse is perfectly able to get food for itself from under the snow. Everything is correct. "Mongols" are hardy creatures that can live all winter on "self-sufficiency". I saw them myself, I once rode a little on one, although there was no rider. Magnificent creatures, I am forever fascinated by Mongolian horses and with great pleasure would exchange my car for such a horse, if it were possible to keep it in the city (and, alas, there is no opportunity).

However, in our case, the above argument does not work. Firstly, ancient sources do not mention horses of the Mongolian breed, which were "in service" with the horde. On the contrary, experts in horse breeding unanimously prove that the "Tatar-Mongolian" horde rode Turkmens - and this is a completely different breed, and looks different, and it is not always able to soak in winter without human help ...

Secondly, the difference between a horse allowed to roam in the winter without any work, and a horse forced to make long transitions under a rider, and also to participate in battles, is not taken into account. Even Mongols, if there were a million of them, with all their fantastic ability to soak in the middle of a snow-covered plain, would die of hunger, interfering with each other, beating off rare blades of grass from each other ...

But they, in addition to the riders, were also forced to carry heavy prey!

But the “Mongols” also had rather big carts with them. The cattle that pulls the wagons must also be fed, otherwise they won't pull the wagon...

In a word, throughout the twentieth century, the number of "Mongol-Tatars" who attacked Rus' dwindled like the famous shagreen leather. In the end, historians with gnashing of teeth stopped at thirty thousand - the remnants of professional pride simply do not allow them to go lower.

And one more thing... The fear of admitting heretical theories like mine into Great Historiography. Because, even if we take the number of "invading Mongols" to be thirty thousand, a series of sarcastic questions arises ...

And the first among them will be this: isn’t it enough? No matter how you refer to the "disunity" of the Russian principalities, thirty thousand cavalrymen is too meager a figure in order to arrange "fire and ruin" throughout Rus'! After all, they (even the supporters of the "classical" version admit this) did not move in a compact mass, leaning en masse one by one on Russian cities. Several detachments scattered in different directions - and this reduces the number of "innumerable Tatar hordes" to the limit beyond which elementary distrust begins: well, such a number of aggressors could not, no matter what discipline their regiments were soldered (torn off from the supply bases, as if a group of saboteurs behind enemy lines), "capture" Rus'!

It turns out a vicious circle: for purely physical reasons, a huge army of "Mongol-Tatars" could not maintain combat readiness, move quickly, and inflict those very notorious "indestructible blows". A small army would never have been able to establish control over most of the territory of Rus'.

Only our hypothesis can save us from this vicious circle - that there were no aliens. There was a civil war, the enemy forces were relatively small - and they relied on their own forage stocks accumulated in the cities.

By the way, it is completely unusual for nomads to fight in winter. But winter is a favorite time for Russian military campaigns. From time immemorial, they went on a campaign, using frozen rivers as “roadways” - the most optimal way of waging war on a territory almost completely overgrown with dense forests, where it’s damned difficult for a more or less large military detachment, especially cavalry.

All chronicle information about the military campaigns of 1237-1238 that has come down to us. they draw the classic Russian style of these battles - the battles take place in winter, and the "Mongols", who seem to be supposed to be classic steppe dwellers, act with amazing skill in the forests. First of all, I mean the encirclement and subsequent complete destruction of the Russian detachment on the City River under the command of the Grand Duke of Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich ... Such a brilliant operation could not have been carried out by the inhabitants of the steppes, who simply had no time, and no place to learn to fight in the thicket .

So, our piggy bank is gradually replenished with weighty evidence. We found out that no "Mongols", i.e. for some reason there were no Mongoloids among the "horde". They found out that there could not be many “aliens”, that even the meager number of thirty thousand, on which historians entrenched themselves, like the Swedes near Poltava, could in no way provide the “Mongols” with establishing control over all of Russia. We found out that the horses under the "Mongols" were by no means Mongolian, but these "Mongols" fought for some reason according to Russian rules. And they were, curiously, fair-haired and blue-eyed.

Not much to start with. And we, I warn you, are just entering the taste ...

WHERE DID THE "MONGOLS" COME TO Rus'?
That's right, I didn't mess anything up. And very quickly the reader learns that the question put in the headline only at first glance seems to be nonsense ...

We have already talked about the second Moscow and the second Krakow. There is also a second Samara - "Samara Grad", a fortress on the site of the present city of Novomoskovsk, 29 kilometers north of Dnepropetrovsk ...

In a word, the geographical names of the Middle Ages did not always coincide with what we understand today as some kind of name. Today, for us, Rus' means all the then land inhabited by Russians.

But the then people thought a little differently ... Every time, as soon as you read about the events of the 12th-13th centuries, you must remember: then "Rus" was called part of the regions inhabited by Russians - Kiev, Pereyaslav and Chernigov principalities. More precisely: Kyiv, Chernihiv, the river Ros, Porosye, Pereyaslavl-Russian, Seversk land, Kursk. Quite often in the ancient chronicles it is written that from Novgorod or Vladimir ... "were going to Rus'"! That is - to Kyiv. Chernihiv cities are "Russian", but Smolensk cities are already "non-Russian".

Historian of the 17th century: "...Slavs, our ancestors - Moscow, Russians and Others..."

Exactly. Not for nothing on Western European maps for a very long time Russian lands were divided into "Muscovy" (north) and "Russia" (south). last name
lasted an extremely long time - as we remember, the inhabitants of those lands where "Ukraine" is now located, being Russians by blood, Catholics by religion and subjects of the Commonwealth (as the author calls the Commonwealth, which is more familiar to us - Sapfir_t), called themselves "Russian gentry."

Thus, chronicle reports like "such and such a year the horde attacked Rus'" should be treated taking into account what was said above. Remember: this mention does not mean aggression against all of Rus', but an attack on a specific area, strictly localized.

Kalka - a ball of mysteries
The first clash of the Russians with the "Mongol-Tatars" on the Kalka River in 1223 is described in some detail and in detail in the ancient domestic chronicles - however, not only in them, there is also the so-called "Tale of the Battle of the Kalka, and of the Russian princes, and about seventy heroes".

However, the abundance of information does not always bring clarity ... In general, historical science has long denied the obvious fact that the events on the Kalka River are not an attack by evil aliens on Rus', but Russian aggression against their neighbors. Judge for yourself. The Tatars (the Mongols are never, never mentioned in the descriptions of the battle on the Kalka) fought with the Polovtsians. And they sent ambassadors to Rus', who quite friendly asked the Russians not to interfere in this war. The Russian princes ... killed these ambassadors, and according to some old texts, not just killed - "tortured". The act, to put it mildly, is not the most decent - at all times the murder of an ambassador was considered one of the most serious crimes. Following that, the Russian army sets out on a long march.

Leaving the borders of Rus', it first of all attacks the Tatar camp, takes prey, steals cattle, after which it moves into the depths of foreign territory for another eight days. There, on Kalka, a decisive battle takes place, the Polovtsian allies flee in panic, the princes remain alone, fight back for three days, after which, believing the assurances of the Tatars, they surrender. However, the Tatars, angry with the Russians (that's strange, why would that be?! They didn't do any special harm to the Tatars, except that they killed their ambassadors, attacked them first ...) kill the captured princes. According to some sources, they kill simply, without any fuss, according to others, they pile on tied boards and sit down to feast on top, scoundrels.

It is significant that one of the most ardent "Tatarophobes", the writer V. Chivilikhin, in his almost eight hundred-page book "Memory", oversaturated with abuse against the "Horde", somewhat embarrassingly bypasses the events on Kalka. He mentions briefly - yes, there was something like that ... It seems that they fought a little there ...

You can understand it: the Russian princes in this story do not look the best. I’ll add on my own: the Galician prince Mstislav Udaloy is not just an aggressor, but also a uniformed bastard - however, more on that later ...

Let's get back to the riddles. For some reason, the same "Tale of the Battle of the Kalka" is not able ... to name the enemy of the Russians! Judge for yourself: "... because of our sins, unknown peoples, godless Moabites came, about whom no one knows exactly who they are and where they came from, and what their language is, and what tribe they are, and what faith. And they call them Tatars , while others say - taurmen, and others - Pechenegs.

Extremely strange lines! I remind you that they were written much later than the events described, when it seemed to be supposed to know exactly who the Russian princes fought on Kalka. After all, part of the army (albeit small, according to some sources - one tenth) nevertheless returned from Kalka. Moreover, the winners, in turn chasing the defeated Russian regiments, chased them to Novgorod-Svyatopolch (not to be confused with Veliky Novgorod! - A. Bushkov), where they attacked the civilian population - (Novgorod-Svyatopolch stood on the banks of the Dnieper) so and among the townspeople there should be witnesses who saw the enemy with their own eyes.

However, this adversary remains "unknown". Those who came from it is not known from what places, speaking God knows what language. Your will, it turns out a certain inconsistency ...

Either Polovtsy, or Taurmen, or Tatars... This statement further confuses the matter. By the time described, the Polovtsy were well known in Rus' - for so many years they lived side by side, then fought with them, then went on campaigns together, became related ... Is it a conceivable thing not to identify the Polovtsy?

The Taurmens are a nomadic Turkic tribe that lived in the Black Sea region in those years. Again, they were well known to the Russians by that time.

Tatars (as I will soon prove) by 1223 had already lived in the same Black Sea region for at least several decades.

In short, the chronicler is definitely disingenuous. The full impression is that for some extremely good reasons he does not want to directly name the enemy of the Russians in that battle. And this assumption is not far-fetched. Firstly, the expression "either Polovtsy, or Tatars, or Taurmen" in no way agrees with the life experience of Russians of that time. And those, and others, and the third in Rus' were well known - everyone except the author of the "Tale" ...

Secondly, if the Russians had fought on the Kalka with the "unknown" people, seen for the first time, the subsequent picture of events would have looked completely different - I mean the surrender of the princes and the pursuit of the defeated Russian regiments.

It turns out that the princes, who had settled in the fortification of "tyna and carts", where they repelled enemy attacks for three days, surrendered after ... a certain Russian named Ploskinya, who was in the enemy's battle formations, solemnly kissed his pectoral cross on what the prisoners won't do any harm.

I cheated, you bastard. But the point is not in his cunning (after all, history gives a lot of evidence of how the Russian princes themselves violated the "kissing of the cross" with the same cunning), but in the personality of Ploskin himself, a Russian, a Christian, who somehow mysteriously turned out to be among the warriors of the "unknown people". I wonder what fate brought him there?

V. Yan, a supporter of the "classical" version, portrayed Ploskinya as a sort of steppe tramp, who was caught on the road by the "Mongol-Tatars" and with a chain around his neck was led to the Russian fortification in order to persuade them to surrender to the mercy of the winner.

This is not even a version - this is, excuse me, schizophrenia. Put yourself in the place of a Russian prince - a professional soldier, who in his life fought to his heart's content with both Slavic neighbors and nomadic steppe dwellers, who went through fires and waters ...

You are surrounded in a distant land by warriors of a completely unknown tribe. For three days you repel the attacks of this adversary, whose language you do not understand, whose appearance is strange and disgusting to you. Suddenly, this mysterious adversary drives some ragamuffin with a chain around his neck to your fortification, and he, kissing the cross, swears that the besiegers (I emphasize again and again: hitherto unknown to you, strangers in language and faith!) will spare you if you surrender. ..

What, will you give up under these conditions?

Yes, completeness! Not a single normal person with a little bit of military experience will give up (besides, I’ll clarify, you recently killed the ambassadors of this very people and plundered the camp of his fellow tribesmen to their heart’s content).

But the Russian princes for some reason surrendered ...

However, why "for some reason"? The same "Tale" writes quite unambiguously: "There were roamers along with the Tatars, and their governor was Ploskinya."

Brodniki are Russian free combatants who lived in those places. The forerunners of the Cossacks. Well, this somewhat changes the matter: it was not a bound captive who persuaded to surrender, but a voivode, almost an equal, such a Slav and a Christian ... One can believe this - that the princes did.

However, the establishment of the true social position of Ploskin only confuses the matter. It turns out that the roamers in a short time managed to agree with the "unknown peoples" and got close to them so much that they hit the Russians together? Your brothers in blood and faith?

Again, something doesn't add up. It is clear that the wanderers were outcasts who fought only for themselves, but anyway, somehow very quickly found a common language with the "godless Moabites", about whom no one knows where they came from, and what language they are, and what faith .. .

Strictly speaking, one thing can be stated with all certainty: part of the army with which the Russian princes fought on the Kalka was Slavic, Christian.

Maybe not a part? Maybe there were no "Moabites"? Maybe the battle on the Kalka is a "showdown" between the Orthodox? On the one hand, several allied Russian princes (it must be emphasized that for some reason many Russian princes did not go to Kalka to rescue the Polovtsy), on the other, wanderers and Orthodox Tatars, neighbors of the Russians?

It is worth accepting this version, everything falls into place. And the hitherto mysterious surrender of princes - they surrendered not to some unknown strangers, but to well-known neighbors (the neighbors, however, broke their word, but how lucky ...) - (That the captured princes were "thrown under the boards" , reports only "The Tale". Other sources write that the princes were simply killed without mocking, and still others that the princes were "captured". So the story of the "feast on the bodies" is just one of the options). And the behavior of those residents of Novgorod-Svyatopolch that it is not clear why they came out to meet the Tatars pursuing the Russians fleeing from Kalka ... with a procession!

Such behavior, again, does not fit into the version with the unknown "godless Moabites." Our ancestors can be reproached for many sins, but there was no excessive gullibility among those. In fact, what normal person would come out to appease some unknown stranger, whose language, faith and nationality remain a mystery?!

However, as soon as we assume that the fleeing remnants of the prince's armies were being chased by some of their own, long known, and that, most importantly, the same Christians, the behavior of the city's inhabitants instantly loses all signs of madness or absurdity. From their own, long known, from the same Christians, there really was a chance to defend themselves with a procession.

The chance, however, did not work this time - apparently, the horsemen, excited by the chase, were too angry (which is quite understandable - their ambassadors were killed, they themselves were attacked first, cut down and robbed) and immediately flogged those who came out to meet with the cross. I will especially note that this also happened during purely Russian internecine wars, when the enraged winners chopped right and left, and the raised cross did not stop them ...

Thus, the battle on the Kalka is not at all a clash with unknown peoples, but one of the episodes of the internecine war waged between Christian Russians, Christian Polovtsians (it is curious that the chronicles of that time mention the Polovtsian Khan Basty who converted to Christianity) and Christians- Tatars. The Russian historian of the 17th century summarizes the results of this war as follows: “After this victory, the Tatars completely ruined the Polovtsian fortresses and cities and villages. today it is called Perekop), and around Pontus Evkhsinsky, that is, the Black Sea, the Tatars took it by their hand, and settled there.

As you can see, the war was for specific territories, between specific peoples. By the way, the mention of "cities, and fortresses, and Polovtsian villages" is extremely curious. We were told for a long time that the Polovtsians are nomadic steppe peoples, but nomadic peoples have neither fortresses nor cities ...

And finally - about the Galician prince Mstislav Udal, or rather, about why he deserves the definition of "scum". A word to the same historian: "... The brave Prince Mstislav Mstislavich of Galicia ... when he ran to the river to his boats (immediately after the defeat from the "Tatars" - A. Bushkov), having crossed the river, ordered all the boats to be sunk and chopped , and burn, fearing the Tatar chase, and, filled with fear, on foot reached Galich.Most of the Russian regiments, running, reached their boats and, seeing them to a single sunk and burned, from sadness and need and hunger could not swim across the river , there they died and perished, except for some princes and warriors, who swam across the river on wicker meadowsweet sheaves.

Like this. By the way, this scum - I'm talking about Mstislav - is still called Udaly in history and literature. True, not all historians and writers are delighted with this figure - a hundred years ago, D. Ilovaisky listed in detail all the mistakes and absurdities committed by Mstislav as the prince of Galicia, using the remarkable phrase: "Obviously, in old age Mstislav completely lost his common sense." On the contrary, N. Kostomarov, without hesitation, considered Mstislav's act with the boats as a matter of course - Mstislav, they say, by this "did not allow the Tatars to cross." However, excuse me, they still somehow crossed over, if "on the shoulders" of the retreating Russians they rushed to Novgorod-Svyatopolch?!

The complacency of Kostomarov in relation to Mstislav, who, in fact, killed most of the Russian troops with his act, however, is understandable: Kostomarov had only the “Tale of the Battle of the Kalka” at his disposal, where the death of soldiers who had nothing to cross was not mentioned at all . The historian I have just quoted is definitely unknown to Kostomarov. Nothing strange - I will reveal this secret a little later.

SUPERMEN FROM THE MONGOLIAN STEPPE
Having accepted the classical version of the "Mongol-Tatar" invasion, we ourselves do not notice what a bunch of illogicalities, or even outright stupidity, we are dealing with.

To begin with, I will quote an extensive piece from the work of the famous scientist N.A. Morozov (1854-1946):

“Nomadic peoples, by the very nature of their life, should be widely scattered over a large uncultivated area by separate patriarchal groups, incapable of general disciplined action that requires economic centralization, i.e. a tax that could support an army of adult single people. peoples, like clusters of molecules, each of their patriarchal groups is repulsed by the other, thanks to the search for more and more grass to feed their herds.

Having united together in the number of at least several thousand people, they must also unite with each other several thousand cows and horses and even more sheep and rams belonging to different patriarchs. As a result of this, all the nearest grass would be quickly eaten up and the whole company would have to be scattered again by the former patriarchal small groups in different directions in order to be able to live longer without moving their tents to another place every day.

That is why, a priori, the very idea of ​​the possibility of organized collective action and a victorious invasion of settled peoples by some widely scattered nomadic people feeding on herds, such as the Mongols, Samoyeds, Bedouins, etc., must be discarded a priori, as a pure fantasy. except in the case when some gigantic, natural catastrophe, threatening general destruction, drives such a people from the perishing steppe entirely to a settled country, like a hurricane drives dust from a desert to an adjacent oasis.

But after all, even in the Sahara itself, not a single large oasis was forever covered with surrounding sand, and after the end of the hurricane it was again reborn to its former life. Similarly, and throughout our reliable historical horizon, we do not see a single victorious invasion of wild nomadic peoples on sedentary cultured countries, but just the opposite. This means that this could not have happened in the prehistoric past. All these migrations of peoples back and forth on the eve of their appearance in the field of view of history should be reduced only to the migration of their names or, at best, rulers, and even then from more cultured countries to less cultured ones, and not vice versa.

Gold words. There are indeed no cases in history when nomads scattered over vast expanses would suddenly create, if not a powerful state, then a powerful army capable of conquering entire countries.

With one single exception - when it comes to the "Mongol-Tatars". We are offered to believe that Genghis Khan, who allegedly lived in present-day Mongolia, by some miracle, in a matter of years created an army from scattered uluses that surpassed any European army in discipline and organization ...

Curious to know how he did it? Despite the fact that the nomad has one undoubted advantage that keeps him from any whims of the settled power, the power that he did not like at all: mobility. That's why he's a nomad. The self-styled khan did not like it - he assembled a yurt, loaded horses, seated his wife, children and an old grandmother, waved his whip - and moved to distant lands, from where it is extremely difficult to get him. Especially when it comes to the boundless Siberian expanses.

Here is a suitable example: when in 1916 the tsarist officials did something especially torturing the nomadic Kazakhs, they calmly withdrew and migrated from the Russian Empire to neighboring China. The authorities (and we are talking about the beginning of the twentieth century!) simply could not stop them and prevent them!

Meanwhile, we are invited to believe in the following picture: the steppe nomads, free as the wind, for some reason dutifully agree to follow Genghis "to the last sea." With the complete, we emphasize and repeat, Genghis Khan's lack of means of influencing the "refuseniks" - it would be unthinkable to chase them along the steppes and thickets stretching for thousands of kilometers (certain clans of the Mongols did not live in the steppe, but in the taiga).

Five thousand kilometers - approximately this distance was covered by the detachments of Genghis to Rus' according to the "classical" version. The armchair theorists who wrote such things simply never thought about what it would cost in reality to overcome such routes (and if we recall that the "Mongols" reached the shores of the Adriatic, the route increases by another one and a half thousand kilometers). What force, what miracle could compel the steppes to set off into such a distance?

Would you believe that Bedouin nomads from the Arabian steppes would one day set off to conquer South Africa, reaching the Cape of Good Hope? And the Indians of Alaska one fine day showed up in Mexico, where, for unknown reasons, they decided to migrate?

Of course, all this is pure nonsense. However, if we compare the distances, it turns out that from Mongolia to the Adriatic, the "Mongols" would have to go about the same distance as the Arabian Bedouins - to Cape Town or the Indians of Alaska - to the Gulf of Mexico. It’s not easy to pass, let’s clarify - along the way, also capture several of the largest states of that time: China, Khorezm, devastate Georgia, Rus', invade Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary ...

Are historians asking us to believe this? Well, so much the worse for historians... If you don't want to be called an idiot, don't do idiotic things - an old worldly truth. So the supporters of the "classic" version themselves run into insults ...

Not only that, the nomadic tribes, which were not even at the stage of feudalism - the tribal system - for some reason suddenly realized the need for iron discipline and dutifully dragged after Genghis Khan for six and a half thousand kilometers. Even in a short (damn tight!) time, the nomads suddenly learned how to use the best military equipment of that time - wall-beating machines, stone throwers ...

Judge for yourself. According to reliable data, the first major campaign outside the "historical homeland" Genghis Khan makes in 1209. Already in 1215, he allegedly
captures Beijing, in 1219, with the use of siege weapons, takes the cities of Central Asia - Merv, Samarkand, Gurganzh, Khiva, Khojent, Bukhara - and twenty years later destroys the walls of Russian cities with the same wall-beating machines and stone-throwers.

Mark Twain was right: well, ganders do not spawn! Well, swede does not grow on a tree!

Well, a steppe nomad is not capable of mastering the art of capturing cities using wall-beating machines in a couple of years! Create an army superior to the armies of any states of that time!

First of all, because he does not need it. As Morozov rightly noted, there are no examples in world history of the creation of states by nomads or the defeat of foreign states. Especially in such a utopian timeframe, as the official history slips us, uttering pearls like: "After the invasion of China, the army of Genghis Khan adopted Chinese military equipment - wall-beating machines, stone-throwing and flame-throwing guns."

That's nothing, there are pearls and cleaner. I happened to read an article in an extremely serious, academic journal: it described how the Mongol (!) Navy in the 13th century. fired at the ships of the ancient Japanese ... with combat missiles! (The Japanese, presumably, responded with laser-guided torpedoes.) In a word, navigation must also be included among the arts mastered by the Mongols in a year or two. Well, at least not flying on devices heavier than air ...

There are situations when common sense is stronger than all scientific constructions. Especially if scientists are led into such labyrinths of fantasy that any science fiction writer will open his mouth admiringly.

By the way, an important question: how did the wives of the Mongols let their husbands go to the end of the world? The vast majority of medieval sources describe
"Tatar-Mongol horde" as an army, and not a resettling people. No wives and little kids. It turns out that the Mongols wandered in foreign lands until their death, and their wives, never seeing their husbands, managed the herds?

Not bookish, but real nomads always behave in a completely different way: they quietly roam for many hundreds of years (attacking occasionally on their neighbors, not without it), it never occurs to them to conquer some nearby country or go halfway around the world to look for the "last sea". It simply would not occur to a Pashtun or Bedouin tribal leader to build a city or create a state. How does not come to his mind a whim about the "last sea". There are enough purely earthly, practical things: you need to survive, prevent the loss of livestock, look for new pastures, exchange fabrics and knives for cheese and milk ... Where can one dream of an "empire for half the world"?

Meanwhile, we are seriously assured that the nomadic steppe for some reason suddenly became imbued with the idea of ​​a state, or at least a grandiose conquest campaign to "the limits of the world." And in a short period of time, by some miracle, he united his fellow tribesmen into a powerful organized army. And in a few years I learned how to handle rather complex machines by the standards of that time. And he created a navy that fired missiles at the Japanese. And he compiled a code of laws for his vast empire. And he corresponded with the pope, kings and dukes, teaching them how to live.

The late L.N. Gumilyov (not the last historian, but sometimes overly fond of poetic ideas) seriously believed that he had created a hypothesis that could explain such miracles. We are talking about the "theory of passionarity". According to Gumilyov, this or that nation at a certain moment receives a certain mysterious and semi-mystical energy blow from the Cosmos - after which they calmly turn mountains and achieve unprecedented achievements.

There is a significant flaw in this beautiful theory, which benefits Gumilyov himself, but his opponents, on the contrary, complicates the discussion to the limit. The fact is that any military or other success of any nation can easily be explained by a "manifestation of passionarity". But to prove the absence of a "passionate blow" is almost impossible. This automatically puts Gumilyov's supporters in better conditions than their opponents - since there are no reliable scientific methods, as well as equipment capable of fixing the "flow of passionarity" on paper or pleg.

In a word - frolic, soul ... Let's say, the Ryazan governor Baldokha, at the head of a valiant rati, attacked the Suzdalians, instantly and brutally defeated their army, after which the Ryazanians arrogantly abused the Suzdal women and girls, robbed all the stocks of salted mushrooms, squirrel skins and honey , finally, at the neck of an inopportunely turned up monk, and the winners returned home. Everybody. You can, narrowing your eyes meaningfully, say: "The people of Ryazan received a passionary impetus, but the Suzdal people lost their passionarity by that time."

Half a year has passed - and now the Suzdal prince Timonya Gunyavy, burning with a thirst for revenge, attacked the Ryazan people. Fortune turned out to be fickle - and this time the "Ryazan skewbald" broke on the first number and took away all the goods, and the women with the girls were cut off the hem, which was before the voivode Baldokha, they mocked him to their heart's content, shoving a hedgehog that turned up inopportunely with his bare backside. The picture for the historian of the Gumilyov school is clear through and through: "The people of Ryazan have lost their former passionarity."

Perhaps they didn’t lose anything - it’s just that the hungover blacksmith didn’t shoe Baidokhin’s horse in time, he lost the horseshoe, and then everything went according to the English song in Marshak’s translation: there was no nail, the horseshoe was gone, there was no horseshoe, the horse limped. .. And the main part of Baldokhin's rati did not take part in the battle at all, since they were chasing the Polovtsians a hundred miles from Ryazan.

But try to prove to the orthodox Gumilyov that the problem is in the nail, and not in the "loss of passionarity"! No, really, take a chance for the sake of curiosity, only I'm not your friend here ...

In a word, the "passionary" theory is not suitable for explaining the "phenomenon of Genghis Khan" because of the complete impossibility of both proving it and refuting it. Let's leave mysticism behind the scenes.

There is one more piquant moment here: the same monk, whom the Ryazanians so imprudently hit on the neck, will compile the Suzdal chronicle. If he is especially vindictive, he will present the Ryazans ... and not the Ryazans at all. And some "nasty", insidious Antichrist horde. No one knows where the Moabites emerged, eating foxes and gophers. Subsequently, I will give some quotations showing that in the Middle Ages this was sometimes the case ...

Let's return to the reverse side of the medal of the "Tatar-Mongol yoke". Unique relations between the "Horde" and the Russians. Here it is already worth paying tribute to Gumilyov, in this area he is not worthy of scoffing, but respect: he has collected a huge amount of material, clearly indicating that the relationship between "Rus" and "Horde" cannot be described in any other word than symbiosis.

To be honest, I don't want to enumerate these proofs. They wrote too much and often about how Russian princes and "Mongol khans" became brothers, relatives, sons-in-law and father-in-law, how they went on joint military campaigns, how (let's call a spade a spade) friends. If desired, the reader himself can easily get acquainted with the details of Russian-Tatar friendship. I will focus on one aspect: that this kind of relationship is unique. For some reason, in no country defeated or captured by them, the Tatars did not behave like this. However, in Rus' it reached an incomprehensible absurdity: for example, the subjects of Alexander Nevsky one day beat the Horde tribute collectors to death, but the "Horde Khan" reacted to this in a strange way: when news of this sad event did not
only does not take punitive measures, but gives Nevsky additional privileges, allows him to collect tribute himself, and in addition, frees him from the need to supply recruits for the Horde army ...

I'm not fantasizing, but just retelling Russian chronicles. Reflecting (probably contrary to the "creative intent" of their authors) very strange relations that existed between Russia and the Horde: a uniform symbiosis, brotherhood in arms, leading to such an interweaving of names and events that you simply stop understanding where the Russians end and the Tatars begin. ..

And nowhere. Rus' is the Golden Horde, have you forgotten? Or, to be more precise, the Golden Horde is a part of Rus', the one that is under the rule of the Vladimir-Suzdal princes, descendants of Vsevolod the Big Nest. And the notorious symbiosis is just a reflection of events that is not completely distorted.

Gumilyov did not dare to take the next step. And I'm sorry, I'll take the risk. If we have established that, firstly, no "Mongoloids" came from nowhere, that, secondly, the Russians and Tatars were in uniquely friendly relations, logic dictates to go further and say: Rus' and the Horde are simply one and the same. And the tales of the "evil Tatars" were composed much later.

Have you ever wondered what the word "horde" itself means? In search of an answer, I first dug into the depths of the Polish language. For a very simple reason: it was in Polish that quite a lot of words that disappeared from Russian in the 17th-18th centuries were preserved (once both languages ​​were much closer).

In Polish "Horda" means "horde". Not a "crowd of nomads", but rather a "big army". Numerous army.

We move on. Sigismund Herberstein, the "Caesar" ambassador, who visited Muscovy in the 16th century and left the most interesting "Notes", testifies that in the "Tatar" language "horde" meant "multitude" or "collection". In Russian chronicles, when talking about military campaigns, the phrases "Swedish horde" or "German horde" in the same meaning - "army" are calmly inserted.

At the same time, Academician Fomenko points to the Latin word "ordo", meaning "order", to the German "ordnung" - "order".

To this we can add the Anglo-Saxon "order", meaning again "order" in the sense of "law", and in addition - the military system. In the navy, the expression "marching order" still exists. That is - the construction of ships on a campaign.

In modern Turkish, the word "ordu" has meanings, again corresponding to the words "order", "sample", and not so long ago (from a historical point of view) in Turkey there was a military term "orta", meaning a Janissary unit, something in between between battalion and regiment...

At the end of the XVII century. on the basis of written reports of explorers, the Tobolsk serviceman S.U. Remezov, together with his three sons, compiled the "Drawing Book" - a grandiose geographical atlas covering the territory of the entire Muscovite kingdom. The Cossack lands adjacent to the North Caucasus are called ... "Land of the Cossack Horde"! (Like on many other old Russian maps.)

In a word, all the meanings of the word "horde" revolve around the terms "army", "order", "legislation" (in modern Kazakh "Red Army" sounds like Kzyl-Orda!). And this, I am sure, is not without reason. The picture of the "horde" as a state that at some stage united Russians and Tatars (or simply the armies of this state) fits into reality much more successfully than the Mongol nomads, who surprisingly inflamed with a passion for wall-beating machines, the navy and campaigns for five or six thousand kilometers.

Simply, once Yaroslav Vsevolodovich and his son Alexander began a fierce struggle for dominance over all Russian lands. It was their army-horde (in which there were really enough Tatars) that served the later falsifiers to create a terrible picture of the "foreign invasion".

There are a few more similar examples when, with a superficial knowledge of history, a person is quite capable of drawing false conclusions - in the event that he is only familiar with the name and does not suspect what is behind it.

In the 17th century in the Polish army there were cavalry units called "Cossack banners" ("horugv" - a military unit). There were no real Cossacks there - in this case, the name meant only that these regiments were armed according to the Cossack model.

During the Crimean War, the Turkish troops that landed on the peninsula included a unit called "Ottoman Cossacks". Again, not a single Cossack - only Polish emigrants and Turks under the command of Mehmed Sadyk Pasha, who is also a former cavalry lieutenant Michal Tchaikovsky.

And finally, we can recall the French Zouaves. These parts got their name from the Algerian Zuazua tribe. Gradually, not a single Algerian remained in them, only purebred French, but the name was preserved for subsequent times, until these units, a kind of special forces, ceased to exist.

This is where I stop. If you're interested, read on here

MONGOLO-TATAR INVASION

Formation of the Mongolian state. At the beginning of the XIII century. in Central Asia, in the territory from Lake Baikal and the upper reaches of the Yenisei and Irtysh in the north to the southern regions of the Gobi Desert and the Great Wall of China, the Mongolian state was formed. By the name of one of the tribes that roamed near Lake Buirnur in Mongolia, these peoples were also called Tatars. Subsequently, all the nomadic peoples with whom Rus' fought began to be called Mongolo-Tatars.

The main occupation of the Mongols was extensive nomadic cattle breeding, and in the north and in the taiga regions - hunting. In the XII century. among the Mongols there was a disintegration of primitive communal relations. From the environment of ordinary community members-cattle breeders, who were called karachu - black people, noyons (princes) stood out - to know; having squads of nukers (warriors), she seized pastures for livestock and part of the young. The noyons also had slaves. The rights of the noyons were determined by "Yasa" - a collection of teachings and instructions.

In 1206, a congress of the Mongol nobility - kurultai (Khural) took place on the Onon River, at which one of the noyons was elected the leader of the Mongol tribes: Temuchin, who received the name Genghis Khan - "great khan", "sent by God" (1206-1227). Having defeated his opponents, he began to rule the country through his relatives and the local nobility.

Mongolian army. The Mongols had a well-organized army that maintained tribal ties. The army was divided into tens, hundreds, thousands. Ten thousand Mongol warriors were called "darkness" ("tumen").

Tumens were not only military, but also administrative units.

The main striking force of the Mongols was the cavalry. Each warrior had two or three bows, several quivers with arrows, an ax, a rope lasso, and was proficient with a saber. The warrior's horse was covered with skins, which protected it from the arrows and weapons of the enemy. The head, neck and chest of the Mongol warrior from enemy arrows and spears were covered with an iron or copper helmet, leather armor. The Mongolian cavalry had high mobility. On their undersized, shaggy-maned, hardy horses, they could travel up to 80 km per day, and up to 10 km with carts, wall-beating and flamethrower guns. Like other peoples, passing through the stage of state formation, the Mongols were distinguished by their strength and solidity. Hence the interest in expanding pastures and in organizing predatory campaigns against neighboring agricultural peoples, who were at a much higher level of development, although they experienced a period of fragmentation. This greatly facilitated the implementation of the conquest plans of the Mongol-Tatars.

Defeat of Central Asia. The Mongols began their campaigns with the conquest of the lands of their neighbors - Buryats, Evenks, Yakuts, Uighurs, Yenisei Kirghiz (by 1211). Then they invaded China and in 1215 took Beijing. Three years later, Korea was conquered. Having defeated China (finally conquered in 1279), the Mongols significantly increased their military potential. Flamethrowers, wall-beaters, stone-throwing tools, vehicles were taken into service.

In the summer of 1219, almost 200,000 Mongol troops led by Genghis Khan began the conquest of Central Asia. The ruler of Khorezm (a country at the mouth of the Amu Darya), Shah Mohammed, did not accept a general battle, dispersing his forces over the cities. Having suppressed the stubborn resistance of the population, the invaders stormed Otrar, Khojent, Merv, Bukhara, Urgench and other cities. The ruler of Samarkand, despite the demand of the people to defend himself, surrendered the city. Mohammed himself fled to Iran, where he soon died.

The rich, flourishing agricultural regions of Semirechye (Central Asia) turned into pastures. Irrigation systems built up over centuries were destroyed. The Mongols introduced a regime of cruel requisitions, artisans were taken into captivity. As a result of the conquest of Central Asia by the Mongols, nomadic tribes began to inhabit its territory. Sedentary agriculture was supplanted by extensive nomadic pastoralism, which slowed down the further development of Central Asia.

Invasion of Iran and Transcaucasia. The main force of the Mongols with the loot returned from Central Asia to Mongolia. The 30,000-strong army under the command of the best Mongol commanders Jebe and Subedei set off on a long-range reconnaissance campaign through Iran and Transcaucasia, to the West. Having defeated the united Armenian-Georgian troops and causing enormous damage to the economy of Transcaucasia, the invaders, however, were forced to leave the territory of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, as they met with strong resistance from the population. Past Derbent, where there was a passage along the coast of the Caspian Sea, the Mongolian troops entered the steppes of the North Caucasus. Here they defeated the Alans (Ossetians) and Polovtsy, after which they ravaged the city of Sudak (Surozh) in the Crimea. The Polovtsy, led by Khan Kotyan, the father-in-law of the Galician prince Mstislav Udaly, turned to the Russian princes for help.

Battle on the Kalka River. On May 31, 1223, the Mongols defeated the allied forces of the Polovtsian and Russian princes in the Azov steppes on the Kalka River. This was the last major joint military action of the Russian princes on the eve of the invasion of Batu. However, the powerful Russian prince Yuri Vsevolodovich of Vladimir-Suzdal, the son of Vsevolod the Big Nest, did not participate in the campaign.

Princely strife also affected during the battle on the Kalka. The Kyiv prince Mstislav Romanovich, having fortified himself with his army on a hill, did not take part in the battle. Regiments of Russian soldiers and Polovtsy, having crossed the Kalka, struck at the advanced detachments of the Mongol-Tatars, who retreated. The Russian and Polovtsian regiments were carried away by the persecution. The main Mongol forces that approached, took the pursuing Russian and Polovtsian warriors in pincers and destroyed them.

The Mongols laid siege to the hill, where the prince of Kyiv fortified. On the third day of the siege, Mstislav Romanovich believed the promise of the enemy to honorably release the Russians in the event of voluntary surrender and laid down his arms. He and his warriors were brutally killed by the Mongols. The Mongols reached the Dnieper, but did not dare to enter the borders of Rus'. Rus' has not yet known a defeat equal to the battle on the Kalka River. Only a tenth of the troops returned from the Azov steppes to Rus'. In honor of their victory, the Mongols held a "feast on the bones". The captured princes were crushed with boards on which the victors sat and feasted.

Preparation of a campaign to Rus'. Returning to the steppes, the Mongols made an unsuccessful attempt to capture Volga Bulgaria. Reconnaissance in force showed that wars of conquest against Russia and its neighbors could be waged only by organizing a general Mongol campaign. At the head of this campaign was the grandson of Genghis Khan - Batu (1227-1255), who inherited from his grandfather all the territories in the west, "where the foot of the Mongol horse sets foot." His main military adviser was Subedei, who knew the theater of future military operations well.

In 1235, at the Khural in the capital of Mongolia, Karakorum, a decision was made on a general Mongol campaign to the West. In 1236 the Mongols captured the Volga Bulgaria, and in 1237 they subjugated the nomadic peoples of the Steppe. In the autumn of 1237, the main forces of the Mongols, having crossed the Volga, concentrated on the Voronezh River, aiming at the Russian lands. In Rus', they knew about the impending formidable danger, but the princely feuds prevented the sips from uniting to repel a strong and treacherous enemy. There was no unified command. Fortifications of cities were erected for defense against neighboring Russian principalities, and not from steppe nomads. The princely cavalry squads were not inferior to the Mongol noyons and nukers in terms of armament and fighting qualities. But the bulk of the Russian army was made up of the militia - urban and rural warriors, inferior to the Mongols in weapons and combat skills. Hence the defensive tactics, designed to deplete the enemy's forces.

Defense of Ryazan. In 1237, Ryazan was the first of the Russian lands to be attacked by invaders. The Princes of Vladimir and Chernigov refused to help Ryazan. The Mongols laid siege to Ryazan and sent envoys who demanded obedience and one-tenth "in everything." The courageous answer of the people of Ryazan followed: "If we are all gone, then everything will be yours." On the sixth day of the siege, the city was taken, the princely family and the surviving inhabitants were killed. In the old place, Ryazan was no longer revived (modern Ryazan is a new city located 60 km from the old Ryazan, it used to be called Pereyaslavl Ryazansky).

Conquest of North-Eastern Rus'. In January 1238, the Mongols moved along the Oka River to the Vladimir-Suzdal land. The battle with the Vladimir-Suzdal army took place near the city of Kolomna, on the border of the Ryazan and Vladimir-Suzdal lands. In this battle, the Vladimir army died, which actually predetermined the fate of North-Eastern Rus'.

Strong resistance to the enemy for 5 days was provided by the population of Moscow, led by the governor Philip Nyanka. After the capture by the Mongols, Moscow was burned, and its inhabitants were killed.

February 4, 1238 Batu besieged Vladimir. The distance from Kolomna to Vladimir (300 km) was covered by his troops in a month. On the fourth day of the siege, the invaders broke into the city through gaps in the fortress wall near the Golden Gate. The princely family and the remnants of the troops closed in the Assumption Cathedral. The Mongols surrounded the cathedral with trees and set it on fire.

After the capture of Vladimir, the Mongols broke into separate detachments and crushed the cities of North-Eastern Rus'. Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich, even before the approach of the invaders to Vladimir, went to the north of his land to gather military forces. Hastily assembled regiments in 1238 were defeated on the Sit River (the right tributary of the Mologa River), and Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich himself died in the battle.

The Mongol hordes moved to the north-west of Rus'. Everywhere they met stubborn resistance from the Russians. For two weeks, for example, a distant suburb of Novgorod, Torzhok, defended itself. North-Western Rus' was saved from defeat, although it paid tribute.

Having reached the stone Ignach Cross - an ancient sign on the Valdai watershed (one hundred kilometers from Novgorod), the Mongols retreated south, to the steppe, in order to restore losses and give rest to tired troops. The retreat was in the nature of a "raid". Divided into separate detachments, the invaders "combed" the Russian cities. Smolensk managed to fight back, other centers were defeated. Kozelsk, which held out for seven weeks, put up the greatest resistance to the Mongols during the "raid". The Mongols called Kozelsk an "evil city".

Capture of Kyiv. In the spring of 1239, Batu defeated South Rus' (Pereyaslavl South), in the fall - the Chernigov principality. In the autumn of the next 1240, the Mongol troops crossed the Dnieper and laid siege to Kyiv. After a long defense, led by the governor Dmitr, the Tatars defeated Kyiv. In the next 1241, the Galicia-Volyn principality was attacked.

Batu's campaign against Europe. After the defeat of Rus', the Mongol hordes moved to Europe. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Balkan countries were devastated. The Mongols reached the borders of the German Empire, reached the Adriatic Sea. However, at the end of 1242 they suffered a series of setbacks in Bohemia and Hungary. From distant Karakorum came the news of the death of the great Khan Ogedei - the son of Genghis Khan. It was a convenient excuse to stop the difficult campaign. Batu turned his troops back to the east.

A decisive world-historical role in the salvation of European civilization from the Mongol hordes was played by the heroic struggle against them by the Russian and other peoples of our country, who took the first blow from the invaders. In fierce battles in Rus', the best part of the Mongol army perished. The Mongols lost their offensive power. They could not but reckon with the liberation struggle unfolding in the rear of their troops. A.S. Pushkin rightly wrote: "A great destiny was determined for Russia: its boundless plains absorbed the power of the Mongols and stopped their invasion on the very edge of Europe ... the emerging enlightenment was saved by torn to pieces by Russia."

Fight against the aggression of the crusaders. The coast from the Vistula to the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea was inhabited by Slavic, Baltic (Lithuanian and Latvian) and Finno-Ugric (Ests, Karelians, etc.) tribes. At the end of the XII - beginning of the XIII centuries. the peoples of the Baltic states are completing the process of disintegration of the primitive communal system and the formation of an early class society and statehood. These processes were most intense among the Lithuanian tribes. The Russian lands (Novgorod and Polotsk) exerted a significant influence on their western neighbors, who did not yet have a developed state of their own and church institutions (the peoples of the Baltic were pagans).

The attack on Russian lands was part of the predatory doctrine of the German chivalry "Drang nach Osten" (onslaught to the East). In the XII century. it began the seizure of lands belonging to the Slavs beyond the Oder and in the Baltic Pomerania. At the same time, an offensive was carried out on the lands of the Baltic peoples. The invasion of the crusaders into the lands of the Baltic states and North-Western Rus' was sanctioned by the Pope and the German Emperor Frederick II. German, Danish, Norwegian knights and troops from other northern European countries also took part in the crusade.

Knightly orders. In order to conquer the lands of the Estonians and Latvians, the knightly Order of the Sword-bearers was created in 1202 from the Crusaders defeated in Asia Minor. The knights wore clothes with the image of a sword and a cross. They pursued an aggressive policy under the slogan of Christianization: "Whoever does not want to be baptized must die." Back in 1201, the knights landed at the mouth of the Western Dvina (Daugava) River and founded the city of Riga on the site of the Latvian settlement as a stronghold for subjugating the Baltic lands. In 1219, the Danish knights captured part of the Baltic coast, founding the city of Revel (Tallinn) on the site of an Estonian settlement.

In 1224 the crusaders took Yuriev (Tartu). To conquer the lands of Lithuania (Prussians) and the southern Russian lands in 1226, the knights of the Teutonic Order, founded in 1198 in Syria during the Crusades, arrived. Knights - members of the order wore white cloaks with a black cross on the left shoulder. In 1234, the Swordsmen were defeated by the Novgorod-Suzdal troops, and two years later, by the Lithuanians and Semigallians. This forced the crusaders to join forces. In 1237, the swordsmen united with the Teutons, forming a branch of the Teutonic Order - the Livonian Order, named after the territory inhabited by the Liv tribe, which was captured by the Crusaders.

Neva battle. The offensive of the knights especially intensified due to the weakening of Rus', which bled in the fight against the Mongol conquerors.

In July 1240, the Swedish feudal lords tried to take advantage of the plight of Rus'. The Swedish fleet with an army on board entered the mouth of the Neva. Having risen along the Neva to the confluence of the Izhora River, the knightly cavalry landed on the shore. The Swedes wanted to capture the city of Staraya Ladoga, and then Novgorod.

Prince Alexander Yaroslavich, who was 20 years old at that time, with his retinue quickly rushed to the landing site. "We are few," he turned to his soldiers, "but God is not in power, but in truth." Covertly approaching the Swedes' camp, Alexander and his warriors hit them, and a small militia led by Misha from Novgorod cut off the Swedes' path along which they could flee to their ships.

Alexander Yaroslavich was nicknamed Nevsky by the Russian people for the victory on the Neva. The significance of this victory is that it stopped the Swedish aggression to the east for a long time, retained Russia's access to the Baltic coast. (Peter I, emphasizing the right of Russia to the Baltic coast, founded the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in the new capital on the site of the battle.)

Battle on the Ice. In the summer of the same 1240, the Livonian Order, as well as Danish and German knights, attacked Rus' and captured the city of Izborsk. Soon, due to the betrayal of the posadnik Tverdila and part of the boyars, Pskov was taken (1241). Strife and strife led to the fact that Novgorod did not help its neighbors. And the struggle between the boyars and the prince in Novgorod itself ended with the expulsion of Alexander Nevsky from the city. Under these conditions, individual detachments of the crusaders found themselves 30 km from the walls of Novgorod. At the request of the veche, Alexander Nevsky returned to the city.

Together with his retinue, Alexander liberated Pskov, Izborsk and other captured cities with a sudden blow. Having received the news that the main forces of the Order were coming at him, Alexander Nevsky blocked the way for the knights, placing his troops on the ice of Lake Peipus. The Russian prince showed himself as an outstanding commander. The chronicler wrote about him: "Winning everywhere, but we won't win at all." Alexander deployed troops under the cover of a steep bank on the ice of the lake, eliminating the possibility of enemy reconnaissance of his forces and depriving the enemy of freedom of maneuver. Taking into account the construction of the knights by a "pig" (in the form of a trapezoid with a sharp wedge in front, which was heavily armed cavalry), Alexander Nevsky arranged his regiments in the form of a triangle, with a tip resting on the shore. Before the battle, part of the Russian soldiers were equipped with special hooks to pull the knights off their horses.

On April 5, 1242, a battle took place on the ice of Lake Peipsi, which was called the Battle of the Ice. The knight's wedge broke through the center of the Russian position and hit the shore. The flank strikes of the Russian regiments decided the outcome of the battle: like pincers, they crushed the knightly "pig". The knights, unable to withstand the blow, fled in panic. The Novgorodians drove them for seven versts across the ice, which by the spring had become weak in many places and collapsed under heavily armed soldiers. The Russians pursued the enemy, "flashed, rushing after him, as if through air," the chronicler wrote. According to the Novgorod chronicle, "400 Germans died in the battle, and 50 were taken prisoner" (German chronicles estimate the death toll at 25 knights). The captured knights were led in disgrace through the streets of the Lord Veliky Novgorod.

The significance of this victory lies in the fact that the military power of the Livonian Order was weakened. The response to the Battle of the Ice was the growth of the liberation struggle in the Baltic states. However, relying on the help of the Roman Catholic Church, the knights at the end of the XIII century. captured a significant part of the Baltic lands.

Russian lands under the rule of the Golden Horde. In the middle of the XIII century. one of the grandsons of Genghis Khan, Khubulai moved his headquarters to Beijing, founding the Yuan dynasty. The rest of the Mongol state was nominally subordinate to the great khan in Karakorum. One of the sons of Genghis Khan - Chagatai (Jagatai) received the lands of most of Central Asia, and the grandson of Genghis Khan Zulagu owned the territory of Iran, part of Western and Central Asia and Transcaucasia. This ulus, singled out in 1265, is called the Hulaguid state after the name of the dynasty. Another grandson of Genghis Khan from his eldest son Jochi - Batu founded the state of the Golden Horde.

Golden Horde. The Golden Horde covered a vast territory from the Danube to the Irtysh (Crimea, the North Caucasus, part of the lands of Rus' located in the steppe, the former lands of Volga Bulgaria and nomadic peoples, Western Siberia and part of Central Asia). The capital of the Golden Horde was the city of Sarai, located in the lower reaches of the Volga (a shed in Russian means a palace). It was a state consisting of semi-independent uluses, united under the rule of the khan. They were ruled by the Batu brothers and the local aristocracy.

The role of a kind of aristocratic council was played by the "Divan", where military and financial issues were resolved. Being surrounded by the Turkic-speaking population, the Mongols adopted the Turkic language. The local Turkic-speaking ethnic group assimilated the newcomers-Mongols. A new people was formed - the Tatars. In the first decades of the existence of the Golden Horde, its religion was paganism.

The Golden Horde was one of the largest states of its time. At the beginning of the XIV century, she could put up a 300,000th army. The heyday of the Golden Horde falls on the reign of Khan Uzbek (1312-1342). In this era (1312), Islam became the state religion of the Golden Horde. Then, just like other medieval states, the Horde experienced a period of fragmentation. Already in the XIV century. the Central Asian possessions of the Golden Horde separated, and in the 15th century. the Kazan (1438), Crimean (1443), Astrakhan (mid-15th century) and Siberian (end of the 15th century) khanates stood out.

Russian lands and the Golden Horde. The Russian lands devastated by the Mongols were forced to recognize vassal dependence on the Golden Horde. The unceasing struggle waged by the Russian people against the invaders forced the Mongol-Tatars to abandon the creation of their own administrative authorities in Rus'. Rus' retained its statehood. This was facilitated by the presence in Rus' of its own administration and church organization. In addition, the lands of Rus' were unsuitable for nomadic cattle breeding, in contrast, for example, to Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea region.

In 1243, Yaroslav Vsevolodovich (1238-1246), the brother of the Grand Duke of Vladimir, who was killed on the Sit River, was called to the Khan's headquarters. Yaroslav recognized vassal dependence on the Golden Horde and received a label (letter) for the great reign of Vladimir and a golden plaque ("paydzu"), a kind of pass through the Horde territory. Following him, other princes reached out to the Horde.

To control the Russian lands, the institution of Baskak governors was created - the leaders of the military detachments of the Mongol-Tatars, who monitored the activities of the Russian princes. The denunciation of the Baskaks to the Horde inevitably ended either with the summoning of the prince to Sarai (often he lost his label, and even his life), or with a punitive campaign in the unruly land. Suffice it to say that only in the last quarter of the XIII century. 14 similar campaigns were organized in Russian lands.

Some Russian princes, in an effort to quickly get rid of vassal dependence on the Horde, took the path of open armed resistance. However, the forces to overthrow the power of the invaders were still not enough. So, for example, in 1252 the regiments of the Vladimir and Galician-Volyn princes were defeated. This was well understood by Alexander Nevsky, from 1252 to 1263 the Grand Duke of Vladimir. He set a course for the restoration and recovery of the economy of the Russian lands. The policy of Alexander Nevsky was also supported by the Russian Church, which saw a great danger in Catholic expansion, and not in the tolerant rulers of the Golden Horde.

In 1257, the Mongol-Tatars undertook a census of the population - "recording the number." Besermens (Muslim merchants) were sent to the cities, and the collection of tribute was paid off. The size of the tribute ("exit") was very large, only the "royal tribute", i.e. tribute in favor of the khan, which was first collected in kind, and then in money, amounted to 1300 kg of silver per year. The constant tribute was supplemented by "requests" - one-time extortions in favor of the khan. In addition, deductions from trade duties, taxes for "feeding" the khan's officials, etc. went to the khan's treasury. In total there were 14 types of tributes in favor of the Tatars. Census of the population in the 50-60s of the XIII century. marked by numerous uprisings of Russian people against the Baskaks, Khan's ambassadors, tribute collectors, scribes. In 1262, the inhabitants of Rostov, Vladimir, Yaroslavl, Suzdal, and Ustyug dealt with the tribute collectors, the Besermen. This led to the fact that the collection of tribute from the end of the XIII century. was handed over to the Russian princes.

The consequences of the Mongol conquest and the Golden Horde yoke for Rus'. The Mongol invasion and the Golden Horde yoke became one of the reasons for the Russian lands lagging behind the developed countries of Western Europe. Huge damage was done to the economic, political and cultural development of Rus'. Tens of thousands of people died in battle or were driven into slavery. A significant part of the income in the form of tribute went to the Horde.

The old agricultural centers and the once developed territories were abandoned and fell into decay. The border of agriculture moved to the north, the southern fertile soils were called the "Wild Field". Russian cities were subjected to mass ruin and destruction. Many handicrafts were simplified and sometimes disappeared, which hampered the creation of small-scale production and ultimately delayed economic development.

The Mongol conquest preserved political fragmentation. It weakened the ties between the various parts of the state. Traditional political and trade ties with other countries were disrupted. The vector of Russian foreign policy, which ran along the "south - north" line (the fight against the nomadic danger, stable ties with Byzantium and through the Baltic with Europe), radically changed its direction to the "west - east". The pace of cultural development of the Russian lands slowed down.

What you need to know about these topics:

Archaeological, linguistic and written evidence about the Slavs.

Tribal unions of the Eastern Slavs in the VI-IX centuries. Territory. Classes. "The Way from the Varangians to the Greeks". Social system. Paganism. Prince and squad. Campaigns to Byzantium.

Internal and external factors that prepared the emergence of statehood among the Eastern Slavs.

Socio-economic development. Formation of feudal relations.

Early feudal monarchy of the Rurikids. "Norman theory", its political meaning. Management organization. Domestic and foreign policy of the first Kyiv princes (Oleg, Igor, Olga, Svyatoslav).

The heyday of the Kievan state under Vladimir I and Yaroslav the Wise. Completion of the unification of the Eastern Slavs around Kyiv. Border defense.

Legends about the spread of Christianity in Rus'. Adoption of Christianity as the state religion. The Russian Church and its role in the life of the Kyiv state. Christianity and paganism.

"Russian Truth". The establishment of feudal relations. organization of the ruling class. Princely and boyar estates. Feudal-dependent population, its categories. Serfdom. Peasant communities. Town.

The struggle between the sons and descendants of Yaroslav the Wise for the grand ducal power. fragmentation tendencies. Lyubech Congress of Princes.

Kievan Rus in the system of international relations in the 11th - early 12th centuries. Polovtsian danger. Princely feuds. Vladimir Monomakh. The final collapse of the Kievan state at the beginning of the XII century.

Culture of Kievan Rus. Cultural heritage of the Eastern Slavs. Folklore. Epics. The origin of Slavic writing. Cyril and Methodius. Beginning of chronicle. "The Tale of Bygone Years". Literature. Education in Kievan Rus. Birch letters. Architecture. Painting (frescoes, mosaics, iconography).

Economic and political reasons for the feudal fragmentation of Rus'.

feudal landownership. Urban development. Princely power and boyars. The political system in various Russian lands and principalities.

The largest political formations on the territory of Rus'. Rostov-(Vladimir)-Suzdal, Galicia-Volyn principality, Novgorod boyar republic. Socio-economic and internal political development of principalities and lands on the eve of the Mongol invasion.

International position of Russian lands. Political and cultural ties between Russian lands. Feudal strife. Fighting external danger.

The rise of culture in the Russian lands in the XII-XIII centuries. The idea of ​​the unity of the Russian land in the works of culture. "The Tale of Igor's Campaign".

Formation of the early feudal Mongolian state. Genghis Khan and the unification of the Mongol tribes. The conquest by the Mongols of the lands of neighboring peoples, northeastern China, Korea, Central Asia. Invasion of Transcaucasia and South Russian steppes. Battle on the Kalka River.

Campaigns of Batu.

Invasion of North-Eastern Rus'. The defeat of southern and southwestern Rus'. Campaigns of Batu in Central Europe. Rus''s struggle for independence and its historical significance.

Aggression of the German feudal lords in the Baltic. Livonian order. The defeat of the Swedish troops on the Neva and the German knights in the Battle of the Ice. Alexander Nevskiy.

Formation of the Golden Horde. Socio-economic and political system. Control system for conquered lands. The struggle of the Russian people against the Golden Horde. The consequences of the Mongol-Tatar invasion and the Golden Horde yoke for the further development of our country.

The inhibitory effect of the Mongol-Tatar conquest on the development of Russian culture. Destruction and destruction of cultural property. Weakening of traditional ties with Byzantium and other Christian countries. Decline of crafts and arts. Oral folk art as a reflection of the struggle against the invaders.

• Sakharov A.N., Buganov V.I. History of Russia from ancient times to the end of the 17th century.

The traditional version of the Tatar-Mongol invasion of Rus', the "Tatar-Mongol yoke", and the liberation from it is known to the reader from school. In the presentation of most historians, events looked something like this. At the beginning of the 13th century, in the steppes of the Far East, the energetic and brave tribal leader Genghis Khan gathered a huge army of nomads, soldered by iron discipline, and rushed to conquer the world - "to the last sea."

So was there a Tatar-Mongolian yoke in Rus'?

Having conquered the nearest neighbors, and then China, the mighty Tatar-Mongol horde rolled to the west. Having traveled about 5 thousand kilometers, the Mongols defeated Khorezm, then Georgia, and in 1223 reached the southern outskirts of Rus', where they defeated the army of Russian princes in a battle on the Kalka River. In the winter of 1237, the Tatar-Mongols invaded Rus' already with all their countless troops, burned and destroyed many Russian cities, and in 1241 they tried to conquer Western Europe by invading Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, reached the shores of the Adriatic Sea, but turned back, because that they were afraid to leave Rus' devastated, but still dangerous for them, in their rear. The Tatar-Mongol yoke began.

The great poet A. S. Pushkin left heartfelt lines: “Russia was assigned a high destiny ... its boundless plains absorbed the power of the Mongols and stopped their invasion at the very edge of Europe; the barbarians did not dare to leave enslaved Russia in their rear and returned to the steppes of their East. The emerging enlightenment was saved by a torn and dying Russia…”

The huge Mongol state, stretching from China to the Volga, hung over Russia like an ominous shadow. The Mongol khans issued labels to the Russian princes for reigning, attacked Rus' many times in order to rob and rob, repeatedly killed Russian princes in their Golden Horde.

Having grown stronger over time, Rus' began to resist. In 1380, the Grand Duke of Moscow Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Horde Khan Mamai, and a century later, in the so-called “standing on the Ugra”, the troops of Grand Duke Ivan III and the Horde Khan Akhmat converged. The opponents camped for a long time on opposite sides of the Ugra River, after which Khan Akhmat, finally realizing that the Russians had become strong and had little chance of winning the battle, gave the order to retreat and led his horde to the Volga. These events are considered "the end of the Tatar-Mongol yoke."

But in recent decades, this classic version has been challenged. The geographer, ethnographer and historian Lev Gumilyov convincingly showed that relations between Russia and the Mongols were much more complicated than the usual confrontation between cruel conquerors and their unfortunate victims. Deep knowledge in the field of history and ethnography allowed the scientist to conclude that there was a certain “complimentarity” between the Mongols and the Russians, that is, compatibility, the ability to symbiosis and mutual support at the cultural and ethnic level. The writer and publicist Alexander Bushkov went even further, "twisting" Gumilyov's theory to its logical end and expressing a completely original version: what is commonly called the Tatar-Mongol invasion was in fact a struggle between the descendants of Prince Vsevolod the Big Nest (son of Yaroslav and grandson of Alexander Nevsky ) with their rival princes for sole power over Russia. Khans Mamai and Akhmat were not alien raiders, but noble nobles who, according to the dynastic ties of the Russian-Tatar families, had legally justified rights to a great reign. Thus, the Battle of Kulikovo and the “standing on the Ugra” are not episodes of the struggle against foreign aggressors, but pages of the civil war in Rus'. Moreover, this author promulgated a completely “revolutionary” idea: under the names “Genghis Khan” and “Batu”, the Russian princes Yaroslav and Alexander Nevsky appear in history, and Dmitry Donskoy is Khan Mamai himself (!).

Of course, the conclusions of the publicist are full of irony and border on postmodern "banter", but it should be noted that many facts of the history of the Tatar-Mongol invasion and the "yoke" really look too mysterious and need closer attention and unbiased research. Let's try to consider some of these mysteries.

Let's start with a general remark. Western Europe in the 13th century presented a disappointing picture. Christendom was going through a certain depression. The activity of Europeans shifted to the borders of their range. German feudal lords began to seize the border Slavic lands and turn their population into disenfranchised serfs. The Western Slavs who lived along the Elbe resisted German pressure with all their might, but the forces were unequal.

Who were the Mongols who approached the borders of the Christian world from the east? How did the powerful Mongolian state appear? Let's take a tour of its history.

At the beginning of the 13th century, in 1202-1203, the Mongols first defeated the Merkits, and then the Keraites. The fact is that the Keraites were divided into supporters of Genghis Khan and his opponents. The opponents of Genghis Khan were led by the son of Van Khan, the legitimate heir to the throne - Nilha. He had reason to hate Genghis Khan: even at a time when Van Khan was an ally of Genghis, he (the leader of the Keraites), seeing the latter's undeniable talents, wanted to transfer the Keraite throne to him, bypassing his own son. Thus, the clash of part of the Keraites with the Mongols occurred during the lifetime of Wang Khan. And although the Keraites had a numerical superiority, the Mongols defeated them, as they showed exceptional mobility and took the enemy by surprise.

In the clash with the Keraites, the character of Genghis Khan was fully manifested. When Van Khan and his son Nilha fled from the battlefield, one of their noyons (commanders) with a small detachment detained the Mongols, saving their leaders from captivity. This noyon was seized, brought before the eyes of Genghis, and he asked: “Why, noyon, seeing the position of your troops, did not leave yourself? You had both the time and the opportunity." He replied: "I served my khan and gave him the opportunity to escape, and my head is for you, O conqueror." Genghis Khan said: “Everyone should imitate this man.

See how brave, loyal, valiant he is. I cannot kill you, noyon, I offer you a place in my army.” Noyon became a thousand-man and, of course, faithfully served Genghis Khan, because the Kerait horde disintegrated. Wang Khan himself died while trying to escape to the Naimans. Their guards on the border, seeing the Kerait, killed him, and presented the severed head of the old man to their khan.

In 1204, the Mongols of Genghis Khan and the powerful Naiman Khanate clashed. Once again, the Mongols won. The defeated were included in the horde of Genghis. There were no more tribes in the eastern steppe that could actively resist the new order, and in 1206, at the great kurultai, Genghis was again elected khan, but already of all Mongolia. Thus was born the all-Mongolian state. The only hostile tribe remained the old enemies of the Borjigins - the Merkits, but by 1208 they were forced out into the valley of the Irgiz River.

The growing power of Genghis Khan allowed his horde to assimilate different tribes and peoples quite easily. Because, in accordance with the Mongolian stereotypes of behavior, the khan could and should have demanded obedience, obedience to orders, fulfillment of duties, but forcing a person to abandon his faith or customs was considered immoral - the individual had the right to make his own choice. This state of affairs was attractive to many. In 1209, the Uighur state sent ambassadors to Genghis Khan with a request to accept them as part of his ulus. The request, of course, was granted, and Genghis Khan gave the Uighurs huge trading privileges. The caravan route went through Uyghuria, and the Uyghurs, being part of the Mongolian state, got rich due to the fact that they sold water, fruits, meat and “pleasures” to hungry caravaners at high prices. The voluntary unification of Uighuria with Mongolia turned out to be useful for the Mongols as well. With the annexation of Uighuria, the Mongols went beyond the borders of their ethnic range and came into contact with other peoples of the ecumene.

In 1216, on the Irgiz River, the Mongols were attacked by the Khorezmians. Khorezm by that time was the most powerful of the states that emerged after the weakening of the power of the Seljuk Turks. The rulers of Khorezm from the governors of the ruler of Urgench turned into independent sovereigns and adopted the title of "Khorezmshahs". They proved to be energetic, enterprising and warlike. This allowed them to conquer most of Central Asia and southern Afghanistan. The Khorezmshahs created a huge state in which the main military force was the Turks from the adjacent steppes.

But the state turned out to be fragile, despite the wealth, brave warriors and experienced diplomats. The regime of military dictatorship relied on tribes alien to the local population, who had a different language, other customs and customs. The cruelty of the mercenaries caused discontent among the inhabitants of Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv and other Central Asian cities. The uprising in Samarkand led to the destruction of the Turkic garrison. Naturally, this was followed by a punitive operation of the Khorezmians, who brutally dealt with the population of Samarkand. Other large and rich cities of Central Asia also suffered.

In this situation, Khorezmshah Mohammed decided to confirm his title of "ghazi" - "victorious infidels" - and become famous for another victory over them. The opportunity presented itself to him in that very year 1216, when the Mongols, fighting with the Merkits, reached the Irgiz. Upon learning of the arrival of the Mongols, Muhammad sent an army against them on the grounds that the steppe inhabitants must be converted to Islam.

The Khorezmian army attacked the Mongols, but in the rearguard battle they themselves went on the offensive and badly beaten the Khorezmians. Only the attack of the left wing, commanded by the son of Khorezmshah, the talented commander Jalal-ad-Din, corrected the situation. After that, the Khorezmians withdrew, and the Mongols returned home: they were not going to fight with Khorezm, on the contrary, Genghis Khan wanted to establish ties with the Khorezmshah. After all, the Great Caravan Route went through Central Asia and all the owners of the lands along which it ran grew rich due to the duties paid by merchants. Merchants willingly paid duties, because they shifted their costs to consumers, while losing nothing. Wishing to preserve all the advantages associated with the existence of caravan routes, the Mongols strove for peace and quiet on their borders. The difference of faiths, in their opinion, did not give a reason for war and could not justify bloodshed. Probably, the Khorezmshah himself understood the episodic nature of the collision on the Irshz. In 1218 Muhammad sent a trade caravan to Mongolia. Peace was restored, especially since the Mongols had no time for Khorezm: shortly before this, the Naiman prince Kuchluk began a new war with the Mongols.

Once again, Mongol-Khorezmian relations were violated by the Khorezmshah himself and his officials. In 1219, a rich caravan from the lands of Genghis Khan approached the Khorezm city of Otrar. The merchants went to the city to replenish their food supplies and take a bath. There, the merchants met two acquaintances, one of whom informed the ruler of the city that these merchants were spies. He immediately realized that there is a great reason to rob travelers. Merchants were killed, property was confiscated. The ruler of Otrar sent half of the loot to Khorezm, and Mohammed accepted the booty, which means he shared the responsibility for what he had done.

Genghis Khan sent envoys to find out what caused the incident. Mohammed was angry when he saw the infidels, and ordered to kill part of the ambassadors, and part, having stripped naked, drive them to certain death in the steppe. Two or three Mongols nevertheless got home and told about what had happened. Genghis Khan's anger knew no bounds. From the point of view of the Mongol, two of the most terrible crimes took place: the deceit of those who trusted and the murder of guests. According to custom, Genghis Khan could not leave unavenged either the merchants who were killed in Otrar, or the ambassadors who were insulted and killed by the Khorezmshah. The Khan had to fight, otherwise the tribesmen would simply refuse to trust him.

In Central Asia, the Khorezmshah had at his disposal a 400,000-strong regular army. And the Mongols, as the famous Russian orientalist V.V. Bartold believed, had no more than 200 thousand. Genghis Khan demanded military assistance from all allies. Warriors came from the Turks and Kara-Kitais, the Uighurs sent a detachment of 5 thousand people, only the Tangut ambassador boldly replied: "If you do not have enough troops, do not fight." Genghis Khan considered the answer an insult and said: "Only dead I could bear such an insult."

Genghis Khan threw the assembled Mongolian, Uyghur, Turkic and Kara-Chinese troops to Khorezm. Khorezmshah, having quarreled with his mother Turkan-Khatun, did not trust the military leaders related to her by kinship. He was afraid to gather them into a fist in order to repel the onslaught of the Mongols, and scattered the army among the garrisons. The best commanders of the Shah were his own unloved son Jalal-ad-Din and the commandant of the fortress Khojent Timur-Melik. The Mongols took fortresses one after another, but in Khujand, even taking the fortress, they could not capture the garrison. Timur-Melik put his soldiers on rafts and escaped pursuit along the wide Syr Darya. Scattered garrisons could not hold back the offensive of Genghis Khan's troops. Soon all the major cities of the Sultanate - Samarkand, Bukhara, Merv, Herat - were captured by the Mongols.

Regarding the capture of the Central Asian cities by the Mongols, there is an established version: "Wild nomads destroyed the cultural oases of the agricultural peoples." Is it so? This version, as shown by L. N. Gumilyov, is based on the legends of Muslim court historians. For example, the fall of Herat was reported by Islamic historians as a disaster in which the entire population was exterminated in the city, except for a few men who managed to escape in the mosque. They hid there, afraid to go out into the streets littered with corpses. Only wild animals roamed the city and tormented the dead. After sitting for some time and recovering, these "heroes" went to distant lands to rob caravans in order to regain their lost wealth.

But is it possible? If the entire population of a large city was exterminated and lay on the streets, then inside the city, in particular in the mosque, the air would be full of cadaveric miasma, and those who hid there would simply die. No predators, except for jackals, live near the city, and they very rarely penetrate the city. It was simply impossible for exhausted people to move to rob caravans a few hundred kilometers from Herat, because they would have to walk, carrying burdens - water and provisions. Such a “robber”, having met a caravan, would no longer be able to rob it ...

Even more surprising is the information reported by historians about Merv. The Mongols took it in 1219 and also allegedly exterminated all the inhabitants there. But already in 1229 Merv rebelled, and the Mongols had to take the city again. And finally, two years later, Merv sent a detachment of 10 thousand people to fight the Mongols.

We see that the fruits of fantasy and religious hatred gave rise to legends of Mongol atrocities. If, however, we take into account the degree of reliability of sources and ask simple but inevitable questions, it is easy to separate historical truth from literary fiction.

The Mongols occupied Persia almost without a fight, driving the Khorezmshah's son Jalal-ad-Din to northern India. Mohammed II Ghazi himself, broken by struggle and constant defeat, died in a leper colony on an island in the Caspian Sea (1221). The Mongols also made peace with the Shiite population of Iran, which was constantly offended by the Sunnis in power, in particular the Caliph of Baghdad and Jalal-ad-Din himself. As a result, the Shiite population of Persia suffered much less than the Sunnis of Central Asia. Be that as it may, in 1221 the state of the Khorezmshahs was finished. Under one ruler - Mohammed II Ghazi - this state reached its highest power, and died. As a result, Khorezm, Northern Iran, and Khorasan were annexed to the Mongol Empire.

In 1226, the hour of the Tangut state struck, which at the decisive moment of the war with Khorezm refused to help Genghis Khan. The Mongols rightly viewed this move as a betrayal that, according to Yasa, required vengeance. The capital of Tangut was the city of Zhongxing. It was besieged in 1227 by Genghis Khan, having defeated the Tangut troops in previous battles.

During the siege of Zhongxing, Genghis Khan died, but the Mongol noyons, on the orders of their leader, concealed his death. The fortress was taken, and the population of the "evil" city, on which the collective guilt for betrayal fell, was subjected to execution. The Tangut state disappeared, leaving behind only written evidence of its former culture, but the city survived and lived until 1405, when it was destroyed by the Ming Chinese.

From the capital of the Tanguts, the Mongols took the body of their great ruler to their native steppes. The funeral rite was as follows: the remains of Genghis Khan were lowered into the dug grave along with many valuable things and all the slaves who performed the funeral work were killed. According to custom, exactly one year later, it was required to celebrate a commemoration. In order to later find a burial place, the Mongols did the following. At the grave they sacrificed a little camel just taken from their mother. And a year later, the camel herself found in the boundless steppe the place where her cub was killed. Having slaughtered this camel, the Mongols performed the prescribed rite of commemoration and then left the grave forever. Since then, no one knows where Genghis Khan is buried.

In the last years of his life, he was extremely concerned about the fate of his state. The khan had four sons from his beloved wife Borte and many children from other wives, who, although they were considered legitimate children, did not have rights to the throne of their father. Sons from Borte differed in inclinations and in character. The eldest son, Jochi, was born shortly after the Merkit captivity of Borte, and therefore not only evil tongues, but also the younger brother Chagatai called him a "Merkit degenerate." Although Borte invariably defended Jochi, and Genghis Khan himself always recognized him as his son, the shadow of the Merkit captivity of his mother fell on Jochi as a burden of suspicion of illegitimacy. Once, in the presence of his father, Chagatai openly called Jochi illegitimate, and the matter almost ended in a fight between the brothers.

It is curious, but according to contemporaries, there were some stable stereotypes in Jochi's behavior that greatly distinguished him from Genghis. If for Genghis Khan there was no concept of "mercy" in relation to enemies (he left life only for small children who were adopted by his mother Hoelun, and valiant bagaturs who transferred to the Mongol service), then Jochi was distinguished by humanity and kindness. So, during the siege of Gurganj, the Khorezmians, completely exhausted by the war, asked to accept surrender, that is, in other words, to spare them. Jochi spoke out in favor of showing mercy, but Genghis Khan categorically rejected the request for mercy, and as a result, the Gurganj garrison was partially massacred, and the city itself was flooded by the waters of the Amu Darya. The misunderstanding between the father and the eldest son, constantly fueled by the intrigues and slander of relatives, deepened over time and turned into distrust of the sovereign to his heir. Genghis Khan suspected that Jochi wanted to gain popularity among the conquered peoples and secede from Mongolia. It is unlikely that this was the case, but the fact remains: at the beginning of 1227, Jochi, hunting in the steppe, was found dead - his spine was broken. The details of what happened were kept secret, but, without a doubt, Genghis Khan was a person interested in the death of Jochi and quite capable of ending his son's life.

In contrast to Jochi, the second son of Genghis Khan, Chaga-tai, was a strict, executive and even cruel man. Therefore, he received the position of "Guardian of Yasa" (something like the Attorney General or the Supreme Judge). Chagatai strictly observed the law and treated its violators without any mercy.

The third son of the Great Khan, Ogedei, like Jochi, was distinguished by kindness and tolerance towards people. The character of Ogedei is best illustrated by the following case: once, on a joint trip, the brothers saw a Muslim bathing by the water. According to Muslim custom, every true believer is obliged to perform prayer and ritual ablution several times a day. Mongolian tradition, on the contrary, forbade a person to bathe during the whole summer. The Mongols believed that washing in a river or lake causes a thunderstorm, and a thunderstorm in the steppe is very dangerous for travelers, and therefore "calling a thunderstorm" was seen as an attempt on people's lives. The nukers-rescuemen of the ruthless zealot of the law Chagatai seized the Muslim. Anticipating a bloody denouement - the unfortunate man was threatened with beheading - Ogedei sent his man to tell the Muslim to answer that he had dropped gold into the water and was just looking for it there. The Muslim said so to Chagatai. He ordered to look for a coin, and during this time, Ugedei's combatant threw a gold one into the water. The found coin was returned to the "rightful owner". In parting, Ugedei, taking a handful of coins from his pocket, handed them to the rescued person and said: “The next time you drop gold into the water, don’t go after it, don’t break the law.”

The youngest of the sons of Genghis, Tului, was born in 1193. Since Genghis Khan was then in captivity, this time Borte's infidelity was quite obvious, but Genghis Khan recognized Tuluya as his legitimate son, although outwardly he did not resemble his father.

Of the four sons of Genghis Khan, the youngest possessed the greatest talents and showed the greatest moral dignity. A good commander and an outstanding administrator, Tului was also a loving husband and distinguished by nobility. He married the daughter of the deceased head of the Keraites, Wan Khan, who was a devout Christian. Tului himself did not have the right to accept the Christian faith: like Genghisides, he had to profess the Bon religion (paganism). But the Khan's son allowed his wife not only to perform all Christian rites in a luxurious "church" yurt, but also to have priests with her and receive monks. The death of Tului can be called heroic without any exaggeration. When Ogedei fell ill, Tului voluntarily took a strong shamanic potion, seeking to "attract" the disease to himself, and died saving his brother.

All four sons were eligible to succeed Genghis Khan. After the elimination of Jochi, three heirs remained, and when Genghis died, and the new khan had not yet been elected, Tului ruled the ulus. But at the kurultai of 1229, in accordance with the will of Genghis, the gentle and tolerant Ogedei was chosen as the great khan. Ogedei, as we have already mentioned, had a good soul, but the kindness of the sovereign is often not to the benefit of the state and subjects. The management of the ulus under him was carried out mainly due to the severity of Chagatai and the diplomatic and administrative skills of Tului. The great khan himself preferred roaming with hunting and feasting in Western Mongolia to state concerns.

The grandchildren of Genghis Khan were allocated various areas of the ulus or high positions. The eldest son of Jochi, Orda-Ichen, received the White Horde, located between the Irtysh and the Tarbagatai ridge (the area of ​​\u200b\u200bpresent-day Semipalatinsk). The second son, Batu, began to own the Golden (big) Horde on the Volga. The third son, Sheibani, went to the Blue Horde, which roamed from Tyumen to the Aral Sea. At the same time, the three brothers - the rulers of the uluses - were allocated only one or two thousand Mongol soldiers each, while the total number of the Mongols' army reached 130 thousand people.

The children of Chagatai also received a thousand soldiers each, and the descendants of Tului, being at the court, owned the entire grandfather and father's ulus. So the Mongols established a system of inheritance, called the minority, in which the youngest son received all the rights of his father as an inheritance, and older brothers only a share in the common inheritance.

The great Khan Ugedei also had a son - Guyuk, who claimed the inheritance. The increase in the clan during the lifetime of the children of Genghis caused the division of the inheritance and enormous difficulties in managing the ulus, which stretched over the territory from the Black to the Yellow Sea. In these difficulties and family scores, the seeds of future strife lurked that ruined the state created by Genghis Khan and his associates.

How many Tatar-Mongol came to Rus'? Let's try to deal with this issue.

Russian pre-revolutionary historians mention "a half-million Mongol army". V. Yan, the author of the famous trilogy "Genghis Khan", "Batu" and "To the last sea", calls the number four hundred thousand. However, it is known that a warrior of a nomadic tribe goes on a campaign with three horses (at least two). One is carrying luggage (“dry rations”, horseshoes, spare harness, arrows, armor), and the third needs to be changed from time to time so that one horse can rest if you suddenly have to engage in battle.

Simple calculations show that for an army of half a million or four hundred thousand fighters, at least one and a half million horses are needed. Such a herd is unlikely to be able to effectively advance a long distance, since the front horses will instantly destroy the grass in a vast area, and the rear ones will die from starvation.

All the main Tatar-Mongol invasions into Rus' took place in winter, when the remaining grass is hidden under the snow, and you can’t take much fodder with you ... The Mongolian horse really knows how to get food from under the snow, but ancient sources do not mention the horses of the Mongolian breed that were available "in service" of the horde. Horse breeding experts prove that the Tatar-Mongolian horde rode Turkmens, and this is a completely different breed, and looks different, and is not able to feed itself in winter without human help ...

In addition, the difference between a horse released to roam in the winter without any work, and a horse forced to make long transitions under a rider, and also to participate in battles, is not taken into account. But they, in addition to the riders, also had to carry heavy prey! Wagon trains followed the troops. The cattle that pulls the carts also need to be fed ... The picture of a huge mass of people moving in the rearguard of a half-million army with carts, wives and children seems quite fantastic.

The temptation for the historian to explain the campaigns of the Mongols of the 13th century by "migrations" is great. But modern researchers show that the Mongol campaigns were not directly related to the movements of huge masses of the population. Victories were won not by hordes of nomads, but by small, well-organized mobile detachments, after campaigns returning to their native steppes. And the khans of the Jochi branch - Baty, Horde and Sheibani - received, according to the will of Genghis, only 4 thousand horsemen, that is, about 12 thousand people who settled in the territory from the Carpathians to Altai.

In the end, historians settled on thirty thousand warriors. But here, too, unanswered questions arise. And the first among them will be this: is not it enough? Despite the disunity of the Russian principalities, thirty thousand cavalrymen is too small a figure to arrange "fire and ruin" throughout Rus'! After all (even the supporters of the “classical” version admit this) they did not move in a compact mass. Several detachments scattered in different directions, and this reduces the number of "innumerable Tatar hordes" to the limit beyond which elementary distrust begins: could such a number of aggressors conquer Rus'?

It turns out a vicious circle: a huge army of the Tatar-Mongolians, for purely physical reasons, would hardly be able to maintain combat readiness in order to move quickly and inflict the notorious "indestructible blows." A small army would hardly have been able to establish control over most of the territory of Rus'. To get out of this vicious circle, one has to admit that the Tatar-Mongol invasion was in fact only an episode of the bloody civil war that was going on in Rus'. The enemy forces were relatively small, they relied on their own forage stocks accumulated in the cities. And the Tatar-Mongols became an additional external factor used in the internal struggle in the same way as the troops of the Pechenegs and Polovtsy were previously used.

The annalistic information about the military campaigns of 1237-1238 that has come down to us draws a classically Russian style of these battles - the battles take place in winter, and the Mongols - the steppes - act with amazing skill in the forests (for example, the encirclement and subsequent complete destruction of the Russian detachment on the City River under the command of the great Prince Vladimir Yuri Vsevolodovich).

Having cast a general look at the history of the creation of the huge Mongol state, we must return to Rus'. Let us take a closer look at the situation with the battle of the Kalka River, not fully understood by historians.

At the turn of the 11th-12th centuries, it was by no means the steppes that represented the main danger to Kievan Rus. Our ancestors were friends with the Polovtsian khans, married the “red Polovtsian girls”, accepted the baptized Polovtsians into their midst, and the descendants of the latter became Zaporizhzhya and Sloboda Cossacks, not without reason in their nicknames the traditional Slavic suffix belonging to “ov” (Ivanov) was replaced by a Turkic one - “ enco" (Ivanenko).

At this time, a more formidable phenomenon emerged - the decline in morals, the rejection of traditional Russian ethics and morality. In 1097, a princely congress took place in Lyubech, which laid the foundation for a new political form of the country's existence. There it was decided that "let each one keep his fatherland." Rus' began to turn into a confederation of independent states. The princes swore to inviolably observe what was proclaimed and in that they kissed the cross. But after the death of Mstislav, the Kievan state began to quickly disintegrate. Polotsk was the first to be laid aside. Then the Novgorod "republic" stopped sending money to Kyiv.

A striking example of the loss of moral values ​​and patriotic feelings was the act of Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky. In 1169, having captured Kyiv, Andrew gave the city to his warriors for a three-day plunder. Until that moment in Rus' it was customary to act in this way only with foreign cities. Under no civil strife, this practice never spread to Russian cities.

Igor Svyatoslavich, a descendant of Prince Oleg, the hero of The Tale of Igor's Campaign, who became the Prince of Chernigov in 1198, set himself the goal of cracking down on Kyiv, the city where the rivals of his dynasty were constantly strengthening. He agreed with the Smolensk prince Rurik Rostislavich and called for the help of the Polovtsy. In defense of Kyiv - "the mother of Russian cities" - Prince Roman Volynsky spoke out, relying on the troops of the Torks allied to him.

The plan of the Chernigov prince was realized after his death (1202). Rurik, Prince of Smolensk, and the Olgovichi with the Polovtsy in January 1203, in a battle that went mainly between the Polovtsy and the Torks of Roman Volynsky, prevailed. Having captured Kyiv, Rurik Rostislavich subjected the city to a terrible defeat. The Church of the Tithes and the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra were destroyed, and the city itself was burned. “They created a great evil, which was not from baptism in the Russian land,” the chronicler left a message.

After the fateful year 1203 Kyiv never recovered.

According to L. N. Gumilyov, by this time the ancient Russians had lost their passionarity, that is, their cultural and energy “charge”. Under such conditions, a collision with a strong enemy could not but become tragic for the country.

Meanwhile, the Mongol regiments were approaching the Russian borders. At that time, the main enemy of the Mongols in the west were the Cumans. Their enmity began in 1216, when the Polovtsians accepted the natural enemies of Genghis - the Merkits. The Polovtsians actively pursued the anti-Mongolian policy, constantly supporting the Finno-Ugric tribes hostile to the Mongols. At the same time, the Polovtsian steppes were as mobile as the Mongols themselves. Seeing the futility of cavalry clashes with the Polovtsy, the Mongols sent an expeditionary force behind enemy lines.

The talented generals Subetei and Jebe led a corps of three tumens through the Caucasus. The Georgian king George Lasha tried to attack them, but was destroyed along with the army. The Mongols managed to capture the guides, who showed the way through the Darial Gorge. So they went to the upper reaches of the Kuban, to the rear of the Polovtsians. Those, finding the enemy in their rear, retreated to the Russian border and asked for help from the Russian princes.

It should be noted that the relationship between Rus' and the Polovtsy does not fit into the scheme of irreconcilable confrontation "sedentary - nomads". In 1223, the Russian princes became allies of the Polovtsy. The three strongest princes of Rus' - Mstislav Udaloy from Galich, Mstislav of Kyiv and Mstislav of Chernigov - having gathered troops, tried to protect them.

The clash at the Kalka in 1223 is described in some detail in the annals; in addition, there is another source - "The Tale of the Battle of the Kalka, and the Russian Princes, and the Seventy Bogatyrs." However, the abundance of information does not always bring clarity ...

Historical science has long denied the fact that the events on Kalka were not an aggression of evil aliens, but an attack by the Russians. The Mongols themselves did not seek war with Russia. The ambassadors who arrived at the Russian princes rather amiably asked the Russians not to interfere in their relations with the Polovtsians. But, true to their allied obligations, the Russian princes rejected the peace proposals. In doing so, they made a fatal mistake that had bitter consequences. All the ambassadors were killed (according to some sources, they were not even just killed, but "tortured"). At all times, the murder of an ambassador, a truce was considered a serious crime; according to Mongolian law, the deceit of a person who trusted was an unforgivable crime.

Following this, the Russian army sets out on a long march. Leaving the borders of Rus', it is the first to attack the Tatar camp, take prey, steal cattle, after which it moves out of its territory for another eight days. A decisive battle is taking place on the Kalka River: the eighty thousandth Russian-Polovtsian army fell on the twenty thousandth (!) Detachment of the Mongols. This battle was lost by the allies due to the inability to coordinate actions. The Polovtsy left the battlefield in panic. Mstislav Udaloy and his "younger" prince Daniel fled for the Dnieper; they were the first to reach the shore and managed to jump into the boats. At the same time, the prince cut down the rest of the boats, fearing that the Tatars would be able to cross after him, “and, filled with fear, he reached Galich on foot.” Thus, he doomed his comrades-in-arms, whose horses were worse than the prince's, to death. The enemies killed everyone they overtook.

Other princes remain one on one with the enemy, repulse his attacks for three days, after which, believing the assurances of the Tatars, they surrender. Here lies another mystery. It turns out that the princes surrendered after a certain Russian named Ploskinya, who was in the enemy’s battle formations, solemnly kissed the pectoral cross that the Russians would be spared and their blood would not be shed. The Mongols, according to their custom, kept their word: having tied the captives, they laid them on the ground, covered them with planks and sat down to feast on the bodies. Not a drop of blood was shed! And the latter, according to Mongolian views, was considered extremely important. (By the way, only the “Tale of the Battle of Kalka” reports that the captured princes were put under the boards. Other sources write that the princes were simply killed without mocking, and still others that they were “captured.” So the story of a feast on the bodies is just one of the versions.)

Different nations have different perceptions of the rule of law and the concept of honesty. The Russians believed that the Mongols, having killed the captives, violated their oath. But from the point of view of the Mongols, they kept their oath, and the execution was the highest justice, because the princes committed the terrible sin of killing the one who trusted. Therefore, it is not a matter of deceit (history gives a lot of evidence of how the Russian princes themselves violated the "kissing of the cross"), but in the personality of Ploskin himself - a Russian, a Christian, who somehow mysteriously found himself among the soldiers of the "unknown people".

Why did the Russian princes surrender after listening to Ploskini's persuasion? “The Tale of the Battle of the Kalka” writes: “There were roamers along with the Tatars, and their governor was Ploskinya.” Brodniki are Russian free combatants who lived in those places, the predecessors of the Cossacks. However, the establishment of the social position of Ploskin only confuses the matter. It turns out that the roamers in a short time managed to agree with the “unknown peoples” and became close to them so much that they jointly hit their brothers in blood and faith? One thing can be stated with all certainty: part of the army with which the Russian princes fought on the Kalka was Slavic, Christian.

Russian princes in this whole story do not look the best. But back to our mysteries. For some reason, the "Tale of the Battle of the Kalka" mentioned by us is not able to definitely name the enemy of the Russians! Here is a quote: “... Because of our sins, unknown nations came, the godless Moabites [a symbolic name from the Bible], about whom no one knows exactly who they are and where they came from, and what their language is, and what tribe they are, and what faith. And they call them Tatars, while others say - Taurmen, and others - Pechenegs.

Amazing lines! They were written much later than the events described, when it seemed to be necessary to know exactly who the Russian princes fought on the Kalka. After all, part of the army (albeit small) nevertheless returned from Kalka. Moreover, the victors, pursuing the defeated Russian regiments, chased them to Novgorod-Svyatopolch (on the Dnieper), where they attacked the civilian population, so that among the townspeople there should have been witnesses who saw the enemy with their own eyes. And yet he remains "unknown"! This statement further confuses the matter. After all, by the time described, the Polovtsians were well known in Rus' - they lived side by side for many years, then fought, then became related ... The Taurmens, a nomadic Turkic tribe that lived in the Northern Black Sea region, were again well known to the Russians. It is curious that in the "Tale of Igor's Campaign" among the nomadic Turks who served the Chernigov prince, some "Tatars" are mentioned.

There is an impression that the chronicler is hiding something. For some reason unknown to us, he does not want to directly name the enemy of the Russians in that battle. Perhaps the battle on the Kalka was not at all a clash with unknown peoples, but one of the episodes of the internecine war waged between Christian Russians, Christian Polovtsians and Tatars who got involved in the matter?

After the battle on the Kalka, part of the Mongols turned their horses to the east, trying to report on the completion of the task - the victory over the Polovtsians. But on the banks of the Volga, the army fell into an ambush set up by the Volga Bulgars. The Muslims, who hated the Mongols as pagans, unexpectedly attacked them during the crossing. Here the victors at Kalka were defeated and lost many people. Those who managed to cross the Volga left the steppes to the east and united with the main forces of Genghis Khan. Thus ended the first meeting of the Mongols and the Russians.

L. N. Gumilyov collected a huge amount of material, clearly indicating that the relationship between Russia and the Horde CAN be denoted by the word "symbiosis". After Gumilyov, they write especially much and often about how Russian princes and “Mongol khans” became brothers, relatives, sons-in-law and father-in-law, how they went on joint military campaigns, how (let’s call a spade a spade) they were friends. Relations of this kind are unique in their own way - in no country conquered by them, the Tatars did not behave like this. This symbiosis, brotherhood in arms leads to such an interweaving of names and events that sometimes it is even difficult to understand where the Russians end and the Tatars begin...

Therefore, the question of whether there was a Tatar-Mongolian yoke in Rus' (in the classical sense of the term) remains open. This topic is waiting for its researchers.

When it comes to “standing on the Ugra”, we again encounter omissions and omissions. As those who diligently studied school or university history courses remember, in 1480 the troops of the Grand Duke of Moscow Ivan III, the first “sovereign of all Rus'” (ruler of the united state) and the hordes of the Tatar Khan Akhmat stood on opposite banks of the Ugra River. After a long "standing" the Tatars fled for some reason, and this event was the end of the Horde yoke in Rus'.

There are many dark places in this story. Let's start with the fact that the famous painting, which even got into school textbooks - "Ivan III tramples on the Khan's basma" - was written on the basis of a legend composed 70 years after "standing on the Ugra". In reality, the khan's ambassadors did not come to Ivan, and he did not solemnly tear any letter-basma in their presence.

But here again an enemy is coming to Rus', a non-believer, threatening, according to his contemporaries, the very existence of Rus'. Well, all in a single impulse are preparing to repulse the adversary? No! We are faced with a strange passivity and confusion of opinion. With the news of the approach of Akhmat in Rus', something happens that still has no explanation. It is possible to reconstruct these events only on the basis of meager, fragmentary data.

It turns out that Ivan III does not at all seek to fight the enemy. Khan Akhmat is far away, hundreds of kilometers away, and Ivan's wife, Grand Duchess Sophia, flees from Moscow, for which she receives accusatory epithets from the chronicler. Moreover, at the same time, some strange events are unfolding in the principality. “The Tale of Standing on the Ugra” tells about it this way: “In the same winter, the Grand Duchess Sophia returned from her escape, for she ran to Beloozero from the Tatars, although no one was chasing her.” And then - even more mysterious words about these events, in fact, the only mention of them: “And the lands through which she wandered became worse than from the Tatars, from boyar serfs, from Christian bloodsuckers. Reward them, Lord, according to the treachery of their deeds, according to the deeds of their hands, give them, for they loved more wives than the Orthodox Christian faith and holy churches, and they agreed to betray Christianity, for malice blinded them.

What is this about? What happened in the country? What actions of the boyars brought on them accusations of "blood drinking" and apostasy from the faith? We practically don't know what it was about. A little light is shed by reports about the "evil advisers" of the Grand Duke, who advised not to fight the Tatars, but "run away" (?!). Even the names of "advisors" are known - Ivan Vasilievich Oshchera Sorokoumov-Glebov and Grigory Andreevich Mamon. The most curious thing is that the Grand Duke himself does not see anything reprehensible in the behavior of the near boyars, and subsequently no shadow of disfavor falls on them: after “standing on the Ugra”, both remain in favor until their death, receiving new awards and positions.

What's the matter? It is completely dull, vaguely reported that Oshchera and Mamon, defending their point of view, mentioned the need to observe some kind of “old times”. In other words, the Grand Duke must give up resistance to Akhmat in order to observe some ancient traditions! It turns out that Ivan violates certain traditions, deciding to resist, and Akhmat, accordingly, acts in his own right? Otherwise, this riddle cannot be explained.

Some scholars have suggested: maybe we have a purely dynastic dispute? Once again, two people claim the throne of Moscow - representatives of the relatively young North and the more ancient South, and Akhmat, it seems, has no less rights than his rival!

And here Bishop of Rostov Vassian Rylo intervenes in the situation. It is his efforts that break the situation, it is he who pushes the Grand Duke on a campaign. Bishop Vassian pleads, insists, appeals to the conscience of the prince, gives historical examples, hints that the Orthodox Church may turn away from Ivan. This wave of eloquence, logic and emotion is aimed at convincing the Grand Duke to come to the defense of his country! What the Grand Duke for some reason stubbornly does not want to do ...

The Russian army, to the triumph of Bishop Vassian, leaves for the Ugra. Ahead - a long, for several months, "standing". And again something strange happens. First, negotiations begin between the Russians and Akhmat. The negotiations are quite unusual. Akhmat wants to do business with the Grand Duke himself - the Russians refuse. Akhmat makes a concession: he asks for the brother or son of the Grand Duke to arrive - the Russians refuse. Akhmat again concedes: now he agrees to speak with a "simple" ambassador, but for some reason Nikifor Fedorovich Basenkov must certainly become this ambassador. (Why him? A riddle.) The Russians again refuse.

It turns out that for some reason they are not interested in negotiations. Akhmat makes concessions, for some reason he needs to agree, but the Russians reject all his proposals. Modern historians explain it this way: Akhmat "intended to demand tribute." But if Akhmat was only interested in tribute, why such long negotiations? It was enough to send some Baskak. No, everything indicates that we have before us some big and gloomy secret that does not fit into the usual schemes.

Finally, about the mystery of the retreat of the "Tatars" from the Ugra. Today in historical science there are three versions of not even a retreat - Akhmat's hasty flight from the Ugra.

1. A series of "fierce battles" undermined the morale of the Tatars.

(Most historians reject this, rightly stating that there were no battles. There were only minor skirmishes, clashes of small detachments "in no man's land.")

2. The Russians used firearms, which led the Tatars into panic.

(It is unlikely: by this time the Tatars already had firearms. The Russian chronicler, describing the capture of the city of Bulgar by the Moscow army in 1378, mentions that the inhabitants “let thunder from the walls.”)

3. Akhmat was “afraid” of a decisive battle.

But here is another version. It is taken from a historical work of the 17th century, written by Andrey Lyzlov.

“The lawless tsar [Akhmat], unable to endure his shame, in the summer of the 1480s gathered a considerable force: princes, and lancers, and murzas, and princes, and quickly came to the Russian borders. In his Horde, he left only those who could not wield weapons. The Grand Duke, after consulting with the boyars, decided to do a good deed. Knowing that in the Great Horde, from where the tsar came, there was no army left at all, he secretly sent his numerous army to the Great Horde, to the dwellings of the filthy. At the head were the service tsar Urodovlet Gorodetsky and Prince Gvozdev, governor of Zvenigorod. The king did not know about it.

They, sailing in boats along the Volga to the Horde, saw that there were no military people there, but only women, old men and youths. And they undertook to captivate and devastate, mercilessly betraying the wives and children of the filthy to death, setting fire to their dwellings. And, of course, they could kill every single one.

But Murza Oblyaz the Strong, a servant of Gorodetsky, whispered to his king, saying: “O king! It would be absurd to devastate and ruin this great kingdom to the end, because you yourself come from here, and we all, and here is our homeland. Let’s get out of here, we’ve already caused enough ruin, and God can be angry with us.”

So the glorious Orthodox army returned from the Horde and came to Moscow with a great victory, having with them a lot of booty and a lot of food. The king, having learned about all this, at the same hour retreated from the Ugra and fled to the Horde.

Doesn’t it follow from this that the Russian side deliberately dragged out the negotiations - while Akhmat tried for a long time to achieve his unclear goals, making concessions after concessions, Russian troops sailed along the Volga to the capital of Akhmat and cut down women, children and the elderly there, until the commanders woke up that something like conscience! Please note: it is not said that the voivode Gvozdev opposed the decision of Urodovlet and Oblyaz to stop the massacre. Apparently, he was also fed up with blood. Naturally, Akhmat, having learned about the defeat of his capital, retreated from the Ugra, hurrying home with all possible speed. What next?

A year later, the “Horde” is attacked with an army by a “Nogai Khan” named ... Ivan! Akhmat is killed, his troops are defeated. Another evidence of a deep symbiosis and fusion of Russians and Tatars ... There is another version of the death of Akhmat in the sources. According to him, a certain close associate of Akhmat named Temir, having received rich gifts from the Grand Duke of Moscow, killed Akhmat. This version is of Russian origin.

Interestingly, the army of Tsar Urodovlet, who staged a pogrom in the Horde, is called "Orthodox" by the historian. It seems that before us is another argument in favor of the version that the Horde soldiers who served the Moscow princes were by no means Muslims, but Orthodox.

There is another aspect that is of interest. Akhmat, according to Lyzlov, and Urodovlet are "kings." And Ivan III is only a “Grand Duke”. Writer inaccuracy? But at the time when Lyzlov wrote his history, the title "Tsar" was already firmly entrenched in Russian autocrats, had a specific "binding" and precise meaning. Further, in all other cases, Lyzlov does not allow himself such "liberties". Western European kings he has "kings", Turkish sultans - "sultans", padishah - "padishah", cardinal - "cardinal". Is that the title of Archduke is given by Lyzlov in the translation "artsy prince". But this is a translation, not a mistake.

Thus, in the late Middle Ages there was a system of titles that reflected certain political realities, and today we are well aware of this system. But it is not clear why two seemingly identical Horde nobles are called one “Prince” and the other “Murza”, why “Tatar Prince” and “Tatar Khan” are by no means the same thing. Why are there so many holders of the title "Tsar" among the Tatars, and the Moscow sovereigns are stubbornly called "Grand Dukes". Only in 1547 Ivan the Terrible for the first time in Rus' takes the title of "tsar" - and, as Russian chronicles extensively report, he did this only after much persuasion from the patriarch.

Are the campaigns of Mamai and Akhmat against Moscow explained by the fact that, according to some perfectly understandable contemporaries, the rules of the “tsar” were higher than the “grand prince” and had more rights to the throne? That some dynastic system, now forgotten, declared itself here?

It is interesting that in 1501 the Crimean king Chess, having been defeated in an internecine war, for some reason expected that the Kyiv prince Dmitry Putyatich would come out on his side, probably due to some special political and dynastic relations between the Russians and the Tatars. Which one is not exactly known.

And finally, one of the mysteries of Russian history. In 1574 Ivan the Terrible divides the Russian kingdom into two halves; He rules one himself, and transfers the other to the Kasimov Tsar Simeon Bekbulatovich - along with the titles of "Tsar and Grand Duke of Moscow"!

Historians still do not have a generally accepted convincing explanation for this fact. Some say that Grozny, as usual, mocked the people and those close to him, others believe that Ivan IV thus “transferred” his own debts, mistakes and obligations to the new king. But can we not talk about joint rule, which had to be resorted to due to the same intricate ancient dynastic relations? Perhaps for the last time in Russian history, these systems declared themselves.

Simeon was not, as many historians previously believed, Grozny's "weak-willed puppet" - on the contrary, he was one of the largest state and military figures of that time. And after the two kingdoms were again united into one, Grozny by no means “exiled” Simeon to Tver. Simeon was granted the Grand Dukes of Tver. But Tver in the time of Ivan the Terrible was a recently pacified center of separatism, which required special supervision, and the one who ruled Tver, by all means, had to be a confidant of the Terrible.

And finally, strange troubles fell upon Simeon after the death of Ivan the Terrible. With the accession of Fyodor Ioannovich, Simeon is “reduced” from the reign of Tver, blinded (a measure that in Rus' from time immemorial was applied exclusively to sovereign persons who had the right to the table!), Forcibly tonsured monks of the Kirillov Monastery (also a traditional way to eliminate a competitor to the secular throne! ). But even this is not enough: I. V. Shuisky sends a blind, elderly monk to Solovki. One gets the impression that the Muscovite tsar in this way got rid of a dangerous competitor who had significant rights. A contender for the throne? Really the rights of Simeon to the throne were not inferior to the rights of the Rurikovich? (It is interesting that Elder Simeon survived his tormentors. Returned from Solovki exile by decree of Prince Pozharsky, he died only in 1616, when neither Fyodor Ivanovich, nor False Dmitry I, nor Shuisky were alive.)

So, all these stories - Mamai, Akhmat and Simeon - are more like episodes of the struggle for the throne, and not like a war with foreign conquerors, and in this respect they resemble similar intrigues around one or another throne in Western Europe. And those whom we have been accustomed to consider since childhood as the “deliverers of the Russian land”, perhaps, in fact, solved their dynastic problems and eliminated rivals?

Many members of the editorial board are personally acquainted with the inhabitants of Mongolia, who were surprised to learn about their supposedly 300-year-old dominion over Russia. Of course, this news filled the Mongols with a sense of national pride, but at the same time they asked: “Who is Genghis Khan?”

from the magazine "Vedic Culture No. 2"

In the annals of the Orthodox Old Believers about the "Tatar-Mongol yoke" it is said unambiguously: "There was Fedot, but not that one." Let's turn to the ancient Slovene language. Having adapted the runic images to modern perception, we get: thief - enemy, robber; mogul-powerful; yoke - order. It turns out that “Tati Arias” (from the point of view of the Christian flock) with the light hand of the chroniclers were called “Tatars”1, (There is another meaning: “Tata” - father. Tatar - Tata Arias, i.e. Fathers (Ancestors or older) Aryans) powerful - by the Mongols, and the yoke - the 300-year-old order in the State, which stopped the bloody civil war that broke out on the basis of the forced baptism of Rus' - "martyrdom". Horde is a derivative of the word Order, where “Or” is strength, and day is daylight hours or simply “light”. Accordingly, the “Order” is the Force of Light, and the “Horde” is the Light Forces. So these Light Forces of the Slavs and Aryans, led by our Gods and Ancestors: Rod, Svarog, Sventovit, Perun, stopped the civil war in Russia on the basis of forced Christianization and maintained order in the State for 300 years. Were there dark-haired, stocky, dark-faced, hook-nosed, narrow-eyed, bow-legged and very evil warriors in the Horde? Were. Detachments of mercenaries of different nationalities, who, like in any other army, were driven in the forefront, saving the main Slavic-Aryan Troops from losses on the front line.

Hard to believe? Take a look at the "Map of Russia 1594" in Gerhard Mercator's Atlas of the Country. All the countries of Scandinavia and Denmark were part of Russia, which extended only to the mountains, and the Principality of Muscovy is shown as an independent state that is not part of Rus'. In the east, beyond the Urals, the principalities of Obdora, Siberia, Yugoria, Grustina, Lukomorye, Belovodie are depicted, which were part of the Ancient Power of the Slavs and Aryans - the Great (Grand) Tartaria (Tartaria - lands under the auspices of the God Tarkh Perunovich and the Goddess Tara Perunovna - Son and Daughter of the Supreme God Perun - Ancestor of the Slavs and Aryans).

Do you need a lot of intelligence to draw an analogy: Great (Grand) Tartaria = Mogolo + Tartaria = "Mongol-Tataria"? We do not have a high-quality image of the named picture, there is only "Map of Asia 1754". But it's even better! See for yourself. Not only in the 13th, but until the 18th century, Grand (Mogolo) Tartaria existed as realistically as the now faceless Russian Federation.

"Pisarchuks from history" not all were able to pervert and hide from the people. Their repeatedly darned and patched "Trishkin's caftan", which covers the Truth, now and then bursts at the seams. Through the gaps, the truth bit by bit reaches the consciousness of our contemporaries. They do not have truthful information, therefore they are often mistaken in the interpretation of certain factors, but they draw the correct general conclusion: what school teachers taught to several dozen generations of Russians is deceit, slander, falsehood.

Published article from S.M.I. "There was no Tatar-Mongol invasion" - a vivid example of the above. Commentary to it by a member of our editorial board Gladilin E.A. will help you, dear readers, to dot the "i".
Violetta Basha,
All-Russian newspaper "My family",
No. 3, January 2003. p.26

The main source by which we can judge the history of Ancient Rus' is considered to be the Radzivilov manuscript: "The Tale of Bygone Years". The story about the calling of the Varangians to rule in Rus' is taken from her. But can she be trusted? Its copy was brought at the beginning of the 18th century by Peter 1 from Koenigsberg, then its original turned out to be in Russia. This manuscript has now been proven to be a forgery. Thus, it is not known for certain what happened in Rus' before the beginning of the 17th century, that is, before the accession to the throne of the Romanov dynasty. But why did the House of Romanov need to rewrite our history? Is it not then to prove to the Russians that for a long time they were subordinate to the Horde and were not capable of independence, that their lot was drunkenness and humility?

The strange behavior of princes

The classic version of the “Mongol-Tatar invasion of Rus'” has been known to many since school. She looks like this. At the beginning of the 13th century, in the Mongolian steppes, Genghis Khan gathered a huge army of nomads, subject to iron discipline, and planned to conquer the whole world. Having defeated China, the army of Genghis Khan rushed to the west, and in 1223 went to the south of Rus', where they defeated the squads of Russian princes on the Kalka River. In the winter of 1237, the Tatar-Mongols invaded Rus', burned many cities, then invaded Poland, the Czech Republic and reached the shores of the Adriatic Sea, but suddenly turned back, because they were afraid to leave Rus' devastated, but still dangerous for them. In Rus', the Tatar-Mongol yoke began. The huge Golden Horde had borders from Beijing to the Volga and collected tribute from the Russian princes. The khans gave the Russian princes labels for reigning and terrorized the population with atrocities and robberies.

Even the official version says that there were many Christians among the Mongols and some Russian princes established very warm relations with the Horde khans. Another oddity: with the help of the Horde troops, some princes were kept on the throne. The princes were very close people to the khans. And in some cases, the Russians fought on the side of the Horde. Are there many strange things? Is this how the Russians should have treated the occupiers?

Having grown stronger, Rus' began to resist, and in 1380 Dmitry Donskoy defeated the Horde Khan Mamai on the Kulikovo field, and a century later the troops of Grand Duke Ivan III and the Horde Khan Akhmat met. The opponents camped for a long time on opposite sides of the Ugra River, after which the khan realized that he had no chance, gave the order to retreat and went to the Volga. These events are considered the end of the "Tatar-Mongol yoke".

Secrets of the disappeared chronicles

When studying the chronicles of the times of the Horde, scientists had many questions. Why did dozens of chronicles disappear without a trace during the reign of the Romanov dynasty? For example, "The Word about the destruction of the Russian land", according to historians, resembles a document from which everything that would testify to the yoke was carefully removed. They left only fragments telling about a certain "trouble" that befell Rus'. But there is not a word about the "invasion of the Mongols."

There are many more oddities. In the story “About the Evil Tatars”, a Khan from the Golden Horde orders the execution of a Russian Christian prince ... for refusing to bow to the “pagan god of the Slavs!” And some chronicles contain amazing phrases, for example, such: “Well, with God!” - said the Khan and, crossing himself, galloped at the enemy.

Why are there suspiciously many Christians among the Tatar-Mongols? Yes, and the descriptions of princes and warriors look unusual: the chronicles claim that most of them were of the Caucasoid type, had not narrow, but large gray or blue eyes and blond hair.

Another paradox: why all of a sudden the Russian princes in the battle on the Kalka surrender "on parole" to a representative of foreigners named Ploskinya, and he ... kisses the pectoral cross ?! So, Ploskinya was his own, Orthodox and Russian, and besides, of a noble family!

Not to mention the fact that the number of “war horses”, and hence the soldiers of the Horde troops, at first, with the light hand of the historians of the Romanov dynasty, was estimated at three hundred to four hundred thousand. Such a number of horses could not hide in the copses, nor feed themselves in the conditions of a long winter! Over the past century, historians have constantly reduced the size of the Mongol army and reached thirty thousand. But such an army could not keep all the peoples from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in subjection! But it could easily perform the functions of collecting taxes and restoring order, that is, serving as something like a police force.

There was no invasion!

A number of scientists, including academician Anatoly Fomenko, made a sensational conclusion based on the mathematical analysis of manuscripts: there was no invasion from the territory of modern Mongolia! And there was a civil war in Rus', the princes fought with each other. No representatives of the Mongoloid race who came to Rus' existed at all. Yes, there were some Tatars in the army, but not aliens, but residents of the Volga region, who lived in the neighborhood with the Russians long before the notorious "invasion".

What is commonly called the “Tatar-Mongol invasion” was in fact a struggle between the descendants of Prince Vsevolod the “Big Nest” and their rivals for sole power over Russia. The fact of the war between the princes is generally recognized, unfortunately, Rus' did not unite immediately, and rather strong rulers fought among themselves.

But with whom did Dmitry Donskoy fight? In other words, who is Mamai?

Horde - the name of the Russian army

The era of the Golden Horde was distinguished by the fact that, along with secular power, there was a strong military power. There were two rulers: a secular one, who was called a prince, and a military one, they called him a khan, i.e. "warlord". In the annals you can find the following entry: “There were roamers along with the Tatars, and they had such and such a governor,” that is, the troops of the Horde were led by governors! And wanderers are Russian free combatants, the predecessors of the Cossacks.

Authoritative scientists have concluded that the Horde is the name of the Russian regular army (like the "Red Army"). And Tatar-Mongolia is Great Rus' itself. It turns out that it was not the "Mongols", but the Russians who conquered a huge territory from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Arctic to the Indian. It was our troops that made Europe tremble. Most likely, it was the fear of powerful Russians that caused the Germans to rewrite Russian history and turn their national humiliation into ours.

By the way, the German word “ordnung” (“order”) most likely comes from the word “horde”. The word "Mongol" probably came from the Latin "megalion", that is, "great." Tataria from the word "tartar" ("hell, horror"). And Mongol-Tataria (or "Megalion-Tartaria") can be translated as "Great Horror".

A few more words about names. Most people of that time had two names: one in the world, and the other received at baptism or a battle nickname. According to the scientists who proposed this version, Prince Yaroslav and his son Alexander Nevsky act under the names of Genghis Khan and Batu. Ancient sources depict Genghis Khan as tall, with a luxurious long beard, with “lynx”, green-yellow eyes. Note that people of the Mongoloid race do not have a beard at all. The Persian historian of the times of the Horde, Rashid adDin, writes that in the family of Genghis Khan, children "were born mostly with gray eyes and blond."

Genghis Khan, according to scientists, is Prince Yaroslav. He just had a middle name - Genghis with the prefix "khan", which meant "commander". Batu - his son Alexander (Nevsky). The following phrase can be found in the manuscripts: "Alexander Yaroslavich Nevsky, nicknamed Batu." By the way, according to the description of contemporaries, Batu was fair-haired, light-bearded and light-eyed! It turns out that it was the Khan of the Horde who defeated the Crusaders on Lake Peipsi!

Having studied the chronicles, scientists found that Mamai and Akhmat were also noble nobles, according to the dynastic ties of the Russian-Tatar families, who had the right to a great reign. Accordingly, "Mamaev's battle" and "standing on the Ugra" are episodes of the civil war in Rus', the struggle of princely families for power.

What Rus' was the Horde going to?

The chronicles do say; "The Horde went to Rus'." But in the XII-XIII centuries, Rus was called a relatively small area around Kyiv, Chernigov, Kursk, the area near the Ros River, Seversk land. But Muscovites or, say, Novgorodians were already northern residents, who, according to the same ancient chronicles, often “went to Rus'” from Novgorod or Vladimir! That is, for example, in Kyiv.

Therefore, when the Moscow prince was about to go on a campaign against his southern neighbor, this could be called an “invasion of Rus'” by his “horde” (troops). Not in vain, on Western European maps, for a very long time, Russian lands were divided into “Muscovy” (north) and “Russia” (south).

A grand fabrication

At the beginning of the 18th century, Peter 1 founded the Russian Academy of Sciences. During the 120 years of its existence, there were 33 academicians-historians at the historical department of the Academy of Sciences. Of these, only three are Russians, including M.V. Lomonosov, the rest are Germans. The history of Ancient Rus' until the beginning of the 17th century was written by the Germans, and some of them did not even know the Russian language! This fact is well known to professional historians, but they make no effort to carefully review what history the Germans wrote.

It is known that M.V. Lomonosov wrote the history of Rus' and that he had constant disputes with German academicians. After Lomonosov's death, his archives disappeared without a trace. However, his works on the history of Rus' were published, but edited by Miller. Meanwhile, it was Miller who persecuted M.V. Lomonosov during his lifetime! Lomonosov's works on the history of Rus' published by Miller are a falsification, this was shown by computer analysis. There is little left of Lomonosov in them.

As a result, we do not know our history. The Germans of the Romanov family have hammered into our heads that the Russian peasant is good for nothing. That “he does not know how to work, that he is a drunkard and an eternal slave.

how long did the Tatar-Mongol yoke last in Rus' !! ! it is necessary exactly

1. there was no yoke
2. thanks a lot for the answers
3. from the Russians for a sweet soul ....
4. there were no mongol mengu manga from Turkic eternal glorious manga tatars
5. from 1243 to 1480
6. 1243-1480s Under Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, it is considered that it began when he received a label from the khans. And it ended in 1480 is considered. Kulikovo field was in 1380, but then the Horde took Moscow with the support of the Poles and Lithuanians.
7. 238 years (from 1242 to 1480)
8. judging by the numerous facts of inconsistency in history, there were - you can sun. For example, it was possible to hire nomadic "Tatars" to any prince, and it seems that the "yoke" is nothing more than an army hired by the Kyiv prince to change the Orthodox faith to the Christian one ... it turned out the same.
9. from 1243 to 1480
10. There was no yoke, under this they covered up the civil war between Novgorod and Moscow. It's proven
11. from 1243 to 1480
12. from 1243 to 1480
13. MONGOLO-TATAR YOKE in Rus' (1243-1480), the traditional name for the system of exploitation of Russian lands by the Mongol-Tatar conquerors. Established as a result of the invasion of Batu. After the Battle of Kulikovo (1380) it was nominal. Finally overthrown by Ivan III in 1480.

    In the spring of 1238, the Tatar-Mongol army of Batu Khan, who had been ravaging Rus' for many months, ended up on Kaluga land under the walls of Kozelsk. According to the Nikon chronicle, the formidable conqueror of Rus' demanded the surrender of the city, but the Kozelchans refused, deciding "to lay down their heads for the Christian faith." The siege lasted for seven weeks, and only after the destruction of the wall with battering rams did the enemy manage to climb the rampart, where "the battle was great and the slaughter of evil." Part of the defenders went beyond the walls of the city and died in an unequal battle, destroying up to 4 thousand Tatar-Mongol warriors. Bursting into Kozelsk, Batu ordered to destroy all the inhabitants, "until they suck milk," and ordered the city to be called the "Evil City". The feat of the Kozelsk people, who despised death and did not submit to the strongest enemy, became one of the bright pages of the heroic past of our Fatherland.

    In the 1240s. Russian princes found themselves in political dependence on the Golden Horde. The period of the Tatar-Mongol yoke began. At the same time, in the XIII century. under the rule of the Lithuanian princes, a state began to take shape, which included Russian lands, including part of the "Kaluga". The border between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Principality of Moscow was established along the rivers Oka and Ugra.

    In the XIV century. the territory of the Kaluga region became a place of constant confrontation between Lithuania and Moscow. In 1371, the Lithuanian prince Olgerd, in a complaint to the Patriarch of Constantinople Philotheus against the Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Rus' Alexei, among the cities taken from him by Moscow "against the kissing of the cross" for the first time names Kaluga (in domestic sources, Kaluga was first mentioned in the will of Dmitry Donskoy, who died in 1389 .) . It is traditionally believed that Kaluga arose as a border fortress to protect the Moscow principality from an attack from Lithuania.

    The Kaluga cities of Tarusa, Obolensk, Borovsk and others took part in the struggle of Dmitry Ivanovich (Donskoy) against the Golden Horde. Their squads participated in 1380 in the Battle of Kulikovo. A significant role in the victory over the enemy was played by the famous commander Vladimir Andreevich the Brave (specific prince of Serpukhov and Borovsky). In the Battle of Kulikovo, the Tarusian princes Fedor and Mstislav perished.

    A hundred years later, the Kaluga land became the place where the events that put an end to the Tatar-Mongol yoke took place. Grand Duke Ivan III Vasilyevich, who during the years of his reign had turned from a Moscow appanage prince into an autocratic sovereign of all Rus', in 1476 stopped paying the Horde the annual monetary "output" collected from Russian lands since the time of Batu. In response, in 1480, Khan Akhmat, in alliance with the Polish-Lithuanian king Casimir IV, set out on a campaign against Russian soil. Akhmad's troops moved through Mtsensk, Odoev and Lubutsk to Vorotynsk. Here the khan expected help from Casimir IV, but did not wait for it. The Crimean Tatars, allies of Ivan III, diverted the Lithuanian troops by attacking Podolia.

    Having not received the promised help, Akhmat went to the Ugra and, standing on the shore against the Russian regiments that Ivan III had concentrated here in advance, made an attempt to cross the river. Several times Akhmat tried to break through to the other side of the Ugra, but all his attempts were thwarted by Russian troops. Soon the river began to freeze over. Ivan III ordered all troops to be withdrawn to Kremenets, and then to Borovsk. But, Akhmat did not dare to pursue the Russian troops and on November 11 retreated from the Ugra. The last campaign of the Golden Horde against Rus' ended in complete failure. The successors of the formidable Batu were powerless before the state united around Moscow.